The U.S. Postal Service's Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP) Monitors Social Media

takyon writes:

Is the post office spying on you? USPS "covert operations" may monitor social media posts

A division of the U.S. Postal Service that investigates illegal mail activities has quietly operated a program that monitors Americans' social media posts, according to a government document published by Yahoo News.

The Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP), part of the USPS law enforcement arm, is one of seven groups that deal with cybercrime, according to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, which says it targets the use of the mail to facilitate black market trade and other illegal activities related to drugs, fraud and violent crime. But that description neglects to mention that the group also tracks social media sites for "inflammatory" posts, including messages about planned protests.

"Analysts with the United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP) monitored significant activity regarding planned protests occurring internationally and domestically on March 20, 2021," said a March 16 government bulletin marked as "law enforcement sensitive" and distributed by the Department of Homeland Security. "Locations and times have been identified for these protests, which are being distributed online across multiple social media platforms, to include right-wing leaning Parler and Telegram accounts."

[...] Civil liberties experts expressed concerns about the Postal Service's collection of social media posts. "I don't understand why the government would go to the Postal Service for examining the internet for security issues," Geoffrey Stone, a University of Chicago law professor who was appointed by former President Barack Obama to review the National Security Agency's metadata collection, told Yahoo News.

"This seems a little bizarre," added Rachel Levinson-Waldman, deputy director of the Brennan Center for Justice's liberty and national security program. "Based on the very minimal information that's available online, it appears that [iCOP] is meant to root out misuse of the postal system by online actors, which doesn't seem to encompass what's going on here. It's not at all clear why their mandate would include monitoring of social media that's unrelated to use of the postal system."

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