Inspector General Says Postal Service Surveillance Program Being Handled Just About As Well As You'd Expect

from the just-another-ho-hum-day-of-bulk-surveillance dept

The US Postal Service has long been the Little Surveillance Agency That Time Forgot. For more than a decade, it has scanned every piece of mail it handles. Its "Mail Isolation and Tracking Control" program went into effect in response to post-9/11 anthrax mailings.

Prior to 2001, it only collected mail data on request. Post-2001, it's much more proactive. The problem with untargeted surveillance efforts is that they dehumanize the millions of people whose mail is scanned on a daily basis. This leads directly to the sort of behavior uncovered by the USPS's Inspector General. When you don't care about your "customers," your work gets sloppy.

These are the safeguards the Post Office has put in place to protect personal information and ensure accountability.

The Postal Inspection Service’s Criminal Investigations Service Center (CISC), the primary administrator of the mail covers program, is responsible for maintaining accountable mail cover documents and Postal Service (PS) Forms 2008 and 2009. PS Form 2008, Letter of Instruction, provides guidance for completing, returning, and safeguarding mail covers. PS Form 2009, Information Regarding Mail Matter, is used to record information from the outside of the mailpiece, such as the sender’s name and address. These forms contain information such as names, addresses, and financial institutions that, if used in the aggregate, could reveal personally identifiable information.

Here's what the Inspector General discovered. First off, the USPS isn't compiling its accountability paperwork (the PS forms listed above) in a timely fashion. The paperwork must be sent to the CISC within 60 days of the termination of the mail cover request. For external orders, the forms are supposed to be returned by the law enforcement agency making the request. For internal orders, the forms are handled solely by USPS personnel. The same 60-day time limit applies.

We found that Postal Service personnel or external law enforcement agencies did not return accountable documents for 49 of 75 files (65 percent). As of the date of this review, PS Forms 2009 and 2008 were unaccounted for up to 762 days beyond the mail cover period. We also found accountable documents for 16 mail cover files judgmentally selected from FY 2015 were not returned timely, not returned at all, or not retained in the mail cover file.

To add to the problem, the postal employees were closing files despite not having obtained all of the required paperwork.

Postal Inspection Service personnel closed 79 of 120 mail cover files (66 percent) during FYs 2012 through 2014 without PS Forms 2009 being returned… Fifty-one of the 79 mail covers involved preliminary investigations (known as area cases) and the postal inspectors should have returned the documents within 60 days of the end of the mail cover period. For the remaining 28 mail covers, postal inspectors should have returned PS Forms 2009 before CISC officials closed the mail cover files or before the postal inspector closed the investigation.

Not only were the investigative files improperly handled, but in-process mail-scanning orders were treated with a similarly cavalier attitude, exposing personal information related to targeted individuals.

During our visit to a facility in the Chicago District, we observed PS Forms 2008, which had the subject’s name and address posted, on the carrier’s casing station. We also found a mail cover request on the supervisor’s desk, which is on the workroom floor and visible to all employees. The manager stated that the supervisor posted the PS Forms 2008 on the carrier’s casing station as a reminder to perform the mail cover.

When not leaving sensitive documents lying around, supervisors were making up their own rules.

[A]t a facility in the Los Angeles District, a mail cover request was approved for one subject; however, the supervisor instructed the carrier to record mail cover information for all persons residing at the address.

And, as if to confirm the "lazy government employee" stereotype, this happened:

During our visit at another facility in the New York District, we found an unopened mail cover request in the inbox attached to the outside of the manager’s office door, where it was accessible to all employees.

That's not even the worst of it.

We also noted the mail cover was dated September 21, 2014, and our visit was 129 days past the [order's] end date. The manager stated he was not aware that the mail cover request was in his inbox…

It's not really an "inbox" then, is it? It's a black hole. Or a trashcan. Or a happy place where mail cover orders go to escape from the harsh reality of being executed in a timely fashion.

What appears to be a program of massive scope but limited use (if you don't want the government tracking your communications/packages, it seems unlikely you'd use a government agency for delivery) is apparently treated as just another tedious part of the job by USPS personnel -- a job very few want to do correctly, if at all.

Filed Under: mail, oversight, postal service, surveillance, tracking, usps

Old School Snail Mail 'Metadata' Still Being Harvested By The USPS And Turned Over To Law Enforcement/Security Agencies By Request

from the get-it-all,-just-in-case dept

We live in a wondrous age of technological advancement, where almost any form of communication can be instantly captured by interceding security agencies and stored safely away somewhere in Utah where it can be "questioned" at the agencies' convenience.

But the old school ways still have their charm. Various entities have intercepted snail mail since the days when it was just referred to as "mail." Not so much interception goes on now, partly because there's much less to intercept, but law enforcement agencies are still able to access scans of the envelopes of every piece of mail sent or received in the US, all without a warrant. Not unexpectedly, this "enhancement" to the "mail covers" program emerged post-9/11.

The NY Times has a good piece on the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, which was put into place following the post-9/11 anthrax mailings. It quite literally scans every envelope, post card, and piece of junk mail — some 160 billion pieces of mail a year. These scanners probably know more about the mail you receive than you do.

The Mail Isolation program is really just a super-beefed-up version of the USPS "mail covers" program that has been around for about a century, explains the Times. Mail covers are warrantless requests for photos of the outside of specific recipients’ mail.

Basically, a law enforcement agency fills out the request, and for 30 days (extendable to 120 days), it receives scans of all mail related to the subject of the request. Only the outside of the mail is provided, as opening mail would require a warrant. Authorities maintain that no warrant is needed for information on the outside of a piece of mail, as there can be no reasonable expectation of privacy. The USPS can deny a mail covers request, but rarely does.

The old "mail covers" program was targeted. The new, post-9/11 version isn't. Everything is photographed and anything can be requested by simply filling out a form. The argument is that there's no expectation of privacy seeing as any number of people will be able to view what's written on the outside of the envelope as it's in transit. Of course, people might feel their privacy is being violated if they observed someone going through a stack of their mail and taking photos of every envelope, but that's where the courts stand on this issue currently.

Unlike other invasive programs officials have defended by claiming they have prevented [insert number here] terrorist attacks, the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program has at least been instrumental in taking down a purveyor of terrorist-like activity.

In a criminal complaint filed June 7 in Federal District Court in Eastern Texas, the F.B.I. said a postal investigator tracing the ricin letters was able to narrow the search to Shannon Guess Richardson, an actress in New Boston, Tex., by examining information from the front and back images of 60 pieces of mail scanned immediately before and after the tainted letters sent to Mr. Obama and Mr. Bloomberg showing return addresses near her home. Ms. Richardson had originally accused her husband of mailing the letters, but investigators determined that he was at work during the time they were mailed.

While that's comforting, the downside is that this system, like any other mass data collection, is prone to abuse. And what's considered not "private enough" to require a warrant can still tell the requesting party quite a bit about you.

"It's a treasure trove of information," said James J. Wedick, a former F.B.I. agent who spent 34 years at the agency and who said he used mail covers in a number of investigations, including one that led to the prosecution of several elected officials in California on corruption charges. "Looking at just the outside of letters and other mail, I can see who you bank with, who you communicate with — all kinds of useful information that gives investigators leads that they can then follow up on with a subpoena."

But, he said: "It can be easily abused because it's so easy to use and you don't have to go through a judge to get the information. You just fill out a form."

The postal service holds the power to approve or deny these requests, without any outside review, which means every request will sail right through. 15-20,000 requests come through each year related to criminal activity. The number of requests made for national security reasons hasn't been revealed.

In the post-9/11 security/law enforcement climate, it seems it's better to have everything and not need it than want something and not have it. This is all above-board and perfectly constitutional according to the courts, so if any of these entities want to dig through your mail for any reason, (perhaps as a form of political harassment) all they have to do is fill out the right paperwork.

Filed Under: doj, mail, metadata, nsa, scans, surveillance, us postal service, warrants

Cutting Saturday Mail Delivery? Sure, If It Makes Good Business Sense.

from the kramer-wants-to-cancel-his-mail dept

With a loss of $3.8 billion last year, the US Postal Service is facing a challenging business climate. Mail volume fell to 177 billion pieces for 2009, from 203 billion a year before. Outside consultants have estimated a deficit of $238 billion in the next decade. So, the postal service is now considering making many changes to its business, including cutting Saturday delivery from its regular service in an effort to reduce this shortfall. Eric Zorn, of the Chicago Tribune, goes further and asks "Why stop at Saturday?" Sure, with the advent of the digital age, less and less things really need to be sent in the physical realm. However, don't be so quick to write off the USPS. The postal service still did $68 billion in annual revenue for 2009, which is bigger than either UPS or FedEx. At 44 cents, first class mail is still one of the best deals around -- sending a 1 ounce object anywhere in the country within a few days for that amount of money is a modern marvel. Of course, considering that one-third of USPS revenue comes from advertising mail, any change to delivery windows or rates will surely generate flak from that industry. That said, the USPS has had a history of profitability, so these changes just reflect a desire to return to that state, which is good practice for any business, whether they are in the public or the private sector.

Filed Under: delivery, mail, saturday, usps