The last year has been marked by revelations from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden of just how much the government monitors our electronic communication. Now, a new report from The New York Times shows that Big Brother is going old school, too: In 2013 alone, the Postal Service granted some 50,000 requests from the government for secret surveillance of Americans' mail.
This monitoring program is called "mail covers," and much like the NSA's spying, it focuses on metadata, not content: USPS workers track who your mail is from, when it's sent, and any other information they can glean from the outside of the envelope or package.
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