WASHINGTON. Spying on Americans is the latest rage among US government agencies. It started after a Republican-controlled Congress and President passed the Patriot Act in 2001. They told us it would help US intelligence agencies and the FBI fight terror cells operating in the country.
President George W. Bush signs Patriot Act into law. NBC News screen capture.
Twenty years later, the so-called “war on terror’ has turned decidedly inward, with average Americans considered more dangerous to the US government than Islamist radicals eager to slam civilian airliners into skyscrapers.
And so, more branches of the federal government want to get into the domestic espionage game. The US Postal Service for one.
Believe it or not, the guys who lose your letters and packages and enrage your barking dogs have a law enforcement branch. It’s called the United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS).
According to their website, the USPS…
“… maintains an elite police force tasked with securing high-value Post Offices, facilities, and postal vehicles. These Postal Police Officers are on duty every hour of every day.”
The guys whose pot bellies droop over belts that hold up tight blue shorts, and wear pithy pith helmets, claim their “jurisdiction is worldwide.” And their porthole to the globe is the worldwide web.
Jerry Seinfeld delivers the US mail for Newman. “Seinfeld” screen capture.
USPS Internet Covert Operations
According to news reports, the USPIS launched a domestic espionage operation, or Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP). ICOP designed to monitor Parler and other free-speech social media sites for posts considered “inflammatory” regarding protests against Covid restrictions last March 20.
As it turned out, the protests were something of a bust here in the United States. Pittsburgh saw 150 protestors march against coronavirus restrictions and the stolen 2020 presidential election. Raleigh, North Carolina, saw a meager 100.
In Europe, meanwhile, a reported 20,000 Germans marched against their government’s authoritarian Covid restrictions in the city of Kassel.
It’s understandable they’d be a little touchy about government actions mimicking those of a certain screeching and mustachioed gentleman in a blue-gray uniform and flashy armband.
And 10,000 expressed their outrage in London, whose people bravely defied the mustachioed gentleman mentioned above. In Paris, a crowd of 50 stormed into and occupied the shuttered Odéon Theater, where Mozart’s opera “The Marriage of Figaro” premiered in 1784.
So, why is the US Postal Service so afraid of a minority within a minority of conscious and sentient Americans upset by the galloping authoritarianism emanating from Washington?
As the antagonist O’Brian says in George Orwell’s novel “1984”:
“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power – pure power.”
The unofficial motto of the nation’s mail carriers goes: *Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”*
And so, the US Postal Service adds spying on Americans to its list of appointed rounds, along with the swift delivery of fraudulent, mail-in ballots. A new breed of an intelligence operative. One that sorts and mangles letters while wearing comfortable shoes.
Would you ever have guessed that in the land of the free and home of the brave, we, not packages, would be the ones with tracking numbers?
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About the Author:
Originally from Los Angeles, Steven M. Lopez has been in the news business for more than thirty years. He made his way around the country: Arizona, the Bay Area, and now resides in South Florida. A cigar and bourbon aficionado, Steven is a political staff writer for Communities Digital News and an incredibly talented artist.
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