A recent audit by the Inspector General of the Postal Service revealed that there were nearly 50,000 requests last year from law enforcement agencies and the Postal Services' internal inspection unit to secretly monitor the mail of Americans for use in criminal and national security investigations. When a request is approved, postal workers record names, return addresses and any other information from the outside of letters and packages before they are delivered to a person’s home.
In many cases the Postal Service approved requests to monitor an individual’s mail without adequately describing the reason or having proper written authorization. Furthermore, the audit revealed that many requests were not processed in time and computer errors caused the same tracking number to be assigned to different surveillance requests.
Orwell's 1984 is here once more this year.
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