Mail Isolation Control and Tracking

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Mail Isolation Control and Tracking ( MICT ), roughly translated as isolation, control and tracking of mail , is a previously secret program for mass surveillance that is carried out by the United States Postal Service (USPS). All envelopes that are processed by the USPS are photographed - in 2012 this was around 160 billion - and converted into plain text using text recognition (OCR) . If requested by the law enforcement authorities, this means that postal correspondence can be followed up subsequently. MICT was introduced after the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people, including two USPS employees.

On June 7, 2013, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) disclosed the existence of the MICT program. This came about as part of a discussion of the FBI investigation into the ricin- spiked letters sent to US President Barack Obama and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg . The FBI reported in its criminal complaint that the program had been used to narrow the FBI's investigation into assassin Shannon Guess Richardson .

Computer security and data protection expert Bruce Schneier compared MICT with the National Security Agency (NSA) programs published by Edward Snowden in June 2013 (→ Surveillance and Espionage Affair 2013 ) and said: “Essentially, they do the same thing the other programs, they collect the information on the outside of their mail, the metadata if you will, the names, addresses, return addresses and the places of postmarking, which gives the government a pretty good map of their contacts, even if they have the contents do not read."

Commenting on MICT, James J. Wedick , a former FBI agent, said, “It's a treasure chest full of information. Just by looking at the outside of letters and other mail, I can see who their bank is, with whom they are communicating - all kinds of useful information that can give law enforcement a clue that they can pursue with a Subpoena . ”He added, that the program “is easy to abuse because it is so easy to use and because you don't have to go through a judge to get information. You just have to fill out a form. "

The German postal photographed the addresses of all mailings. This is done - so the company told Welt am Sonntag in August 2013 - for internal purposes, such as ensuring correct delivery. In addition, there are longer-term pilot projects in which relevant data from business customers are made available to the US authorities. The aim is to simplify customs clearance in the future.

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  1. ↑ a b c d Ron Nixon: US Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement ( English ) In: The New York Times . July 3, 2013. Archived from the original on August 18, 2013. Retrieved on August 11, 2013.
  2. ↑ Focus -Author mp: 160 billion letters every year: US government photographs all correspondence in the USA . In: Focus . July 4, 2013. Archived from the original on October 29, 2013. Retrieved on March 23, 2014.
  3. ↑ The Smoking Gun: Ricin Suspect Was Tracked Via Mail Scanners ( English ) In: The Smoking Gun . June 7, 2013. Archived from the original on July 16, 2013. Retrieved on March 23, 2014.
  4. ↑ Jan Dams: Data monitoring: Deutsche Post photographs letters for internal purposes . In: The world . July 6, 2013. Archived from the original on August 18, 2013. Retrieved on August 11, 2013.