The Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program was created after the anthrax attacks in late 2001. Highly secret, it seeped into public view last month when the F.B.I. cited it in its investigation of ricin-laced letters sent to President Obama. It enables the Postal Service to retrace the path of mail for law enforcement. No one disputes that it is sweeping. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html?pagewanted=1&ref=general&src=me A Buffalo, NY man was targeted by a longtime surveillance system called mail covers, a forerunner of a vastly more expansive effort, the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, in which Postal Service computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States — about 160 billion pieces last year. It is not known how long the government saves the images.
The Buffalo man had noticed something odd in his mail last September: a handwritten card, apparently delivered by mistake, with instructions for postal workers to pay special attention to the letters and packages sent to his home.
“Show all mail to supv” — supervisor — “for copying prior to going out on the street,” read the card. It included the man’s name, address and the type of mail that needed to be monitored. The word “confidential” was highlighted in green.
As the world focuses on the high-tech spying of the National Security Agency, the misplaced card offers a rare glimpse inside the seemingly low-tech but prevalent snooping of the United States Postal Service.
“In the past, mail covers were used when you had a reason to suspect someone of a crime,” said Mark D. Rasch, who started a computer crimes unit in the fraud section of the criminal division of the Justice Department and worked on several fraud cases using mail covers. “Now it seems to be, ‘Let’s record everyone’s mail so in the future we might go back and see who you were communicating with.’ Essentially you’ve added mail covers on millions of Americans.”
“Looking at just the outside of letters and other mail, I can see who you bank with, who you communicate with — all kinds of useful information…” “It can be easily abused because it’s so easy to use and you don’t have to go through a judge to get the information. You just fill out a form.” said James J. Wedick, a former F.B.I. Agent.
The Buffalo man, Leslie James Pickering, said that although he was arrested two dozen times for acts of civil disobedience and convicted of a handful of misdemeanors, he was never involved in the arson attacks the Earth Liberation Front carried out. He said he became tired of focusing only on environmental activism and moved back to Buffalo to finish college, open his bookstore, Burning Books, and start a family.
“I’m no terrorist,” he said. “I’m an activist.”
