Did you know that the United States Postal Service has its own police force? It's true. While the U.S. Postal Inspection Service is typically tasked with looking into mailbox vandalism and mail fraud, an investigation in Denver reveals that they're also installing hidden cameras at post offices and spying on Americans.
This postal surveillance program sounds shady as hell. FOX31 Denver found one camera disguised as a utility box that "was positioned to capture and record the license plates and facial features of customers leaving a Golden Post Office." Within an hour of the local news station's discovery, the Postal Inspection Service had ripped it out of the ground, though the force later admitted that it had a "number of cameras at their disposal."
So why on Earth is the postal service spying on people? That's the shadiest part: The USPS won't say. FOX31 filed multiple FOIA requests with multiple agencies. "None of the agencies could provide a written data retention policy," the station reports. This is exactly the kind of warrantless surveillance and data collection that's been spreading across post-9/11 America, and the fact that the government won't talk about it is a big problem. It's not just the NSA that's doing the spying, either. It's the postal service, too!
Read the full report and watch the corresponding segment at FOX31's website. Oh, and keep it in mind the next time you go to the post office. Uncle Sam might be scanning your license plate and storing it in a database under a mountain.
Contact the author at adam@gizmodo.com.
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