The notion that only mail carriers should see a piece of mail is based on a strange understanding of mail processing; a Norman Rockwell view of what a modern postal delivery system entails. In the United States, the outside of every letter is photographed. And the information derived from these photos, such as religious and political affiliations, is more intimate than people realize. This data has been described by a former FBI agent is “vulnerable” and “treasure”. When comparing the cover letters to the National Security Agency surveillance exposed in the Edward Snowden scandal, prominent security technologist Bruce Schneier once called them “basically… the same.” .
The letter to Barksdale was intended not only to tell the chief inspector—an official who oversees dozens of field offices and laboratories as well as law enforcement staff and other technical resources—that which he may have known. Instead, they wanted him to simply end the process.
USPS declined to comment.
There is no federal statute that requires the post office to allow mail wrapping. The Postal Service allows this through its own regulations, consistent with its interpretation of what is most permissible under the Fourth Amendment. Those protections were reinforced in 1967 by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that established a legal test—still used—called “privacy expectation.” And while blocking electronic metadata, as the senators noted, often requires a court order because the court has decided Americans do reasonable expect that information to be private—judges do not rule exactly the same way in cases involving physical pieces of mail. There are complex issues involved, but in at least one major case, judges pointed to another legal test, known as the “obvious opinion doctrine,” that applies to evidence that The investigator can see it clearly.
“The risk of cover letter misuse is not theoretical,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter.
The history of cover letter abuse, as the lawmakers noted, is a long one. A famous incident occurred in the 1970s, when a 15-year-old girl mistakenly wrote a letter to the Socialist Labor Party—a communist organization that strongly supported Cuba—while researching a school assignment. related to the Socialist Labor Party. The teen was thoroughly investigated by the FBI, who even sent an agent into her school.
The senators noted that the Church Committee, established in 1975 to investigate US intelligence abuses, found that the Central Intelligence Agency had photographed “the facade of more than 2 million letters,” while opening hundreds of thousands more belonging to “famous activists and authors.”
Indeed, the senators say, modern concerns about postal abuse are reminiscent of the Founders themselves, who criticized what Thomas Jefferson called “postal infidelity,” the surveillance forced those dissidents from the British occupation to resort to encrypted messages they wanted to keep private. The lawmakers noted that these messages included “an initial proposal for the Bill of Rights.”
Lawmakers asked Barksdale to stop allowing mailings without the permission of a federal judge, “except in an emergency.” And to increase transparency, they say, the post office should start publishing annual statistics on mail covers they allow. It hasn’t done so since at least 2014 (along with the Inspector General’s report).
“While the envelopes do not reveal the content of the correspondence, they can reveal deeply personal information about their political leanings, religious beliefs, or causes they support,” the senators wrote. Any such abuse therefore poses a threat, they say, not only to Americans’ right to political and religious affiliation, but to assemble “without government.” monitor.”
