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“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,” the document, a government bulletin dated March 16 says. The bulletin is marked as “law enforcement sensitive” and was distributed through the Department of Homeland Security’s fusion centers. “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.” That’s referencing the World Wide Rally for Freedom and Democracy, which was on March 20, a catch-all “freedom” rally for anti-lockdown, anti-mask, anti-reality kind of people who have certainly been co-opted and exploited by the violent far-right. That the government is monitoring those groups is not a surprise. That the USPS is doing it is just bizarre.
“iCOP analysts are currently monitoring these social media channels for any potential threats stemming from the scheduled protests and will disseminate intelligence updates as needed,” the bulletin sent out to law enforcement agencies through Homeland Security says. It “includes screenshots of posts about the protests from Facebook, Parler, Telegram and other social media sites. Individuals mentioned by name include one alleged Proud Boy and several others whose identifying details were included but whose posts did not appear to contain anything threatening,” Yahoo News reports.
The USPS did not answer any specific questions posed by Yahoo News as to why it, instead of say, the FBI, was conducting this kind of activity. But it did provide a statement. “The U.S. Postal Inspection Service is the primary law enforcement, crime prevention, and security arm of the U.S. Postal Service,” the statement said. “As such, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service has federal law enforcement officers, Postal Inspectors, who enforce approximately 200 federal laws to achieve the agency’s mission: protect the U.S. Postal Service and its employees, infrastructure, and customers; enforce the laws that defend the nation’s mail system from illegal or dangerous use; and ensure public trust in the mail.” Again, how that mission is furthered by this iCOP is not made clear in this statement. “The Internet Covert Operations Program is a function within the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, which assesses threats to Postal Service employees and its infrastructure by monitoring publicly available open source information,” the statement read.
In follow-up tweets, reporter Jana Winter provided more information, including the fact that the USPIS won’t say when the program began, but that “[f]ootnotes in the bulletin citing their authority say the Attorney General can give more powers to the postmaster general.” The Department of Justice would not say when this power was granted. The “FBI declined to comment for this article and postal inspection service wouldn’t tell me when they started their covert program that monitors social media,” Winter said.
This could be a joint venture between DeJoy and whichever Trump DHS acting chief was around at the time—Ken Cuccinelli or Chad Wolf. In fact, it sounds very much like Trump DHS kind of thing that the Biden administration didn’t know exists. Who knows who’s burrowed into the DHS or Department of Justice from the last guy’s administration and has been working with DeJoy to keep this thing going.
Here’s one thing we do know about DeJoy and law enforcement. Last August, he ordered Postal Police Officers (PPO), the uniformed police force of the Postal Service, to stop patrolling. The order was to “end all mail-protection and other law-enforcement activity away from the confines of postal real estate,” according to a complaint filed by the the Postal Police Officers Association (PPOA). That meant ending protection for letter carriers on unsafe routes. It meant patrols to protect blue mail collection boxes and mail vehicles.
There are around 460 PPOs, PPOA national President Frank Albergo told Daily Kos, and about 80% are people of color. He sees the move by DeJoy to stop all postal police street patrols “as the first step to abolish the postal police force in its entirety.” He said that “in the absence of PPOs, all USPIS law enforcement functions will be performed by the predominantly white Postal Inspectors—at twice the cost. In other words, the Postal Service intends to replace lower paid Black and Brown employees with higher paid white employees. Apparently, austerity only applies to certain people.”
These are same postal inspectors who are monitoring social media posts. Albergo is struck that this is happening “at the same time PPOs have been stripped of their law enforcement authority to protect postal employees away from postal premises and mail-in-transit.”
“It seems that the Inspection Service trusts its predominantly white criminal investigators with law enforcement authority which is ostensibly unbounded, but the opposite is true for the predominantly Black and Brown postal police officers,” Albergo told Daily Kos. “I would argue that PPOs are one of the most successful police forces in America insofar as respecting the rights of citizens. But that doesn’t seem to matter to the Agency. Our officers are the wrong color. It’s disgraceful.”
It could also be coming to an end. The confirmation hearing in the Senate Homeland Security Committee for President Joe Biden’s nominees for the Postal Service Board of Governors is Thursday morning. The board will have the power to fire Louis DeJoy and the power to reinstate the PPO force and its mission to protecting postal employees and the mail. It even has the power to make delivering the mail quickly and efficiently the USPS main mission once again.
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