| Five years ago there was a similar situation with the transportation of prescription medications. FedEx put out a public statement that they intended to fight the Department of Justice order: "We want to be clear what’s at stake here: the government is suggesting that FedEx assume criminal responsibility for the legality of the contents of the millions of packages that we pick up and deliver every day. We are a transportation company – we are not law enforcement. We have no interest in violating the privacy of our customers. We continue to stand ready and willing to support and assist law enforcement. We cannot, however, do the job of law enforcement ourselves." [1] Ultimately two years later the DOJ dropped the charges against Fedex. "In court on Friday, [U.S. District Court Judge Charles] Breyer said FedEx was 'factually innocent.' He said the company repeatedly asked the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to give it the name of a customer that was shipping illegal drugs so it could stop working with the person, but the agency was either unwilling or unable to do so." [2] If this plays out similarly, FedEx will use a similar blacklist mechanism to comply with the law, but is suing right now to prevent any backlash that will inevitably occur when the blacklist doesn't contain an illegal entity and it's discovered there was a shipment that slipped through the cracks. "Export restriction rules “essentially deputize FedEx to police the contents of the millions of packages it ships daily even though doing so is a virtually impossible task, logistically, economically, and in many cases, legally,” it said in a filing. ... FedEx responded by saying publicly that it would deliver all products made by Huawei to addresses other than those of Huawei and affiliates placed on the U.S. national security blacklist." (from the main article in this thread) [1] - https://about.van.fedex.com/newsroom/fedex-response-to-depar...
[2] - https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/06/17/482537913... |