If your eBay purchase is a week late coming in the mail, the U.S. Postal Service might blame it on COVID-19.
But they are also busy with the whole spying operation.
The operation has already been in the news, but the head of the Postal Service admitted during an April 28 meeting to literally spying on Americans with its law enforcement arm, tracking their posts on social media.
The operation amounts to analysts paging through social media sites to look for “inflammatory” posts, reported Yahoo, including messages about planned protests. It might keep federal employees busy, but how is that part of delivering the mail?
Chief Postal Inspector Gary Barksdale talked to lawmakers on the Oversight Committee about the Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP), DailyMail.com reports, but apparently could not say how long it had been in operation.
“The Chief Postal Inspector was wildly unprepared for this briefing,” GOP Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina told DailyMail.com following the briefing, which was occasioned by the operation being exposed a week earlier.
Mace said Barksdale revealed the program has generated bulletins for other government agencies, but has not led to any arrests. One such bulletin rang alarm bells about a March 20 protest, the World Wide Rally for Freedom and Democracy, which was organized in protest of COVID lockdowns.
Barksdale told the Oversight Committee that while the operation would continue, they would put an end to the bulletin.
So don’t look for your already slowed-down mail to speed up.
