Fox News recently exposed the use of a hidden face and license place scanner being used by a Post Office in Denver, CO. One hour after Fox discovered the spy camera it was ripped from the ground.
The cameras, managed by the agencies’ police force, the United States Postal Inspection Service, was discovered by a customer hidden inside a utilities box last November. The camera evidently was in use throughout the Christmas season.
Managers inside the post office tell FOX31 Denver they were unaware customers were being photographed outside and that the surveillance was not part of the building’s security monitoring.
A spokesperson for Postal Inspection Service declined to address the specific reason for the domestic surveillance, but admitted the agency had a “number of cameras at their disposal.”
Pamela Durkee, a Federal Law Enforcement Agent and U.S. Postal Inspector, sent an email to FOX31 Denver explaining, “(We) do not engage in routine or random surveillance. Cameras are deployed for law enforcement or security purposes, which may include the security of our facilities, the safety of our customers and employees, or for criminal investigations. Employees of the Postal Inspection Service are sworn to uphold the United States Constitution, including protecting the privacy of the American public.”
FOX31 Denver reviewed criminal search warrants on file in city, county, and federal court but none appeared to be related to the Golden post office camera set-up. The Postal Inspection Service would not confirm or deny that the camera was collecting data for a specific case or cases.
Lee Tien, an attorney for the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, says more and more federal agencies are getting away with conducting surveillance and collecting personal data of citizens without a warrant signed by a judge.
“Part of being a responsible, constitutional government is explaining why it is doing surveillance on its citizens,” Lee told Halsne. “The government should not be collecting this kind of sensitive information. And it is sensitive! It`s about your relationships, your associations with other people, which can be friendship or political or religious. The idea that we give up that privacy simply because we use the U.S. mail is, I think, a silly idea.”
Lee says EFF has been fighting for greater government transparency when it comes to the way agencies like the FBI and the National Security Agency have been vacuuming up massive amounts of cell phone, email and license plates data and storing them in a central computer system.
Lee says, “The idea that they would be able to keep that information forever and search through it whenever they want to – that seems very, very wrong to us because it means you’ll be able to accumulate over time a lot of innocent peoples’ information and then use it in the kinds of ways that would not be overseen by any kind of court or independent third party.”
FOX31 Denver filed multiple Freedom of Information Act requests with the Postal Service, Postal Inspection Service, and Office of the Inspector General in an attempt to identify the cost and scope of the Postal Inspection Service surveillance program.
None of the agencies could provide a written data retention policy, which would detail how long USPIS could keep the images agents have been collecting from the Golden post office camera and other cameras around the Denver area. Similarly, there does not appear to be a policy regarding in what circumstances other federal agencies may have access to the personal information gathered from the cameras.
Our discovery of this camera program comes just months after the U.S. Postal Service was forced to reveal (during a Congressional hearing) that it was videotaping and storing the address and return information from billions of pieces of mail at its distribution centers.
A federal audit in 2014 found that the Post Office had “insufficient” controls in place when allowing law enforcement agencies access to the data collected from that “mail cover” program.
We did locate a California company which claims it sold the U.S. Postal Service “consumer surveillance systems,” which come installed with wireless data retrieval and infrared night capabilities.
Hop-On Incorporated did not return our repeated calls to elaborate on its self-proclaimed deal. Our FOIA requests for federal contracts and financial information about Hop-On and other contractors who sell USPS and USPIS camera equipment were returned to us void of all information.
So why was a camera used to trace citizens activity. This seems more like a simple uncons$#%&!@*utional way to collect names and faces for a data base on people who have done absolutely nothing wrong but for the sole purpose of identifying them at a future time.
Catching folks sending weed through the mail…it is Colorado lol
If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about. When a camera of this stature captures the face of the terrorist that mails anthrax to anyone no one will complain, however everyone complains they are being recorded for no reason. How do people expect the cameras to know who to record?
Santa isnt real. And letters addressed to him are actually kept at the local sorting facility, numbered, copied, personal info is removed, and set out for an ‘adopt a santa letter’ sorta thing.
Just to humor you… Santa letters are actually mailed, coincidentally to my hometown of Schenectady NY with the zip code 12345 which specifically goes to GE where the information can be used in all sorts of crazy ways with the resources of GE.
Who cares and why!
$#%&!@*ing idiots. The right to privacy is sacred to me. You cannot come in and look around my stuff. It’s my stuff and it’s none of anybodies business what I do in the privacy of my own home with my stuff.
So now terrorists know they can mail destructive things and not be identified 🙁
I’m absolutely amazed at how many of you have willingly drank the coolaid. To the best of my knowledge not one single terrorist has been captured because of cameras in the United states.
Does anyone have factual data on terrorist that have been captured? Otherwise this is to monitor the behavior of citizens.
Wasn’t the Boston bombers caught because of camera’s?
Ahh, posts like this remind me that many have forgotten what freedom means.
The Boston Marathon bombers were identified because of cameras. Still, I don’t like having them all over. Too much “Big Brother” and “1984” c**p.