Mail Monitoring Rarely Denied, Postal Service Says

The United States Postal Service granted almost all of the nearly 6,700 requests from law enforcement agencies last year to monitor the mail of Americans for use in criminal and national security investigations, Postal Service officials told a House panel.

The officials said that only 10 requests had been denied, for a rate of approval that some members of Congress sharply criticized. Cases of monitoring are called mail covers because the collected information comes from the outside of letters and parcels. “The fact that 99.85 percent of the mail covers were approved raises serious questions about privacy and the management of the mail covers program,” said Rep Blake Farenthold (R-TX), the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee responsible for the Postal Service.