There’s no shortage of (bad) ideas to reform the U.S. Postal Service, but those that involve turning it into a federal bank need to be marked “Return to Sender.”
Postal banking has been repeatedly suggested by lawmakers such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and even President Biden. Proponents continue to call for the USPS to take up banking, even amid reports that the agency is inappropriately snooping on Americans’ social media accounts.
Lawmakers need to confront a government run amok instead of calling for federal banking.
Through successive Congresses, advocates of postal banking have attached different rhetoric to their proposals. For example, Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, wants “to help hardworking Americans” through the pandemic by giving them access to free bank accounts at their local post office. Given that there are plenty of companies offering no-fee bank accounts with no minimum deposit requirements, it is unclear how postal banking would help these struggling Americans.
The drawbacks of postal banking, though, extend far beyond the fact that they are obviously superfluous.
The USPS has a disturbing track-record of spying on Americans and unwittingly allowing criminals to access private information. In April, Yahoo News reported that the agency runs an investigation unit known as the Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP) which sounds more like a CIA op than a postal division.
According to the news outlet, “[t]he 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.” As if that isn’t creepy enough, the agency uses facial recognition software during internet searches “to help identify unknown targets in an investigation or locate additional social media accounts for known individuals.”
Even before revelations of postal spying became public, it was long known that America’s mail carrier didn’t exactly prioritize privacy. In 2018, a cybersecurity expert found that security vulnerabilities on the USPS’ website left the data of 60 million users exposed to hackers. This included all sorts of personal information such as account numbers, street addresses, phone numbers and mailing campaign data. Just four years before that, a hack exposed the data of 800,000 postal employees and 2.9 million consumer service inquiry records.
Even though we have seen that private data is less safe in government hands, a recent proposal by the Biden administration is now proposing intrusive Internal Revenue Service monitoring of Americans’ banking activities. The administration would force financial institutions to annually report inflows and outflows from personal and business accounts, provided that inflows and outflows total at least $600 annually.
The good news is that there’s plenty of opposition to this disturbing proposal, from lawmakers, businesses and watchdog groups. Even if this proposal is never implemented, it’s clear that the administration wants to monitor all accounts within its reach. That portfolio could expand significantly if postal banking becomes the law of the land.
Government surveillance is rarely benign. Federal surveillance opened the door to harassment of civil rights activists back in the 1960s and enables virtual Peeping Toms in the present day. Lawmakers should keep the government from expanding its activities and getting its hands on even more information. Public servants must maintain a united front against federal authorities collecting Americans’ private data and question the use of tools such as artificial-intelligence-powered software even for ostensibly “official” business.
A proactive effort is also needed to keep essential activities such as banking out of federal reach. There is simply too much at stake to give the USPS — or any federal agency — another window into Americans’ finances.
