Republicans are VERY ANGRY that the US Post Office was monitoring right-wing online threats to federal post office building and postal workers after January 6th, and they DEMANDED HEARINGS about this OUTRAGE.
The only problem is that in the hearing, the Chief Postal Inspector of the post office testified the USPS was given authority to monitor Americans in 2017. By Trump and the GOP. Who used this power for years secretly, including to monitor Black Lives Matter protesters after George Floyd's death last summer.
The U.S. Postal Service’s law enforcement arm began monitoring social media posts following the Black Lives Matter protests that erupted in Minnesota and across the nation after George Floyd was killed in police custody in May 2020, according to congressional aides and lawmakers who attended a briefing this week on the program.
Last week, Yahoo News revealed that analysts with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service have been trawling Americans’ social media posts to track political protests as part of its Internet Covert Operations Program, known as iCOP. The news prompted more than two dozen Republican lawmakers to demand that the USPS provide information on the program.
Then the GOP found out something they probably wish they had left alone.
During a Wednesday briefing before the House Oversight Committee, Chief Postal Inspector Gary Barksdale told lawmakers that iCOP began in 2017 to investigate potential crimes, such as drug and firearms trafficking transported by the mail system, but then moved into monitoring protests last spring because of the potential threat to Postal Service workers and buildings. An uptick in threats against Postmaster General Louis DeJoy was also a factor in iCOP’s continued focus on monitoring protests, according to a GOP aide who attended the briefing.
A leaked intelligence bulletin from March about iCOP’s work largely focused on social media posts on the right-leaning Parler platform, as well as Facebook and other sites. According to those who attended the hearing, Barksdale would say only that the work was “incident-specific,” but did not provide further details.
“The chief postal inspector was unprepared to the point of incompetence,” Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., told Yahoo News. “He couldn’t tell me when this program started, how much money is spent on it or where the authority to spy on Americans came from.
“The complete inability to give us answers to basic questions was unacceptable,” Mace added.
Still, new details about iCOP’s work did emerge, according to several people who attended the briefing. Barksdale began his testimony with a dramatic video of a mail truck engulfed in flames during the protests that erupted in Minnesota after Floyd's death.
The footage was intended to illustrate why iCOP resources were dedicated to tracking protests on social media, according to a GOP aide.
Concerns about the USPS’s social media surveillance comes amid a series of controversies surrounding the agency. During the 2020 presidential campaign, Democrats accused DeJoy, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, of removing mailboxes and sorting machines to influence the November election, which had a record number of mail-in ballots.
Yet now it’s Republicans leading the charge against the USPS, after it emerged that iCOP was monitoring right-wing social media accounts following the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. It’s unclear if news that the program was also tracking protests related to Black Lives Matter will prompt Democratic lawmakers, who have so far been silent about the program, to join their GOP colleagues in asking for more answers.
Barksdale’s appearance Wednesday did not appease Republican lawmakers. “I was not satisfied with their answers,” Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., told Yahoo News.
“Their theory of the case is, they’ve got to protect their workers and properties,” Biggs said. “I asked, 'If you already have engagement with other agencies like FBI, Homeland Security, NSA, whatever, then why aren’t you asking them for help?'
“Why not just call the agencies whose job it is, who are probably already surveilling American citizens?” he said.
The chief postal inspector told lawmakers those agencies “would not cooperate,” so the USPS “made an executive decision” to have iCOP patrol social media, searching for potential threats from upcoming protests, Biggs told Yahoo News.
And I remind you, the decision to monitor American's social media posts were all made under the Trump regime, with the blessing of Regime officials. If GOP lawmakers are just now finding this out, well. Once again, it was Louis DeJoy who made this decision to boot.
Sowing, awesome, reaping, man reaping sucks though.
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