This is a truly bizarre story. I agree with others that other government agencies should run this particularly given USPS already well known financial challenges.
The USPS is running a 'covert' program to monitor Americans' social media posts
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Re: The USPS is running a 'covert' program to monitor Americans' social media posts
#32It seems like this should be the job of the FBI, DHS or some other agency like that. The Post Office should deliver mail and packages not investigate material on the internet.
There are loads of intelligence services in America. Coup d'État has a non-exhaustive list. I'm pretty sure even the NOAA does homeland security stuff.
Re: The USPS is running a 'covert' program to monitor Americans' social media posts
#33It seems like this should be the job of the FBI, DHS or some other agency like that. The Post Office should deliver mail and packages not investigate material on the internet.
To be fair, look at it from totally the opposite direction to see their point of view. Your workers are under threat from poorly made postal bombs that could easily blow up during processing, killing your workers. Due to the vast volume of post you process, the threat is real and non-trivial. Do you do nothing? I think you obviously have to do something, whether you go as far as they did is what's up for debate.
Yes, you contact the FBI and get them to investigate, just like everyone else does when federal crimes are involved.
(Also, echoing the sibling: where are all these poorly made postal bombs you're talking about? I can't remember anything in recent and not-so-recent memory.)
Re: The USPS is running a 'covert' program to monitor Americans' social media posts
#34I feel like the key sentence in this article (edit: which is ironically no longer verbatim in this article, which I see hours later has been heavily expanded) which purports to answer the "but... why the USPS?"--is: > The agency told Yahoo News the Inspection Service collaborates with law-enforcement agencies to identify and assess threats to the Postal Service and its "overall mail processing and transportation netw…
> which purports to answer the "but... why the USPS?"
Yes, that's the burning question I took away from this article.
Re: The USPS is running a 'covert' program to monitor Americans' social media posts
#35[deleted]
Re: The USPS is running a 'covert' program to monitor Americans' social media posts
#36It seems like this should be the job of the FBI, DHS or some other agency like that. The Post Office should deliver mail and packages not investigate material on the internet.
To be fair, look at it from totally the opposite direction to see their point of view. Your workers are under threat from poorly made postal bombs that could easily blow up during processing, killing your workers. Due to the vast volume of post you process, the threat is real and non-trivial. Do you do nothing? I think you obviously have to do something, whether you go as far as they did is what's up for debate.
> Do you do nothing?
No, you coordinate with the CIA or FBI to investigate threats against the government.
Re: The USPS is running a 'covert' program to monitor Americans' social media posts
#37It seems like this should be the job of the FBI, DHS or some other agency like that. The Post Office should deliver mail and packages not investigate material on the internet.
To be fair, look at it from totally the opposite direction to see their point of view. Your workers are under threat from poorly made postal bombs that could easily blow up during processing, killing your workers. Due to the vast volume of post you process, the threat is real and non-trivial. Do you do nothing? I think you obviously have to do something, whether you go as far as they did is what's up for debate.
A couple postal workers died about 20 years ago when someone used the U.S. mails as an anthrax-delivery mechanism. Details are here: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5239a2.htm Note that's there's also a deeper CDC analysis looking at whether mail sorting is a job with higher than usual mortality rates. (Answer: probably not).
Granted, that's a long time ago, and it doesn't happen habitually. But if you're going to have a workforce safety team (good idea), they will likely want to either actually do something to stop the threats, or at least signal to management that they aren't totally clueless
Re: The USPS is running a 'covert' program to monitor Americans' social media posts
#38Oh so this is why they were so concerned about the post office funding in 2020.
Re: The USPS is running a 'covert' program to monitor Americans' social media posts
#39Weird, and scary. But maybe I can kind of see it. Here's a protest. Let's say it's Proud Boys, and Antifa shows up. And here's a mail carrier out trying to deliver the mail, who drives (or worse, walks) right into the middle of it. The Post Office might have a legitimate reason for wanting to know, so they can keep their on-duty employees from harm. Is that what's going on? Is that all that's going on? I don't know.
It's possible for employees of every government agency and every private company to get caught up in the middle of a protest. Should they all start their own surveillance programs?
Re: The USPS is running a 'covert' program to monitor Americans' social media posts
#40I work in cyber security ML engineering (open for interviews, hmu) and frequently see federal contractor firms hiring for cyber data/engineer positions for USPS. Always puzzled me. example: https://jobs.rtx.com/job/-/-/4679/4267185376?codes=INDEED
The Post Office is a tech company, etc.