Pretty much any federal agency you have heard of has an investigative dept that employs federal special agents. These are law enforcement roles with the same training, authority, and responsibilities as investigative agents in the FBI, etc.
They were created to meet the specific law enforcement needs of each agency. Dept of Education agents investigate misuse of Dept of Education funds, for example. The Postal Inspectors investigate illegal use of, or threats to, the mail system.
After 9/11 a lot of these depts got new infusions of resources, and instructions to do a lot more information sharing. There was a feeling that the attacks of 9/11 could have been prevented if existing disparate info had been better collected and collated.
So it’s not that surprising that these agencies will seem to stray out of their lanes. If Postal is monitoring broadly for threats against their systems, but sees other concerning info, they are supposed to share it.
This is all intended to be explanatory; I’m not saying that it’s how things should be.
I will say that personally I have fewer concerns about programs to monitor public content on the Internet, than programs that seek to access, monitor, and store content that people intended to be privately communicated to other people.
They were created to meet the specific law enforcement needs of each agency. Dept of Education agents investigate misuse of Dept of Education funds, for example. The Postal Inspectors investigate illegal use of, or threats to, the mail system.
After 9/11 a lot of these depts got new infusions of resources, and instructions to do a lot more information sharing. There was a feeling that the attacks of 9/11 could have been prevented if existing disparate info had been better collected and collated.
So it’s not that surprising that these agencies will seem to stray out of their lanes. If Postal is monitoring broadly for threats against their systems, but sees other concerning info, they are supposed to share it.
This is all intended to be explanatory; I’m not saying that it’s how things should be.
I will say that personally I have fewer concerns about programs to monitor public content on the Internet, than programs that seek to access, monitor, and store content that people intended to be privately communicated to other people.