On 10/28/14, R. E. Driscoll Sr <llocsirdsr@att.net> wrote:
> Link:
> http://p.nytimes.com/email/re?location=4z5Q7LhI+KVBjmEgFdYACPLKh239P3pgJmYtjiMYLneuutUieghEwBOyB3iyuNUP6zXeRL5t9Cna7T4Nq0AyIlFKae8DuKQiLk0KLWNc35T99joAfWtSRvNA98Q2aA/VGEG/s/+Gd1aRpmNpYgj6ynHo3pEv2V4ANgtmqgC09Ao=&campaign_id=129&instance_id=48407&segment_id=64665&user_id=1ef030aa7a483e750f4addce9f6f355b®i_id=60088859
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>
> Report Reveals Wider Tracking of Mail in U.S.
>
> By RON NIXON
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/n/ron_nixon/index.html>OCT.
>
> 27, 2014
>
> WASHINGTON -- In a rare public accounting of its mass surveillance
> program, the United States Postal Service
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/p/postal_service/index.html?inline=nyt-org>
>
> reported that it approved nearly 50,000 requests last year from law
> enforcement agencies and its own internal inspection unit to secretly
> monitor the mail of Americans for use in criminal and national security
> investigations.
>
> The number of requests, contained in a little-noticed 2014 audit
> <https://www.uspsoig.gov/story/audit-report/protecting-mail-covers-law-enforcement-investigations>
>
> of the surveillance program by the Postal Service's inspector general,
> shows that the surveillance program is more extensive than previously
> disclosed and that oversight protecting Americans from potential abuses
> is lax.
>
> The audit, along with interviews and documents obtained by The New York
> Times under the Freedom of Information Act, offers one of the first
> detailed looks at the scope of the program, which has played an
> important role in the nation's vast surveillance effort since the
> terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
>
> The audit found that in many cases the Postal Service approved requests
> to monitor an individual's mail without adequately describing the reason
> or having proper written authorization.
>
> Photo Mail handlers in Virginia. The Postal Service approved nearly
> 50,000 requests last year to track the mail of Americans. Credit Luke
> Sharrett for The New York Times
>
> In addition to raising privacy concerns, the audit questioned the
> efficiency and accuracy of the Postal Service in handling the requests.
> Many requests were not processed in time, the audit said, and computer
> errors caused the same tracking number to be assigned to different
> surveillance requests.
>
> "Insufficient controls could hinder the Postal Inspection Service's
> ability to conduct effective investigations, lead to public concerns
> over privacy of mail and harm the Postal Service's brand," the audit
> concluded.
>
> The audit was posted in May without public announcement on the website
> of the Postal Service inspector general and got almost no attention.
>
> The surveillance program, officially called mail covers
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html>, is
> more than a century old, but is still considered a powerful
> investigative tool. At the request of state or federal law enforcement
> agencies or the Postal Inspection Service, postal workers record names,
> return addresses and any other information from the outside of letters
> and packages before they are delivered to a person's home.
>
> Law enforcement officials say this deceptively old-fashioned method of
> collecting data provides a wealth of information about the businesses
> and associates of their targets, and can lead to bank and property
> records and even accomplices. (Opening the mail requires a warrant.)
>
> Interviews and court records also show that the surveillance program was
> used by a county attorney and sheriff to investigate a political
> opponent in Arizona -- the county attorney was later disbarred in part
> because of the investigation -- and to monitor privileged communications
> between lawyers and their clients, a practice not allowed under postal
> regulations.
>
> Theodore Simon, president of the National Association of Criminal
> Defense Lawyers, said he was troubled by the audit and the potential for
> the Postal Service to snoop uncontrolled into the private lives of
> Americans.
>
> "It appears that there has been widespread disregard of the few
> protections that were supposed to be in place," Mr. Simon said.
>
> In information provided to The Times earlier this year under the Freedom
> of Information Act, the Postal Service said that from 2001 through 2012,
> local, state and federal law enforcement agencies made more than 100,000
> requests to monitor the mail of Americans. That would amount to an
> average of some 8,000 requests a year -- far fewer than the nearly 50,000
> requests in 2013 that the Postal Service reported in the audit.
>
> The difference is that the Postal Service apparently did not provide to
> The Times the number of surveillance requests made for national security
> investigations or those requested by its own investigation and law
> enforcement arm, the Postal Inspection Service. Typically, the
> inspection service works hand in hand with outside law enforcement
> agencies that have come to the Postal Service asking for investigations
> into fraud, pornography, terrorism or other potential criminal activity.
>
> The Postal Service also uses a program called Mail Imaging, in which its
> computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail sent in
> the United States. The program's primary purpose is to process the mail,
> but in some cases it is also used as a surveillance system that allows
> law enforcement agencies to request stored images of mail sent to and
> received by people they are investigating.
>
> Another system, the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking Program, was
> created after anthrax attacks killed five people, including two postal
> workers, in late 2001. It is used to track or investigate packages or
> letters suspected of containing biohazards like anthrax or ricin
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/r/ricin_poison/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>.
>
> The program was first made public in 2013 in the course of an
> investigation into ricin
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/r/ricin_poison/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>-laced
>
> letters mailed to President Obama and Michael R. Bloomberg, then New
> York City's mayor, by an actress, Shannon Guess Richardson
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/17/us/texas-actress-gets-18-year-sentence-in-ricin-case.html>.
>
> Despite the sweep of the programs, postal officials say they are both
> less intrusive than that of the National Security Agency's vast
> collection of phone and Internet records and have safeguards to protect
> the privacy and civil liberties of Americans.
>
> "You can't just get a mail cover to go on a fishing expedition," said
> Paul J. Krenn, a spokesman for the Postal Inspection Service. "There has
> to be a legitimate law enforcement reason, and the mail cover can't be
> the sole tool."
>
> The mail cover surveillance requests cut across all levels of government
> -- from global intelligence investigations by the United States Army
> Criminal Investigations Command, which requested 500 mail covers from
> 2001 through 2012, to state-level criminal inquiries by the Georgia
> Bureau of Investigation, which requested 69 mail covers in the same
> period. The Department of Veterans Affairs requested 305, and the State
> Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security asked for 256. The
> information was provided to The Times under the Freedom of Information
> request.
>
> Postal officials did not say how many requests came from agencies in
> charge of national security -- including the F.B.I., the Department of
> Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection -- because release of
> the information, wrote Kimberly Williams, a public records analyst for
> the Postal Inspection Service, "would reveal techniques and procedures
> for law enforcement or prosecutions."
>
> Defense lawyers say the secrecy concerning the surveillance makes it
> hard to track abuses in the program because most people are not aware
> they are being monitored. But there have been a few cases in which the
> program appears to have been abused by law enforcement officials.
>
> In Arizona in 2011, Mary Rose Wilcox, a Maricopa County supervisor,
> discovered that her mail was being monitored by the county's sheriff,
> Joe Arpaio. Ms. Wilcox had been a frequent critic of Mr. Arpaio,
> objecting to what she considered the targeting of Hispanics in his
> immigration sweeps.
>
> The Postal Service had granted an earlier request from Mr. Arpaio and
> Andrew Thomas, who was then the county attorney, to track Ms. Wilcox's
> personal and business mail.
>
> Using information gleaned from letters and packages sent to Ms. Wilcox
> and her husband, Mr. Arpaio and Mr. Thomas obtained warrants for banking
> and other information about two restaurants the couple owned. The
> sheriff's office also raided a company that hired Ms. Wilcox to provide
> concessions at the local airport.
>
> "We lost the contract we had for the concession at the airport, and the
> investigation into our business scared people away from our
> restaurants," Ms. Wilcox said in an interview. "I don't blame the Postal
> Service, but you shouldn't be able to just use these mail covers to go
> on a fishing expedition. There needs to be more control."
>
> She sued the county, was awarded nearly $1 million in a settlement in
> 2011 and received the money this June when the Ninth Circuit Court of
> Appeals upheld the ruling
> <http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/arizona/politics/2014/06/02/wilcox-arpaio-payout-lawsuit-abrk/9884143/>.
>
> Mr. Thomas, the former county attorney, was disbarred
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/11/us/arizona-ethics-board-disbars-ex-maricopa-county-prosecutor.html>
>
> for his role in investigations into the business dealings of Ms. Wilcox
> and other officials and for other unprofessional conduct. The Maricopa
> County Sheriff's Office declined to comment on Mr. Arpaio's use of mail
> covers in the investigation of Ms. Wilcox.
>
> In another instance, Cynthia Orr, a defense lawyer in San Antonio,
> recalled that while working on a pornography case in the early 2000s,
> federal prosecutors used mail covers to track communications between her
> team of lawyers and a client who was facing obscenity and tax evasion
> charges. Ms. Orr complained to prosecutors but never learned if the
> tracking stopped. Her team lost the case.
>
> "The troubling part is that they don't have to report the use of this
> tool to anyone," Ms. Orr said in an interview. The Postal Service
> declined to comment on the case.
>
> Frank Askin, a law professor at the Rutgers Constitutional Rights
> Clinic, who as a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union
> successfully sued the F.B.I. nearly 40 years ago after the agency
> monitored the mail of a 15-year-old New Jersey student, said he was
> concerned about the oversight of the current program.
>
> "Postal Service employees are not judicial officers schooled in the
> meaning of the First Amendment," Mr. Askin said.
>
> A version of this article appears in print on October 28, 2014, on page
> A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Report Reveals Wider
> Tracking of Mail in U.S.. Order Reprints
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> Seeking Unity, U.S. Revises Ebola Monitoring Rules
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> <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/28/nyregion/ebola-us.html>
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