united-states us-federal-government mail
Camera to monitor mailbox
<p>A community has a row of mailboxes, as opposed to a mailbox at each address. This is common in the rural USA. Since the covid-19 pandemic, people occasionally drive by and steal the mail.</p>
<p>Several homeowners have since gotten locking mailboxes, and one considered putting up a  webcam at the site as a deterrent. What's the law here?</p>

<p>There is no mailbox-specific law. You can take pictures in public, and you can put a camera to take pictures on your property. Whether you can install a camera in a particular place depends on who owns that place. Of course, you also can't aim it to peer into a nearby residence; and it has to be a video-only camera (unattended recording of audio is illegal without the consent of the thief). In some cases, mega-boxes are owned by the USPS so you would need USPS permission. There is a widespread false narrative that the USPS owns all mailboxes, but the USPS does not say that nor does the US Code. USPS describes <a href="https://faq.usps.com/s/article/What-is-a-Cluster-Box" rel="nofollow noreferrer">two kinds of cluster-boxes</a>, private and USPS-owned. The USPS offers no statements on permission or its denial to install a cameras inside a USPS-owned box, so you would have to ask the local post office in case your box is USPS-owned.</p>
