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Steven W
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2021-04-22 21:38 »

https://news.yahoo.com/the-postal-servi ... 22919.html
The law enforcement arm of the U.S. Postal Service has been quietly running a program that tracks and collects Americans’ social media posts, including those about planned protests, according to a document obtained by Yahoo News.

The details of the surveillance effort, known as iCOP, or Internet Covert Operations Program, have not previously been made public. The work involves having analysts trawl through social media sites to look for what the document describes as “inflammatory” postings and then sharing that information across government agencies.

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Steven W
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2021-04-22 21:55 »

yakov.jpg
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I kept hearing Yakov making that joke in my head after reading that article.


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Steven W
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2022-01-29 03:58 »

https://www.theepochtimes.com/exclusive ... 35704.html
The Cellebrite and GrayKey tools acquired in FY 2019 and 2018 allow the Digital Evidence Unit to extract previously unattainable information from seized mobile devices. During FY 2020, 331 devices were processed, and 242 were unlocked and/or extracted by these services,” the USPIS 2020 annual report says. “The success of the program and ever-increasing demand for services required the purchase this year of a second GrayKey device for use on the East Coast.”

The 2020 report reveals an uptick in phone cracking from 2019, when the USPIS accessed 177 devices—34 using Cellebrite and 143 with GrayKey, according to that year’s annual report.

The internal USPIS letter suggests that the increase continued last year, revealing that one technician alone cracked more than 150 iOS devices.

“In May 2020, FLS [Forensic Laboratory Services] acquired a second GrayKey iOS tool for extractions of locked iOS devices. Password protected devices is one of the biggest challenges facing the digital evidence community today,” the letter says.

“Since acquisition, [the technician] has successfully unlocked/bypassed, extracted, and examined over 150 locked iOS devices. The additional GrayKey unit has allowed FLS to balance the workload for the three locations with specialized mobile tools, essentially eliminating the backlog for these examinations.”
Following last year’s revelations about USPIS monitoring anti-lockdown protestors via its Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP), privacy activists have warned that USPIS is in danger of “mission creep”—when an agency has access to more tools or information than it needs to complete its designed mission, leading it to expand into another role outside of the designated mission to utilize those tools.

https://epic.org/documents/epic-comment ... forcement/
The USPIS has already increased data collection without publishing a privacy impact assessment of its iCOP program.[26] Since 2018, iCOP has used a suite of surveillance tools, including facial recognition and social media monitoring services, to track individuals and produce intelligence products distributed across the federal government. The program used Clearview AI’s facial recognition product and social media monitoring tools to surveil protesters in the summer of 2020. [27] USPIS also monitored online activity after the January 6, 2021 insurrection in Washington, D.C., and its officers adopted covert online identities and attempted to identify upcoming protests and “inflammatory” posts on various social media sites. [28] EPIC has filed a lawsuit under the E-Government Act of 2002 to stop the U.S. Postal Service’s law enforcement arm from using facial recognition and social media monitoring tools based on its failure to perform a privacy impact assessment for new information collection technology.
meanwhile:

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/exclus ... 021-12-15/
"These surveillance mercenaries sold their services to authoritarian regimes with long records of human rights abuses, giving vast spying powers to tyrants," Wyden told Reuters. "Predictably, those nations used surveillance tools to lock up, torture and murder reporters and human rights advocates. The Biden administration has the chance to turn off the spigot of American dollars and help put them out of business for good."
Dear Senator Wyden, please define 'authoritarian regime.

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