The U.S. Postal Service last week voiced strong opposition to any legislative attempt to permit the U.S. Customs Service to conduct warrantless searches of inbound and outbound international mail for drugs and other contraband.
Debra Wilhite, vice president, government relations, said in a letter to House Government Reform Committee Chairman Dan Burton (R-IA) that the USPS is against the idea on both privacy and Constitutional grounds.
She said that draft legislation being circulated by Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL) giving the Customs Service the authority to search mail without a warrant would invade the privacy of personal correspondence. She said it would also violate the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment against unreasonable searches and seizures and for the first time in America’s 224-year history, allow sealed, outbound international mail to be stopped and searched at the border without a warrant.
Wilhite added that there has not been any demonstrated need for the warrantless search of the personal correspondence of the American mailing public.
Officials of both the Direct Marketing Association and the Association for Postal Commerce (PostCom) endorsed the postal service’s position.
“The DMA will probably oppose such a bill if it is introduced,’ said Richard A. Barton, senior vice president, Congressional Matters.”
PostCom’s President Gene A. Del Polito saw no need to give the Customs Service the authority to search mail without a warrant because “mail between two countries is treated differently than freight, because mail by law is generally exempt from being examined while freight is subject to inspection.”
Wilhite went on to state in her letter that “this expansive, new authority would not even require customs officers to have a reasonable suspicion that an illegal item might be carried in a piece of sealed mail before opening it.”
She said the Customs Service failed to demonstrate a need for this authority” and that the U.S. Postal Inspection Service has a mail security enforcement program that works and a proven record of using warrants and working with other law enforcement agencies, including the Customs Service.
Network
