I could only read the first few paragraphs. It enraged me. Holy fuck - it’s even worse than I thought from reading the headline.
The law enforcement arm of the U.S. Postal Service has quietly begun cooperating with federal immigration officials to locate people suspected of being in the country illegally, according to two people familiar with the matter and documents obtained by The Washington Post — dramatically broadening the scope of the Trump administration’s government-wide mass deportation campaign.
The U.S. Postal Inspection Service, a little-known police and investigative force for the mail agency, recently joined a Department of Homeland Security task force geared toward finding, detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional reprisals.
Immigration officials are seeking photographs of the outside of envelopes and packages — an Inspection Service program known as “mail covers” — and access to the postal investigation agency’s broad surveillance systems, including Postal Service online account data, package- and mail-tracking information, credit card data and financial material and IP addresses, the people said.
What the fuck? Can’t even get mail while brown without being investigated now, huh?
When they kill USPS the postal cops will be the only part left.
Nah. They’ll get rid of them too or roll them into another agency. Instead they’ll just bribe and coerce private package companies like UPS and Fedex to cooperate. I’m pretty sure they already do. At the same level and in the same capacity and best of all because they’re private companies you have no rights against infringements by those companies unlike those you hypothetically have when dealing with the government in terms of due process and amendment protections. You can complain and in theory have rights or claims against a federal agent who overstepped the law to go snooping through things beyond their authority but who ever heard of a private company getting in trouble for that, especially because they can just blame a rogue employee if it gets really bad.
People forget how deep in bed private industry is with the US surveillance state because it pays them and because their cooperation means the state looks the other way on taxes and other white collar law violations from their “friends”.
US government already bypasses tons of legal rules about spying on Americans by simply not doing the spying themselves. They pay third party phone analytics and private spying firms for their data-sets on Americans for instance.
One day I will tell my grandkids that the SS-WaffenPolice were a simple mail service when I was a kid. Now it makes a bit more sense how companies completely switch directions; for example, Nokia starting as a paper company and eventually making indestructible cell phones.
Here’s a thing I bet you didn’t know. Nokia has won 3 Emmies since 2016
Unsurprising really. They were always going to use whatever law enforcement arm they could to do fascism. The best we can ever hope for from cops is quitting
Really shows how even innocuous (relatively) Gov agencies can be misused.
For example, IRS database can be used to target ITIN taxpayers (more likely to be migrants).
Or how health data can be used to target disabled or ND ppl
Not our boys in blue 😭
Postal inspectors are not the same as letter carriers and mail handlers. ALL COPS
I wonder if they’re going to add this to the training videos they make you watch when you work for the USPS
