A program run by the law enforcement arm of the U.S. Postal Service is busy tracking and collecting Americans’ social media posts, according to Yahoo! News.
The action specifically looks for planned protests, locations and times, which are being collected from various social media, including Parler and Telegram.
When Yahoo! News contacted civil liberties experts about the program, they were surprised. “It’s a mystery,” University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone, whom President Barack Obama appointed to review the National Security Agency’s bulk data collection in the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks, told Yahoo. “I don’t understand why the government would go to the Postal Service for examining the internet for security issues.”
The Postal Service said it doesn’t discuss its surveillance operations with anyone, but it did defend its setup by explaining that part of its job is to collaborate “with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies to proactively identify and assess potential threats to the Postal Service.”
SOURCE: Yahoo! News April 21, 2021