# Documents Reveal the Postal Service’s Broad Surveillance of Political Activists

- URL: https://talkfuse.com/story/documents-reveal-the-postal-services-broad-surveillance-of-political-activists/
- Published: 2026-11-11T12:00:11+00:00
- Updated: 2026-11-11T12:25:08+00:00
- Original publisher: Reason (publisher lean: Right)
- Original article: https://reason.com/2026/11/11/documents-reveal-the-postal-services-broad-surveillance-of-political-activists/
- Topics: Politics, Software, Technology

## Key points

- Postal investigators monitored posts about protests in 2020 and 2021.
- The programme used covert accounts and facial recognition software.
- The agency says political bulletins stopped, but monitoring may continue.

## Summary

Documents obtained through a lawsuit show that the US Postal Inspection Service monitored social media posts about planned protests in 2020 and 2021, across a range of political causes. The disclosures raise questions about how a programme established to tackle illegal activity involving the post expanded into surveillance of political expression and sharing information with other agencies.

Investigators searched for keywords, used covert online accounts and applied Clearview AI facial recognition to images gathered from social media. The Postal Service says the programme began around 2017 to combat drugs and later expanded in response to threats against facilities and staff; it shared intelligence with about 70 federal, state and local agencies. Officials say bulletins on political activity are no longer issued, but the documents do not establish that social media monitoring has stopped.

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Summarised by TalkFuse (https://talkfuse.com/). Quote the original publisher for the reporting and link this page for the summary and discussion.