Postal inspectors go postal on gun rights activist

Lincoln Brown:

Do you get mail? Of course, you do. You have a mailbox for your house, apartment, or condo, or you have a post office box. Everybody gets mail. But does everybody get their mail monitored? Well, if you’re a Second Amendment supporter or you don’t like Joe Biden, you may have somebody watching your mailbox.

The Washington Times noted that Patrick Eddington of the Cato Institute obtained redacted documents showing that U.S. Postal Service inspectors monitored the mail of some American citizens. The impetus for the move? These people were gun rights activists and had issues with the election of Joe Biden. The office spied on gun activists who attended a gathering in Richmond, Va.,  what the Times calls “far-right” groups who went to D.C. after Biden’s election, and even those who gathered to protest the shooting of Breonna Taylor. This particular operation also included digital surveillance through the Internet Covert Operations Program. The documents Eddington obtained showed that the operation in question ran from September 2020 to April 2021. There were disclaimers on the reports that stated that the surveillance was not intended to infringe on anyone’s rights but to give law enforcement intel about potential violent or criminal activity. The post office inspector general said that the moves were outside the scope of law enforcement and may not have had legal approval. The inspectors disagreed. In the interim, the Postal Service has agreed to a full review and to make sure that future surveillance is properly authorized.

We need postal inspectors. Back in the wild west days of the internet, I covered cases in which postal inspectors played key roles in intercepting child pornography and working with local law enforcement to lock up offenders. But the gun-rights activists and politically active Americans who were recently monitored were not doing anything illegal. Distasteful to some, but not illegal.

...

These abuses seem to be happening regularly on Biden's watch.  

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