Joe Biden’s government is weaponizing institutions against its own citizens.
The amount of control they’re grabbing is scary.
And every American needs to know about the terrifying program the U.S. Postal Service is running.
The United States Postal Service is supposed to deliver mail – a simple task that could be free of all political agenda.
But instead of delivering the mail, the USPS has quietly started spying on Americans on social media.
The program has analysts looking through social media for content they consider “inflammatory.”
“The law enforcement arm of the U.S. Postal Service has been quietly running a program that tracks and collects Americans’ social media posts, including those about planned protests,” reported Yahoo News, which broke the story.
According to a document obtained by Yahoo News, the surveillance operation was dubbed the Internet Covert Operations Program.
“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, marked “law enforcement sensitive,” said. “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.”
It’s unclear if this is legally justified in any way.
The 4th Amendment of the Constitution is supposed to keep Americans safe from government surveillance.
The Supreme Court ruled in 1967 that the amendment is broken when the government violates a person’s “reasonable expectation of privacy” and that it applies both electronically and physically.
“This seems a little bizarre,” says Rachel Levinson-Waldman, the deputy director of 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.”
Levinson-Waldman also assessed why the program could be unconstitutional.
“If the individuals they’re monitoring are carrying out or planning criminal activity, that should be the purview of the FBI,” she said.
“If they’re simply engaging in lawfully protected speech, even if it’s odious or objectionable, then monitoring them on that basis raises serious constitutional concerns.”
“It’s a mystery,” University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone told Yahoo News. “I don’t understand why the government would go to the Postal Service for examining the internet for security issues.”
The fact that Parler and Telegram were mentioned indicates the surveillance program is specifically targeting conservatives – which wouldn’t be the first time a government agency has been weaponized against them.
During the Obama years, the IRS wrongfully targeted Tea Party and conservative groups because of their political views.
Obama tried hard to justify the actions in 2010, claiming the groups were a “threat to democracy” and potentially run by “political operatives” or were “foreign-controlled.”
The steps Democrats are taking against their political enemies is dangerously eroding what little social trust is left in the country.
