SurveillanceKansas history says DHS opened his mail -- again

Grant Goodman, a retired professor at the University of Kansas, was shocked when he found out that DHS opened his mail in 2005, but now that it has happened again, he just wants to know why.

“I want to know why,” Goodman told the Republic. “I want to know why me?”

Goodman is a professor emeritus who has specialized in Japan and Southeast Asia for thirty years. He said U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) opened a letter he recently received from a friend who lives in the Philippines. The letter arrived on 27 October with a message saying it had been opened by Customs.

The same situation happened it 2005 when the same friend mailed Goodman a letter.

“I think it’s very unpleasant and very disturbing and I have no idea why I am a seeming target or what their rationale is for their selection of the letters to open,” Goodman told theRepublic in a telephone interview Tuesday. “The strange thing is that these letters have been coming regularly. They could open any one. … If they wait two weeks, they can see another.”

Goodman does not know why DHS would be interested in the relationship he has with his friend. He would not identify her by name because he does not want to involve her, but he said that she was also in her 80s, educated, and Catholic. Goodman prefers to talk to her by e-mail but says his friend does not have a computer and has been sending him letter twice a month for decades.

According to Goodman, the letters regularly include newspaper clippings “to keep me up to date about their political situation, military activities, U.S.-Philippines relations.”

Goodman says nothing in the letter could be seen as suspicious. “I’m a historian of Asia,” Goodman said. “And I lived in the Philippines at different times in my life. … They’re not unusual or excessive or provocative in any way whatsoever.”

Federal law has long protected first-class domestic U.S. mail against search and seizure, according to the U.S. Postal Service Web site. If the Postal Service has reason to believe such mail could be illegal, it needs a warrant to open it. These rules do not apply to international mail.

DHS spokeswoman Cherise Miles said that CBP has “a broad and unique border search authority to ferret out what is inadmissible and illegal.”

According to Miles, the CBP does not need a warrant or probable cause to check international mail or cargo. Every item of mail that comes into the United States from outside is sent to Customs by the postal service and inspectors examine the mail and determine whether duty is owed and whether the item should been inspected thoroughly.

In 2011, searches led to the discovery of more than 131,000 pounds of narcotics.

“They’re really, really good at finding needles in the haystack, so to speak,” Miles told the Republic.

Miles said that she is not familiar with Goodman’s case, but that the newspaper clippings, in addition to the letter being from the Philippines, may have led to it being opened.

Goodman wants it to be made more aware that this can happen. “I think it’s important that no one in the general public seems to have any knowledge of this,” Goodman said. “If they’re going to do this, we should know about it.”