The Postal Service Watched Protesters Online. The Records Were on a Dropped Hard Drive.

Records released this year in a settlement of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit show that the Postal Service's internet Covert Operations Program, known as iCOP, routinely read social media posts about planned protests and wrote them up as bulletins, across the political spectrum, with few rules on file about how the First Amendment fit into any of it. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which sued for the records in 2021, published its account on November 3. The part that should hold your attention is not what the bulletins say. It is what the agency can no longer produce.