The US Post Office (?) Is Monitoring "Social Media" Posts?

[Steve M. Galbraith]

From the story: "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, according to a document obtained by Yahoo News."

Who knew there was a "law enforcement arm" of the postal service? In any case, they have no business - none - tracking and collecting what we post on social media. And no business monitoring "planned protests".  Who came up with this idea? Who is ensuring that they're not abusing this power?

Full story here: https://news.yahoo.com/the-postal-service-is-running-a-running-a-covert-operations-program-that-monitors-americans-social-media-posts-160022919.html

[Jon Banks]

From the story: "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, according to a document obtained by Yahoo News."

Who knew there was a "law enforcement arm" of the postal service? In any case, they have no business - none - tracking and collecting what we post on social media. And no business monitoring "planned protests".  Who came up with this idea? Who is ensuring that they're not abusing this power?

Full story here: https://news.yahoo.com/the-postal-service-is-running-a-running-a-covert-operations-program-that-monitors-americans-social-media-posts-160022919.html

The Postal Inspection Service is the oldest Law Enforcement agency in the country.

It's News to me that they're monitoring Social Media users but not surprising given the role they've historically played in terms of surveillance.

[Steve M. Galbraith]

The justification for this monitoring appears to be this: the US Postal Service mission is to "enforce the laws that defend the nation's mail system from illegal or dangerous use; and ensure public trust in the mail.”

Gosh, I thought their mission was to deliver the mail. How is monitoring social media defending the nation's "mail system from illegal or dangerous use"? "Dangerous" use? So if they determine the mail system is being used for "dangerous" purposes - as determined by them - they can monitor our posts on Twitter? That can't be right. What do we have the FBI for?

And "ensure the public trust in the mail"? This isn't how you do it.