Postal interception is the act of retrieving another person's
mail
The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letter (message), letters, and parcel (package), parcels. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid ...
for the purpose of either ensuring that the mail is not delivered to the recipient, or to
spy
Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tangib ...
on them.
For instance, the American
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
(CIA) and
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...
(FBI) were involved in numerous large-scale operations targeting US activist groups, whose mail was opened and photographed. In one such programme, over 215,000 letters were opened.
In the United Kingdom, the
Special Investigations Unit of the General Post Office was responsible for postal interception.
Saunders, Frances Stonor. "Stuck on the Flypaper: MI5 and the Hobsbawm File". London Review of Books. 9 April 2015.
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Since 2002, the United States Postal Service
The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or Postal Service, is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the U ...
photographs the outside of all mail, retains those images for weeks or months, and provides them to police or other investigators upon a simple request.
See also
* COINTELPRO
COINTELPRO ( syllabic abbreviation derived from Counter Intelligence Program; 1956–1971) was a series of covert and illegal projects actively conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrati ...
* Surveillance
Surveillance is the monitoring of behavior, many activities, or information for the purpose of information gathering, influencing, managing or directing. This can include observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment, such as c ...
* Church committee
The Church Committee (formally the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities) was a US Senate select committee in 1975 that investigated abuses by the Central Intelligence ...
* Black room
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A black room is part of a communication center (e.g. a post office) used by state officials to conduct clandestine interception and surveillance of communications. Typically, all letters or communications pass through the black room bef ...
* Postal censorship
Postal censorship is the inspection or examination of mail, most often by governments. It can include opening, reading and total or selective obliteration of letters and their contents, as well as covers, postcards, parcels and other postal pa ...
*Secrecy of correspondence
__NOTOC__
The secrecy of correspondence (german: Briefgeheimnis, french: secret de la correspondance) or literally translated as secrecy of letters, is a fundamental legal principle enshrined in the constitutions of several European countries. It ...
* Mail cover
Mail cover is a law enforcement investigative technique in which the United States Postal Service, acting at the request of a law enforcement agency, records information from the outside of letters and parcels before they are delivered and then se ...
* Mail Isolation Control and Tracking Mail Isolation Control and Tracking (MICT) is an imaging system employed by the United States Postal Service (USPS) that takes photographs of the exterior of every piece of mail that is processed in the United States. The Postmaster General has stat ...
References
Surveillance
Espionage techniques
Postal systems
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