Local News Reporter Discovers Secret Spy Camera Outside a Post Office – but an Hour Later, It Was Gone

A secret surveillance camera outside a post office near Denver has been removed – but only after a local investigative reporter discovered it. Before then, customers had no idea they were being recorded.

Secret surveillance camera is found hidden outside Colorado post office. (Image source: KDVR-TV)

While it's common to see security cameras in place near doors or even windows of most buildings nowadays, this particular device's location was unique. It was positioned along the side of the driveway, KDVR-TV reported.

Why?

It turns out the camera had taken thousands of pictures of customers' license plates and their faces to match with them. But after only one hour of KDVR-TV reporter Chris Halsne finding the camera, it was gone. It appeared as though someone had just ripped it from the ground.

Managers at the Golden, Colorado, location told Halsne they didn't know it was there and that it was not part of the building's security monitoring system. The outlet reported it conducted a review of criminal search warrants but none appeared to be linked to the post office. The surveillance was seemingly random and without any specific purpose.

But Federal Law Enforcement Agent and U.S. Postal Inspector Pamela Durkee said that isn't at all the case. Durkee denied any notion that the post office engages in "routine or random surveillance."

"Cameras are deployed for law enforcement or security purposes, which may include the security of our facilities, the safety of our customers and employees, or for criminal investigations," Durkee said. "Employees of the Postal Inspection Service are sworn to uphold the United States Constitution, including protecting the privacy of the American public.”

Tell that to Lee Tien, an attorney for the privacy advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation, who said the post office is among of many federal agencies monitoring activity without ever obtaining a warrant: “Part of being a responsible, constitutional government is explaining why it is doing surveillance on its citizens."

“The government should not be collecting this kind of sensitive information. And it is sensitive! It`s about your relationships, your associations with other people, which can be friendship or political or religious," Lee added. "The idea that we give up that privacy simply because we use the U.S. mail is, I think, a silly idea.”

KDVR filed multiple Freedom of Information Act requests to the Postal Service, Postal Inspection Service and Office of the Inspector General to determine how much the program cost but did not report receiving any responses. In addition, none of those agencies could say how long the images can be stored or under which circumstances, if any, other government agencies could access the information.

TheBlaze has also filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act to determine the legal justification the agency cites for enforcing such practices. It often takes weeks – sometimes months – to receive any documents pertaining to FOIA requests.

(H/T: KDVR-TV)

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