Quick. Think of a single good reason why they should be monitoring or spying on social media outlets. Maybe that good-for-everything cover "Situational Awareness". The two-pager points out that the most worrying stuff inspectors came across emanated from Parler. But even at its most concerning, the iCOP effort came up with nothing but some wasted tax dollars and a few incursions into inalienable rights territory.
“No intelligence is available to suggest the legitimacy of these threats,” it adds.
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The United States Postal Service is still in the spying business. The USPS has been scanning pretty much every piece of mail that runs through its system, creating a massive database of metadata that serves whatever purpose the USPS imagines it does. "National security" or whatever the fuck.
When not helping the DEA find cash and the occasional drug shipment, the USPS is also apparently keeping tabs on social media users. This includes social media services with smaller, but perhaps more concerning, user bases. The name of the game is still "national security," but it's unclear why the Postal Service -- which has a hard enough time divvying up its limited resources -- is engaged in this sort of surveillance.
A two-page report [PDF] from the USPS's "iCOP" (Internet Covert Operations Program) [again, why is this actually a thing?] -- first reported by Yahoo News -- details the internet sleuthery of US Postal Service Inspectors. . .
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