Controlled Delivery of Controlled Substances

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ScoobySmacks

Greenlighter
Joined
Dec 14, 2010
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I'm going to law school to become a criminal defense attorney. I am studying case law on controlled deliveries, among other articles of evidence found in cases that involve complicated drug syndicates. A few common themes that I see include this scenario:
Controlled deliveries which take place repeatedly, in conjunction with undercover surveillance that can last weeks or months.
Obviously, this kind of investigation is expensive for law enforcement. Which has me thinking; with limited budgets and, let's face it...being seriously outnumbered, they must have some sort of computer database that shows the history of parcel delivery to and from any location.
My question boils down to this: Assuming there is no reasonable suspicion from law enforcement or postal inspector, does the post office carry the capability to track the history (origin/frequency/name of receiver) of shipments to and from a certain location after they have been delivered? And if so, would this information be handed over to law enforcement with or without a warrant?
Thanks in advance blue lighters!
 
Yes, the postal service does have a way to track certain types of mail. However, I've never had a case in which this happened. Most cases that involve controlled deliveries also involve a CI. In some instances it may stem from a random canine search at the mail center (these are conducted at USPS centers as well as private parcel carriers).
 
forgotten said:
Yes, the postal service does have a way to track certain types of mail. However, I've never had a case in which this happened. Most cases that involve controlled deliveries also involve a CI. In some instances it may stem from a random canine search at the mail center (these are conducted at USPS centers as well as private parcel carriers).
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Thanks for that information. It reinforces the fact that usps can and does possess the tools necessary to comply with law enforcement.
I guess the main idea that I'm trying to get at is whether or not any mail (not limited to controlled substances) is monitored on regular basis. It's got kind of a bizarre government conspiracy flavor to it haha... but I'm being totally honest in saying that I suspect that the usps postmaster may hold records of that letter you got from grandma 3 weeks ago, even though the worst crime you've committed is speeding while passing a car in the cone zone..
Maybe I'm grasping at straws, here. All I know is that if I was postal inspector, you bet your sweet ass I'd have records of every return address that sent (anything) to you AND every one of your neighbors' within a few key strokes. Think about it... the dog sounds off, right? They look at the return address. Within seconds, the postal inspector know how many timesyou have received mail from this person within the recent past. Easy way of leveraging a suspect during interrogations. "you do realize ee have been watching your mail, and we know that this is nothing new..." Bam! Huge charges ensue.
Someone tell me that the entire USPS system has no clue who gets what, until the CI shows up..?
 
It would have to be one hell of a database to track the ~240 billion pieces of mail delivered annually.
 
forgotten said:
It would have to be one hell of a database to track the ~240 billion pieces of mail delivered annually.
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True...but how many of those are packages? Of those, how many use tracking? Among these even still, how many originate from other countries? Probably a much much smaller number, something much more managable.
But yes, point taken. Grandma's birthday card was never tracked ;)
 
They dont have a data base as far as anyone knows but they have started to flag packages that are tracked from multiple locations around the country, because if your torrenting, which you should be, your ip address comes up different everytime you track the package and usually the places it says are not that close to eachother. When they see someone tracking a package with a california ip address then the next day someone tracks the package with a mississippi ip address then the next day someone tracks it from a canadian ip address they can see youre torrenting which means youre trying to hide your identity which means you dont want them to know thats your package. This makes them think theres something bad in there and they check it out more carefully. If its usps they still need a warrent before they open it.
 
mollycoddled said:
They dont have a data base as far as anyone knows but they have started to flag packages that are tracked from multiple locations around the country, because if your torrenting, which you should be, your ip address comes up different everytime you track the package and usually the places it says are not that close to eachother. When they see someone tracking a package with a california ip address then the next day someone tracks the package with a mississippi ip address then the next day someone tracks it from a canadian ip address they can see youre torrenting which means youre trying to hide your identity which means you dont want them to know thats your package. This makes them think theres something bad in there and they check it out more carefully. If its usps they still need a warrent before they open it.
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References, links, Sir? :)
 
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