[by:¿É¿ÉÓ¢ÓïÍø¡«www.utensil-race.com]
[00:00.00]As worries grow about technology, surveillance and privacy, 
[00:03.20]it turns out the government is watching your snail mail too. 
[00:06.59]A new report from The New York Times finds the U.S. Postal Service approved nearly 50,000 requests from law enforcement agencies last year to monitor mail.
[00:15.78]Reporter Ron Nixon has been digging into that for more than a year. And he joins me now.
[00:20.35]Fifty thousand requests, how many of those actually were satisfied by the feds?
[00:26.79]That's just it. 
[00:28.12]We don't know a whole lot about this program beyond the numbers.
[00:30.82]The Postal Service and the Postal Inspection Service, 
[00:33.61]their law enforcement wing has been very secretive about this program.
[00:38.12]Did the program arise after 9/11 or had it previously existed?
[00:41.91]No, this program actually has been around since about the late 1800s. 
[00:45.24]So, it's a centuries-old program.
[00:47.58]What they have done is added the technical prowess to the program, 
[00:52.95]but mail covers as a whole is this very old law enforcement technique.
[00:56.55]You call it mail covers.
[00:57.69]Yes.
[00:57.92]Describe what that ¡ª what you mean by that,
[00:59.44]because that's not actually opening your mail and looking at it.
[01:01.06]No, it's not actually opening your mail, then into it.
[01:03.26]What this is, is basically metadata of snail mail. 
[01:06.67]They copy everything that's on the outside of the packages and letters. 
[01:10.95]And that lets me know who you're communicating with, your banking information, credit card, that kind of thing. 
[01:17.44]So, ¡ª but it is not opening the mail. 
[01:19.71]You need a warrant for that.
[01:20.65]So, it seems pretty low-tech in some respects.
[01:23.38]It is.
[01:24.38]But they also have very high-tech ¡ª 
[01:26.33]they have massive banks of computers that take pictures of every single letter and package that comes through. 
[01:32.51]And they do utilize that for law enforcement purposes at times as well.
[01:37.37]Is that the reason they take ¡ª 
[01:39.07]they record everything, or is just the side effect of what¡­
[01:42.35]It's a side effect. You have this technology that can do this thing, 
[01:46.10]so they use it in limited ways for law enforcement purposes.
[01:51.09]But the main purpose of, it is actually to deliver the mail, process and deliver the mail.
[01:57.35]So, explain to us how it works.
[01:58.90]So, say I'm a law enforcement agency and I'm investigating you. 
[02:03.77]I go to the Postal Inspection Service saying, hey, I have reason to believe that 
[02:08.12]Ms. Ifill is guilty of something or illegally running drugs.
[02:14.19]I send a request to the Postal Inspection Service. 
[02:17.49]They look at it. 
[02:18.76]They look, say, yes, there's legitimate reason. 
[02:21.46]They sign off on it and then they start to take down all the information on the letters and packages 
[02:26.60]that you are both sending and receiving so they can track who you're communicating with and again, 
[02:31.36]as I mentioned before, banking information, property, that kind of thing.
[02:35.45]Has it successfully curbed illegal activity in ways that you can cite me some examples?
[02:41.34]Yes.
[02:42.09]There's been a number of examples that I have written about before. 
[02:46.15]They have busted a prostitution ring. 
[02:48.02]They have busted drug rings. They have found fugitives. 
[02:51.36]So it's a legitimate law enforcement tool that everybody from the FBI to the Arlington County police would use.
[03:00.47]So, why ¡ª you spent couple years almost working on this.
[03:04.03]Yes.
[03:04.66]Why was it so difficult to get to the bottom of it?
[03:06.16]Well, because it's a program that is ¡ª 
[03:08.81]they didn't want to talk about a lot.
[03:11.92]We filed several Freedom of Information requests to find out the scope of this, 
[03:17.80]and they still have not released to us how many times the FBI has requested mail covers, for instance. 
[03:24.58]So, it's a program that they don't talk about a lot. And they have actually¡­
[03:30.85]In the interest of national security?
[03:33.14]In the interest of national security, but also because it's a law enforcement technique. 
[03:36.27]And they don't want to reveal exactly how it works.
[03:38.89]OK. Let's do the flip side.
[03:40.55]There are things that they have stopped or they have been able to find out about.
[03:43.21]Right.
[03:43.91]Are there ways that this program has been misused?
[03:46.94]Yes.We did find couple of examples where the program apparently appears to be misused. 
[03:53.11]There was ¡ª in Maricopa County, Arizona, there's a sheriff and a local county attorney who¡­
[03:59.85]Joe Arpaio?
[04:00.72]Joe Arpaio¡­
[04:01.75]¡­ and the local county attorney there launched an investigation of various council members.
[04:08.52]And one of them was Councilwoman Mary Rose Wilcox. 
[04:13.55]And she just got a million-dollar settlement for what the ¡ª 
[04:18.99]a panel for the Supreme Court, state Supreme Court there said appear to be a politically motivated investigation.
[04:26.41]They used mail covers to track who she was doing business with and then invaded the business.
[04:33.49]So, for political purposes, it was used to target someone, allegedly?
[04:37.62]Allegedly.
[04:38.25]Allegedly.
[04:39.23]Allegedly, right.
[04:40.56]Now, here is once again ¡ª and I'm going back and forth because I'm curious about the most famous incident of Postal Service ¡ª 
[04:46.37]illegal things happening through the Postal Service is anthrax or any kind of substance being sent to public officials. 
[04:53.47]We spent a lot of time talking about that.
[04:54.82]Right.
[04:55.54]Is this something which is also used for that purpose?
[04:58.59]Yes, there's a program that they call the mail isolation tracking control system that was used to find Shannon Richardson,
[05:08.11] the actress had sent ricin-laced letters to President Obama and former New York Mayor Bloomberg.
[05:15.09]They used this to track her mail specifically to a facility that she had mailed it from, 
[05:21.62]and she had tried to blame it on her husband. 
[05:23.51]And they were able to prove based on when she sent the letters that it was her, in fact.
[05:29.65]So this is ¡ª this is ¡ª obviously, there are pluses and there are minuses.
[05:34.40]Is there some way in which this compares in any way to the NSA surveillance techniques we talk so much about?
[05:41.51]I think, in terms of scope, it's much, much smaller in scope, 
[05:45.38]in that it can't scoop up as much information as the NSA does, 
[05:50.45]of course, because we use the phones much more than we use letters.
[05:54.21]And, as mail has declined, we are using it less and less. 
[05:58.42]But, still, law enforcement officials consider this a very important tool.
[06:02.55]Ron Nixon of The New York Times, thank you.
[06:04.80]Thank you. Thanks for having me.