'Warrantless surveillance': Postal Service reveals it hands over data without court order

The U.S. Postal Service has shared information with law enforcement from thousands of packages and letters without requiring a court order, according to a new analysis.

Postal inspectors gave the Washington Post a decade's worth of data showing that law enforcement agencies made about 6,700 requests a year through the mail covers program, which is a legal technique for obtaining names, addresses and other details from the outside of packages and letters, the newspaper reported.

The Fourth Amendment requires postal inspectors to get a warrant to look inside packages, but the Postal Service's law enforcement arm has traditionally declined to say how often it grants such requests because inspectors say that would "alert criminals" to how the process works.

A group of eight senators, including Ron Wyden (D-OR), Rand Paul (R-KY) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), asked the U.S. Postal Inspection Service in May 2023 to require a federal judge to approve those requests and share more details about the program, but chief postal inspector Gary Barksdale declined to change the policy. He provided data about requests that was then shared with the newspaper.

Barksdale told the senators in his June 2023 response that the program, which was legally authorized in 1879, was not a “large-scale surveillance apparatus” and was focused only on mail that could help police and national security agencies perform their duties.

“There is no reasonable expectation of privacy with respect to information contained on the outside of mail matter,” Barksdale wrote.

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The data Barksdale shared with the senators also shows that inspectors recorded data from about 35,000 pieces of mail each year, in addition to the 6,700 requests by law enforcement agencies.

“These new statistics show that thousands of Americans are subjected to warrantless surveillance each year, and that the Postal Inspection Service rubber stamps practically all of the requests they receive,” Wyden said in a statement. "[U.S. Postal Inspection Service is] refusing to raise its standards and require law enforcement agencies monitoring the outside of Americans’ mail to get a court order, which is already required to monitor emails and texts.”