The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has been cataloging U.S. citizens’ mail and sharing the data with federal law enforcement without a warrant since 2017 under the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking (MICT) program, wholly separate from its post-9/11 responsibility to look at and collect private and corporate email.
MICT doesn’t read the content of the mail but records and stores data on thousands of letters, packages, and parcels that pass through USPS facilities. Critics compare the program to the FBI Department of Justice or National Security Agency surveillance of phone and internet records, warrantlessly searched under the Patriot Act, and using a loose standard of proof.
Because MICT only looks at the outside of letters, which are publicly viewable, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. The U.S. Supreme Court has used similar reasoning to explain why the police can go through your trash set out on the curb without a warrant or probable cause.
Alarmingly, there is no external oversight by the Department of Homeland Security or the U.S. Congress.
There is an external component to the MICT program where the USPS takes a photograph of the mail and texts it to subscribers to their ‘free’ service, called “Informed Consent,” which sounds a bit Orwellian.
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