As Edward Snowden pursues asylum in Russia, the world is reeling in the revelations of the United States’ NSA (National Security Agency) surveillance activities and the US Postal Service’s policy of photographing every “mail cover” passing through the system.
According to a July 3, 2013 NY Times article, the mail covers programme is more than a century old but is still considered a “powerful tool.” At the request of various law enforcement officials, postal workers record information from the outside of the letters and parcels before they are delivered. The information is then sent to the particular law enforcement agency that requested the information. The mail covers programme became even more extensive in 2001 when, as part of the “war on terror” and after the anthrax scare, the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking programmes were developed. These are surveillance programmes in which USPS’s computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail circulated in the USPS system, estimated at 160 billion pieces in 2012. This would include mail to be delivered outside the US and received from foreign jurisdictions. It’s also unknown how long the government saves the images.
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