Huawei reviewing FedEx relationship, says packages 'diverted' | Hacker News Reader

Huawei reviewing FedEx relationship, says packages 'diverted'

reuters.com

180 pointshhs157 comments

Regardless of the cause of this particular set of events, corporate media engagement as resistance against state actors is the only logical development that can be expected following the Snowden revelations which confirmed that long-theorized postal interception methods are in use. This creates additional pushback for FedEx who now have to prove they aren't working for US intelligence, or face losing additional customers. While other state actors remain valid threats, given US involvement was proven by Snowden and FedEx is so global I am kind of surprised that neither Deutsche Post[0] nor ZTO[1] nor SF Express[2] shares are up on the news.

[0] http://en.boerse-frankfurt.de/stock/Deutsche_Post-share [1] https://www.nyse.com/quote/XNYS:ZTO [2] http://www.szse.cn/English/siteMarketData/siteMarketDatas/lo...

> I am kind of surprised that neither Deutsche Post[0] nor ZTO[1] nor SF Express[2] shares are up on the news.

Why would they be up on the news? They're just as likely to be engaging in the same behavior, only for a different set of government actors.

Intercepting it in the US or within their own country is one thing. Rerouting a document being sent from Japan to China to the US multiple times is most certainly not a common thing mail services would do for intelligence agencies.

Getting a private company operating in a foreign country to do your intelligence work so blatantly is certainly news worthy. Maybe not stock price shifting news though.

I think it should affect stock price. Espionage is usually punished pretty harshly and you have no guarantee that said private company won't be charged with it in the future when the political landscape changes in the country.

If the packages really were intentionally diverted, it's entirely possible Fedex didn't knowingly participate with the spooks.

Fedex has thousands of customer service agents with the ability to change package destinations for legitimate purposes.

Is any company's security is so strong they can prevent employees from independently cooperating with governments?

Deutsche Post? Forget it. The scandal would be off the scale.

Stasi is a living memory in Germany.

Mentioned as they own DHL.

Even if Huawei stops using FedEx and switches to 'HenryBemisEx', there is nothing that a gag order can't fix. If this is a US 3-letter-word act/intervention, it will happen with the next company down the line. The only way to prevent this is the good old way. Send 3 trusted people with 3 sets of documents from A-to-B and make sure that nobody opens those darned folders. I am simplifying this, but hey, you send something using publicly available methods, you get publicly available privacy violations (unfortunately).

I enjoyed the "FedEx doesn't comment..." policy.

Not related to this package delivery drama, but the way we are observing the live demolition of the world largest networking equipment maker and second largest smartphone maker (by number) in the name of trade war will never bring back the confidence in those who are flexing muscle.

The illusion of the rule of law, free world, globalization and the reality of control is simply frightening, and worrisome.

> The illusion of the rule of law

Rule of law has always been national. International politics are anarchic. Huawei quite clearly broke the laws of the United States (e.g. with respect to Iran), repeatedly and wilfully.

Importing goods to Iran really isn't a violation of US laws, any more than, say, a twenty year old Huawei employee having a beer in Beijing or driving at 120 mph on a German autobahn. The rule of law is indeed national, and legally the US has very little jurisdiction outside its borders. Extralegally, of course, it has plenty of powers to arrest, kill or torture those it doesn't like.

The allegations against Huawei aren't that it "imported goods into Iran." The allegations are that it imported American goods into Iran, which is clearly a violation of US export laws. If such laws didn't apply to third-party distributors of American goods, then the only effect of US sanctions would be have foreign distributors exporting American goods rather than American ones.

Huawei appears to have known this as well seeing as Meng Wanzhou had fraudently misrepresented the relevant transactions to the banks it was working with.

There was nothing extralegal about Meng Wanzhou's arrest.

The allegation is not quite that Huawei imported American goods into Iran. The accusation is that Huawei misled a non-American bank, HSBC, about its relationship with Skycom, a company that is accused of importing some American office computers into Iran. The US alleges that Huawei essentially controls Skycom, and that it hid this from HSBC, a British bank. Since HSBC does business in the US, it would not be allowed to give loans to Huawei.

You can start to see how far-reaching American sanctions are. A British bank is being told that it cannot do business with a Chinese company, because that Chinese company allegedly controls a Hong Kong company that imported small numbers of American goods into Iran. As I understand it, these sorts of extensive secondary sanctions are not normal, and are a sore point between the US and many countries, including some of its allies (such as France and Germany).

I would be very interested to know what gives the US any jurisdiction to demand the arrest of a foreign executive on foreign territory, for acts committed on foreign territory. Whatever the legal justification, though, this is a very unusual and aggressive step, and one that is transparently motivated by political considerations in the ongoing trade war.

> what gives the US any jurisdiction to demand the arrest of a foreign executive on foreign territory, for acts committed on foreign territory

She violated American laws with American products using U.S. dollars for years. She then travelled to an American ally.

This is a stupid counter argument.

Where does the US have jurisdiction? This is a legitimate question. What legal right does the US government have to enforce US laws on a foreigner who isn't in the US, for actions taken outside the US and which were not illegal in the country the person resides in? I'd legitimately like to know what sort of legal argument is used to justify this, because it sounds like a massive overreach by the United States. Regardless, arresting the CFO of a major corporation - the daughter of the CEO - in such a manner is an extremely aggressive act.

The US has a reciprocal agreement with Canada. These agreements are the basis for jurisdiction.

I always wonder how mutual these agreements are. Probably more like “Sign this agreement or else”.

I'm not just asking why Canada is handing over the Huawei CFO. I'm asking how the US has jurisdiction to even prosecute the supposed underlying crime. The connection of any of her actions to the United States is extremely tenuous and indirect. They occurred outside the United States, were legal in the country where they occurred, she doesn't work for an American company, she's not an American, and she wasn't even dealing with an American company. Just imagine what it would be like if every country began applying its domestic law extraterritorially in such an aggressive manner.

Huawei may have broken the law with respect to violating U.S's sanctions on Iran. These are still unproven allegations as of yet.

Meanwhile, Société Générale, Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, JP Morgan have provably done exactly that.

Yet there is only one C-suite level executive who is currently being held personally, criminally liable for corporate actions. I guarantee you won't be seeing Jamie Dimon threatened with prison time for JP Morgan's 87 violations of Iranian sanctions and Weapons of Mass Destruction sanctions, anytime soon.

Laws which are enforced selectively lack credibility.

Very simply, sanctions evasion is enforced differently from other domains. In any case, China is a terrible foil for the rule of law. Meng will get a fair trial in America. Nobody from anywhere would get the same in China.

> Meng will get a fair trial in America.

Your faith is US justice is admirable and patriotic. Do you believe Assange would also get a fair trial in USA ?

Fairer than in China!

> Do you believe Assange would also get a fair trial in USA ?

No. I don’t believe secret courts can be fair courts.

Meng, however, is being charged through normal channels by a prosecutor who must make a case in the regular court system. The charges and decisions will be made in the open. (There is a decent chance, due to the difficulty of admitting large swaths of evidence, that she could win.)

> Huawei quite clearly broke the laws

Was it proven in court or we should just believe everything US administration says?

Since when does the US set laws for Huawei? The attitude that the whole world must obey US laws is being increasingly rejected. And not before time.

they set the law for companies that want to do business in and with the USA, anything else would just lead to ridiculous shell games where corporations could break laws with impunity by farming it out to "completely independent foreign companies".

Its fine if Huawei doesn't want to follow US law, but they shouldn't expect to do business with Americans or American companies either.

The allegations have not been proven in court yet, but US is already disrupting Huawei's business and US companies are cancelling the contracts. That's not how law works.

These aren't American companies. America's actual position is something more like this:

"If you do business in any way with any Americans at any point, regardless of who you are or where you're based, then you will be thrown in jail the moment we can get your hands on you, if you do business with anyone on this list, or with anyone who does not implement our rules either"

See how companies like ARM are being forced to stop doing business with Huawei despite not being American companies. It's massive overreach.

what are you smoking. Even if Huawei broke US laws (unproven, no evidence, no court proceedings), who gave US the right to divert other people's packages in a foreign country?

Are you saying that I can simply divert you mail because I think you broke my laws?

What they're doing to Huawei will have nefarious consequences to the US. Who can ever trust a country that can use this kind of tactics to destroy a comercial competitor?

China's tactics aren't really any better (allow blatant IP theft).

I suppose the only real difference was that this wasn't well-known in advance. It's like the Joker's statement about people losing their shit when something happens unannounced but being orderly when much worse is announced in advance.

We already don't trust China though. That's the difference.

Who are "we" here? Readers of hacker news, or your family which you may or may not have the right to represent?

China hasn't taken any actions comparable to this. This would be like shutting down Apple's production lines in China with no warning - essentially a coup de grace to a major tech company.

> What they're doing to Huawei will have nefarious consequences to the US

And what consequences do you imagine there will be?

Countries around the world will realize that it is not safe to trust in the US as a player in the global market. This may not seem big initially, but market barriers around technology will start to crop up everywhere in developed nations.

The consequences might be like this (in addition to many other possible forms):

Previously, my little factory spent 100% of the budget for component x and component y on buying from American suppliers (quality and price are both very good).

But going forward, we plan to spend 70% to buy from Americans, 20% from other countries, and 10% to fund demestic research, and we will reduce the 70% part as soon as we can manage.

You can imagine if multiplying our small adjustment by the actions of hundreds of thousands of similar businesses around the world who are watching closely what's going on recently, then the interests of American businesses will probably be severely affected.

What you describe is already 100% what is going on with the technology transfers.

You mean like China forcing foreign companies to turn over technology to Chinese companies to eventually be used to compete against them? Who could ever trust a country that does that, or that imprisons millions of people based on their religion?

Blacklisting Huawei is for national security reasons not because of the trade war. Because of the trade war the US has stopped turning a blind eye to misdeeds from China and state backed Chinese companies.

It’s just a bargaining chip. If China meets some of Trumps demands, be prepared to watch all these security reasons disappear like snow on a sunny day.

Basing an argument on a hypothetical future event isn't very convincing.

>The order, which will not name specific countries or companies, has been under consideration for more than a year but has repeatedly been delayed, the sources said, asking not to be named because the preparations remain confidential. It could be delayed again, they said.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-huawei-tech-exc...

Is it your position that Huawei is not a national security threat?

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48392021

Huawei is probably a security threat but that isn’t new nor relevant. My position is that this is a transparent attempt to gain leverage at the negotiating table.

The timing is certainly intentional and designed to improve the US's position on both trade and national security. There is more than one variable at play. And I agree that the black list can go away after negotiations. But only if those negotiations ensure the US feels secure in its national security.

Trump has already publicly announced that he's willing to use Huawei as a bargaining chip. This isn't vague speculation. It's something the President of the United States is openly saying:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-china/trump-say...

US arbitrarily "blacklisting" Huawei and trying to disrupt its business is nothing different from China banning Western companies. They also have valid excuses like "national security".

But in one case the media will tell us about evil authoritarian regime that doesn't want to play by the rules, and in another case they present it as a "fair punishment" for "misdeeds".

Spot on! Nothing has changed from the colonial era except having been dressed up in "genteel" clothes of "rule of law as long as it is to OUR benefit". Every country is learning from this and nobody is going to trust the US anymore. It is all lies, sham and hypocrisy. The western countries have lost the lead in Wireless Mobile technology and instead of admitting it and redoubling their efforts to win back the lead, they are engaged in tearing down the company and the country who beat them.

> The illusion of the rule of law, free world, globalization and the reality of control is simply frightening, and worrisome.

There has never been an absolute "rule of law". The rule of law is always protected and uphold by the government military. Otherwise, what to prevent your neighbour from killing you and taking your assets. There must be someone more powerful and armed than him.

The government uses the "power of law" idea to make people happy and mentally stable. But it'll use power when need be. The US bombed japan with nuclear weapons and will redo it again to protect its interests.

Hanlon's razor applies here. If there was truly something nefarious going on, why would FedEx update the tracking status to say that the packages were re-routed? Why not just say they were held up in the sending or receiving country?

Incompetence?

There's lots of other potential reasons: maybe their system can't handle overrides, or maybe it's a canary so people know it's the government rather than their fault?

(But I do agree overall that it's probably nothing)

Potential reason - they do not have a system that can split public/secret stops. They need tracking to be available for internal purposes (actual delivery) but never built the filtering features. (Or there is, but needs boxes to be checked explicitly and the box wasn't checked. Is there anyone from FedEx to throwaway comment? :-) )

We are talking about the federal government - do you think suits from the three-letter agencies will accept that reasoning?

No. If they want quiet intercepts, that's what they get... even if it means "slow down conveyor belts and post agents to manually read every incoming package label before it hits the scanner".

This was either unrelated or an intentionally loud message.

Three letter agencies are not gods, they make mistakes, they underestimate complexity of some issues and etc. After all they are just people with too much power.

And companies that are compelled to help three letter agencies to exercise any lateral thinking/do more than the exact directions in the order. (Especially when compliance may cost them future international business)

We're of course still speculating, by given the number of low-level employees that would need to be involved, it would be hard to keep it silent for long.

Because there was nobody who thought about it.

We had a similar situation in Russia. A mobile operator was cooperating with government to hack into activists' Telegram accounts. They disabled SMS service for a user and then requested a password restore using SMS, intercepted it and got access. But they forgot to delete this information from their internal systems, so when the user called support, they told them that SMS service was disabled, and later even gave a signed confirmation about it.

I don't know whether the story from the article is true or not, but people tend to make such kind of mistakes. Imagine a typical accounting system, written on bunch of legacy technologies during last 20 years, and think how difficult it would be to remove all traces from all the databases and logs and not break anything. And tell every employee that would process the package not to scan it.

Alternatively someone was forced to do something he didn’t believe in and purposefully didn’t erase all his tracks.

Or it could just be that like internet packets the fastest route between A and B isn’t always the shortest, especially if we are talking Anchorage and northeast Asia.

Why wouldn't an intelligence agency just intercept it quietly? If I were sufficiently motivated and had global assets willing to do my bidding I could probably have found a way to intercept it at a sorting facility or en route or by sending in an "inspector" or social engineering or something.

Why on earth would they do something so obvious to leave such a paper trail when you know they could pull this off quietly?

Because they want to be able to do it at scale?

The ideal approach would be to have packages of the "interesting" kind automatically diverted to a scanning location, and then continue on their way...

Dont think of it as them being interested in a single package. They are interested in setting up a mechanism by which ALL packages of interest can be diverted with only very small effort on their part.

If they were doing it at scale this wouldn't be the first time we are reading about it on HN.

It isn't.

I know there are other accounts of packages being intercepted, but is there a previous example where Fedex's tracking information openly states that a package was diverted to the U.S.?

My impression from the prior accounts was that the interception was far more clandestine.

My guess is that they blocked display of the scans of the intercepted item, but forgot to account for scans of the crate that the package is in?

It also wouldn't be the first time a shipping/logistics error caused a package to be misrouted.

The obvious and most probable answer is usually the right answer unless you have evidence otherwise.

Not every weird incident is part of some conspiracy.

Four packages... And Huawei called Fedex Vietnam customer service. They explicitly said the package was reouted on request from Fedex U.S.

Check this: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/28/huawei-says-fedex-diverted-p...

According to FedEx’s website, the status “exception” means an unexpected event is preventing delivery of a package, for example a customs delay, a holiday, or no one being available to accept delivery. FedEx declined to give details on what the exception was in this case.

According to Huawei, a FedEx customer service representative in Vietnam replied to their inquiry on May 22 when two expected packages did not arrive on time, saying: “Please be informed that FDX SG received notification from FDX US to hold and return the package to US. Hence, the shipment is not deliver to consignee and now being hold at FDX station and under process to RTS it (return to sender),” the representative wrote in broken English, according to an email Huawei showed to Reuters.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa...

Probably easier to make the re-routing seem legitimate/boring so the handlers don't think something is amiss. More subtle than a G-Man telling you "when package #ABC-123 is scanned put it in the other pile, and tell no one", or workers noticing their co-worker is putting packages in the wrong pile.

Maybe you don't have global assets?

In this age of fingerprints and occasional iris checks, sending intelligence personnel through foreign airports is risky.

you ever dealt with a big corporate?

that's like asking "why are there software bugs when programmers know how to code!"

of course, there's the other side of that coin, in that of you've got a big enough company and enough of a complex package network, the probability that you'll find packages routed erroneously or in bizarre directions approaches 1.

Given that we do not know the details of the packages, either their contents or supposed reason for rerouting, but we do know that Huawei has made a media story of this (a couple of packages rerouting is nothing to get in the paper about, and they could have kept quiet if they were genuinely concerned), about the only thing we can really take away from this is that is likely part of the public relations/propaganda jostling currently going on between US/China corporates.

It should be noted that we do know for a fact that the NSA has done things like this in the past (the Snowden documents revealed that they would intercept some networking equipment that was being shipped internationally so they could install backdoors[1,2]). And the NSA has hacked into Huawei's systems before to get access to internal emails and the source code of their products[3].

Hanlon's razor isn't as strong of an argument if you already have evidence that something similarly malicious has been done by that actor before. Obviously we still need to be skeptical, but not blindly so.

[1]: https://www.infoworld.com/article/2608141/snowden--the-nsa-p... [2]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa... [2]: https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/23/latest-snowden-allegations...

Doesn't the NSA supposedly have a facility in Japan? Wouldn't they have just intercepted it there instead of sending it to the US?

The tracking didn't say that. It is in communication with FedEx customer service that revealed it has been requested by HQ to divert the package.

Not to a CIA "load station" ?

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa...

They were documents. Why wouldn't they have just intercepted them in-place instead of sending them to the US?

It doesn't make sense to be anything other than an error and Huawei being paranoid (rightfully so, but still).

Possibly because if the USG were caught reading foreign companies' documents on foreign soil it would be a violation of countless international treaties, which would make the ongoing trade and infosec tensions worse, versus "whoops, this landed on our doorstep, we can do whatever we want on our soil". The fact that this can be easily chocked up to a logistical error is good cover.

Let's be honest, America has been violation of so many treaties and rules they themselves have written that it really doesn't matter anymore. Some countries retaliate, but with different methods.

They just want you to think they were documents. The question is why ...

Are you now implying that Huawei is lying about them being documents to cover up what they were actually shipping or something?

(I genuinely can't tell if this is a joke or not)

My comments so far have been very tongue in cheek, I must admit.

To me, it appears as a Chinese way of saying they are are as much at the mercy of US logistics as the Western World is at the mercy of Huawei's logistics ( 5G ).

edit: even it when it is not true, the message comes across.

Dunno about Huawei, but I’ve definitely sent door keys and thin EEPROM programmers as « documents » to save on shipping costs.

They tend to have fewer customs issues too since they go through a separate stream in a lot of countries.

They could be being paranoid, or they could be feeding mistrust of American corporations because the US has lead people to mistrust them. Russia has used similar tactics in the past to counter US measures.

The NSA has broken into Huawei's systems in the past[1]. I think it's more than reasonable for them to explore the possibility that this is a continuation of that pattern.

[1]: https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/23/latest-snowden-allegations...

Right...but the NSA wasn't so stupid in the past to leave a FedEx redirect message during an intercept. So, that's why the entire theory is nonsense. If they were intercepting, Huawei would have no idea, and would not be left with a FedEx change of status.

Anyone who has shipped with FedEx knows how somehow everything you send goes through Atlanta. I'll bet this was just one of those "logistical efficiency" gone wrong kind of things.

Or US intelligence requested the documents be diverted. Either is about equally likely I'd say.

I tend to agree with the first half... Maybe I'm a bit tin-foil, but I feel like if intelligence was involved they'd just intercept it en route, and wouldn't bother sending it all the way back to the US, especially in a trackable way for that matter...

The second half was more of a joke. I agree with you, they would probably hide it, unless FedEx was dumb enough to mess up and show it when they shouldn't.

Honestly, FedEx has a tracking system... I wouldn't be surprised if they were unable to avoid somehow altering the destination information of the package unless the NSA stole the items off the back of their delivery truck - it may also be FedEx throwing up a canary about government shadiness but...

The truth is probably that FedEx is just terrible at their job and goofed it.

i find it hard to believe any intelligence service would a.) literally reroute the package, instead of having some field agents in the origin country deal with it, b.) not suppress revealing the actual route on the fedex tracking website.

Agreed, it was more of a joke.

If US intelligence wanted it, it would simply get put on hold at some foreign facility while agents go through it there (or use that transparent paper spray). Nothing different would be noticed.

What is this transparent paper spray?

I hope it sprays transparent paper.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERSJTY0PrEI

Did you mean Memphis? Atlanta would love to take some or all that traffic away from Memphis since the Atlanta airport is woefully under utilized after midnight.

Maybe? I just remember it was somewhere on the other side of the country where my package from SF to LA had no business being.

Yes, it's Memphis[1].

[1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=y3qfeoqErtY&t=1m51s

The Memphis package exchange is something to behold. It's the hub in a massive hub and spoke model.

I had a package go from Fremont to SF via Memphis.

It’s humans, whether they’re going to heaven or hell, that have a connection in Atlanta.

(ATL is a hub for Delta, and a few other airlines run a ton of flights out of there too)

Everything domestic. It doesn't make sense to do that internationally, though.

Having done logistics this happens all the time in international parcels. I saw 0.5% of parcels have some massively weird routing error to countries that made no sense.

If this had been a us govt request they wouldn’t have scanned the packages at the sorting facilities in the US!

Packages were probably getting a free "upgrade". The same upgrade that cost Cisco billions in revenue over the past 5 years.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa...

Upgrades like what? Spell checking? These were packages of documents.

They were just making a backup copy, just in case.

The Huawei spokesperson said they contained important commercial documents, not equipment:

“The recent experiences where important commercial documents sent via FedEx were not delivered to their destination, and instead were either diverted to, or were requested to be diverted to, FedEx in the United States, undermines our confidence,” Joe Kelly, a spokesman for Huawei, told Reuters.

I wonder what the backstory is to this.

You don't issue a press release for two missing packages. And since they were "important commercial documents" I am assuming that US intelligence must have intercepted them for some reason.

The back story could just as easily be a shipping error and Huawei trying to drum up anti-American sentiment as a counter to all the bad press the US have directed their way.

Sure, it’s highly suspicious that a Hauwei shipment end up in America but equally it seems unlikely FedEx would be dumb enough to advertise that fact on their tracking page if they were ordered to divert said documents.

I’m not suggesting there isn’t something deeper going on that governments are keeping classified, however if there is then they’re doing a good job of keeping it a secret by making this trade war sound like petty bickering.

Another backstory is that huwai has long believed to be backdoring to chinese intel just as cisco has since the mid 90s...

We arrested their cfo in canada and have been on attack with them since.

The actual question is - the US has been doing this against them for quite some time now Mr smith.

So...

Did huwai just realize, or do they have enough anomalous tracking that they are leaking public to measure reaction.

Look, dont be a fool - WWIII - as Einstein stated, is not nuclear, its informational - and we are in the midst;

Echelon <— nobody believed this existed in the 80s and 90s

Carnivore <— att guy went to jail for revealing this

Stuxnet <— israel fucked that one up

Duqu <— scary that this dropped off the map

PRISM <— one of many of the trackers

Lots more: too many.

Etc

There are a lot of subs in that list and a lot of ghosts we dont know about...

But only a moron would think that cyber war is NOT in full force

I operate on the idea that everyone has been back dooring and breaking into everyone else's stuff forever.

I remember a picture I can't remember the details now but think the East Germans discovered a tunnel from West Berlin into a phone vault in East Berlin with a bunch of taps installed. That was in the 1960's. The Soviets were planting microwave recording devices on the east coast in the 1970's. The US has been tapping under sea cables since the 1970's. Maybe earlier.

Everyone's been trying to spy on everyone else. Commercial companies are either willing partners cough facebook cough or haplessly in the middle. Notable they threw Joseph Nacchio in prison for not playing along.

I don’t think anyone is under the illusion that state sponsored espionage isn’t happening. What people are sceptical of is whether the Huawei / US trade war is a credible example of that.

Half the time these stories seem about as dubious as the Bloomberg (I think it was?) Supermicro debacle.

I’m genuinely open to the possibility there is something covert going on but equally I’m also exercising some healthy scepticism about the claims that are being reported. There is always the possibility that this is literally just a trade war and nothing else; and the “espionage” angle is really just unsubstantiated FUD.

Ultimately we are never going to know the truth so the best we can do is enjoy our speculation for what it is.

“Echelon <— nobody believed this existed in the 80s and 90s”

The Puzzle Palace came out in the early 80’s and 2600 was on the library shelf not much later. It was widely believed that telegram and international calls were intercepted.

I knew lots of crackpots before then who insisted every domestic call was recorded and was printed speech-to-text into some giant filing cabinet, where, they couldn’t say.

Weird this is getting downvoted while other comments saying literally the same thing are getting up voted.

Saw a few instances of this same thing happening yesterday as well.

If HN were to force voters to capture their reasons for such reactions I’m sure there would be fascinating psychological study waiting to happen there.

Maybe the shipment was planted to false flag the Americans? Do some press release about it, to add more credibility to the story?

It could be as simple as finding any excuse to put pressure on US companies.

IMO vastly more likely that Huawei wants people to -believe- they were intercepted for US intelligence, as a counter measure for the pressure they are under. In reality, US intelligence would just place someone in a FedEx facility and track down the package and do everything off the record from FedEx's tracking system. The US government is pretty incompetent, but they could easily scan all the documents without a single soul knowing or having the suspicion, even FexEx would likely not know. This is likely just a logistical change, and Huawei is trying to take advantage of it and to raise doubt.

Fedex diverted huawei’s packet through the US by mistake. China telecom diverted internet packets through China because it must be hacking.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18385920

Well, it's called FedEx, of course it expropriates your packages to the feds,

I really hope any US Commerce dept plans against Huawei completely backfire. Imagine in two years if Huawei has a stable, strong alternative to Android that takes over the Asian markets and even gets imported by American enthusiasts through 3rd party channels. I'd like to see someone break the Apple/Google dual-olopy.

And next thing you know everyone in Germany will suddenly have an epiphany and switch to WeChat and get themselves a QQ.

Dumbest thing I ever heard.

> I'd like to see someone break the Apple/Google dual-olopy.

I am not sure that will happen here. But it sure does seem like that is the trajectory for China.

It’s not the trajectory, apart from a reliance on ARM the Android experience in China is pretty independent of anything overseas already, lacking the Play Store and all.

https://www.techradar.com/news/huaweis-os-to-be-rolled-out-n...

Air shipping from any island in APAC is tricky, speaking as someone on an island in APAC. There are only X number of flights and sometimes things go to places you wouldn't expect based on whatever prioritization rules drive FedEx's optimization algorithm that day. This costs my lab and our hospital dearly, so I sort of sympathize. But I also know a FedEx pilot who flew this area for decades and explained their end of the problem as well. It's a hard optimization problem.

For example: it may have gone to Alaska, but that's actually closer to Japan and China than any of their other hubs.

I would assume this is part of the US government's recent attacks on Huawei except... I'm familiar with FedEx and their terrible service, so I assume it's just them being as terrible as they always are.

So many US corporations are sacrificing potential billions in global comsumer confidence and flat-out revenue loss backing the “trade war”. What assurances are they getting which makes them willing to take the leap, I wonder?

At the end of the day any losses have to be explained to sharebolders, regadless of political loyalties.

The asurance that their company won't be shut down for violating a federal embargo?

Trump has proven loyal to the farmers, at least, to the tune of redistributing over $15 billion in taxes to compensate them for the harm done by his administration's trade policies.

I'm sure the rest of us will receive similar consideration.

The Huawei 'war' is between the 5 Eyes Alliance countries and China, not just the US. If you live in Canada, Australia etc, you have persistent propaganda being released in the media warning of the evils of Huawei 5G hardware.

My cynical view is Huawei has some sort of edge on competitors to quickly deploy 5G around the world (state subsidies possibly), and the 5 Eyes Alliance will lose their 'information dominance' as once expressed by Gen Alexander, so the option was to start flexing against Huawei with 1980s cold war style aggression to slow them down.

This seems to assume that the 5 Eyes alliance has backdoors in products by the competition: products by continental European companies (Ericsson, etc.) that don't have a notable history of this. That's a strong assumption to make.

I'm not suggesting the companies are compliant, the 5 Eyes Alliance probably doesn't want to give up it's cheap and easy access to telecom hardware ie: information dominance. The executives of Cisco back in 2014 lamented how all the Snowden leaks about backdooring their equipment boosted Huawei: https://venturebeat.com/2014/08/13/nsa-spying-tech-companies...

“This week a number of media outlets reported another serious allegation: that the National Security Agency took steps to compromise IT products enroute to customers, including Cisco products. We comply with US laws, like those of many other countries, which limit exports to certain customers and destinations; we ought to be able to count on the government to then not interfere with the lawful delivery of our products in the form in which we have manufactured them."

They aren't getting assurances, they're being threatened with the loss of federal government business.

> they're being threatened with the loss of federal government business

Criminal penalties for their executives are the real stick.

The CFO and daughter of the founder is currently held in Vancouver awaiting extradition to the US.

It's an excuse for long term thinking and out of control for the shareholders.

Ever since every Chinese company with >50 employees requires a representative of the communist party. Every multinational knows that China will screw them over. They just have an excuse now.

Plenty of multinationals that don't want to do business there.

I haven't heard any of them subject truthfully that they hate not able to do business there.

> every Chinese company with >50 employees requires a representative of the communist party.

And every Western company is required to comply with NSA orders and sanctions arbitrarily imposed by anyone from US administration. Nothing different here.

> Plenty of multinationals that don't want to do business there.

A billion customers market is not something you can ignore. Google wants to return to China, and Apple is happily cooperating with its Chinese partner.

> FedEx spokeswoman Maury Donahue told Reuters the packages were “misrouted in error” and that FedEx was not requested to divert them by any other party.

Scout's honor. Sounds a lot like Huawei saying it was just a coding error. Would they get away of a spying accusation with this? If it can happen in the US (FedEx, Cisco) it can surely happen in China.

It's strange seeing people defending this as "probably an error" and perfectly acceptable when coming from one side but definitely intentional and totally unacceptable from the other.

The hypocrisy is strong in this one...

P.S. For the casual observer, please note that this comment is not about which company is guilty and how (un)acceptable that may be.

The difference is that Huawei has a board of CCP members that sits within Huawei and has say over their actions. While FedEx is an independent company that operates within the US, and has access to US courts to defend themselves. It's 1st party vs 3rd party, when it comes to government influence.

Huawei is assumed to be working at behalf of the CCP because the CCP has management control over the company. It's like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Do you doubt that the US government has control over them? They are "independent" government sponsored companies with oversight by the US government... just like Huawei.

Everyone knows Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac implement policies put in place by the US government. That's their job. But when it comes to Huawei, we're all suppose to ignore the CCP control?

China likes to have state-run companies (far more than the US does). The consequence is that no one trusts you. If they don't like it, and want to build trust with their customers, then they can liberalize their markets (or at least let Huawei be a fully independent company).

Huawei executives make management decisions at Huawei, not the CCP. I presume that what you're referencing is the existence of a CCP group at Huawei. As I understand it, all Chinese companies above a certain number of employees have a party section. That doesn't mean that the CCP controls those companies, any more than having a union means the AFL-CIO controls an American company. Huawei is subject to the same sort of potential government pressure, however, that American companies might face. If the US government sends a national security letter, American companies have to quietly comply.

OK, "%Government% exerts non-transparent influence over %Company%". Who am I talking about? This is not a China thing, it's not a communist thing. It's a thing, mostly a superpower thing. You can't nail one party to the cross while praising the other one for the exact same thing. I mean you can but not without a strong display of (misinformed?) hypocrisy.

Again, decide for yourself what's good or bad but be consistent, not selective depending on who's doing it: "us" or "them" ;).

People saying 'just an error tbis ; US doesn't do this' should be reminded that the same scenario played out, nationally, with Amazon routing Jacob Appelbaum's laptop to Langley before reaching him.

What kind of sloppy 2 bit intelligence operation informs the customer their packages are being redirected to the US? The article mentioned the packages were in the process of being marked "return to sender"

To me, this is clearly a case of not being able to read the shipping label, damage to packaging, or similar. It would make plenty of sense that manual "human" decisions on what to do with undeliverable packages is handled by FedEx employees in the US. I have had mail returned before and it always ends up going to a random place, likely to be hand sorted, and taking forever to make its way back.

This is likely a non-story trying to throw shade on US companies to distract from negative press on Hauwei. Besides, the mail was shipped using a US based carrier, probably airmail. A plane can make it across the world in 24 hours, so it might make sense to route certain destinations through the US regardless for logistical reasons. If I could ship something to Europe using China Post I would not be fazed if my package ends up in China at some point.

If you don't want something to end up in the US don't ship it using a US based mail carrier that is a private company allowed to send your package in any manner it desires. Hauwei complaining to the Chinese government about how their packages are being routed through the US on the way to their destination by a US based mail carrier, what a joke

This is bad for US companies because it will likely result in the rise of a Chinese worldwide Fedex/UPS competitor - you're already sort of seeing this happening in the bulk mail services that are used to ship stuff form Aliexpress

Probably happens all of the time. The unlawful spying organizations in the United States have no true bounds, especially not trivial things like borders or corporate integrity.

I am Chinese, living in China and have been pro-U.S / democracy my whole life. But the recent actions by Trump government, U.S corporations, Fedex etc., and academics (IEEE etc.) made me angry. The U.S government provided no evidence of Huawai spying or backdoor but acted hysterically to kill Huawei. And your corporations and intellectuals are helping it.

And there are lots of Chinese like me feel the same. Trump and his China haters are pushing away a large group of influential Chinese elites in all different professions, intellectuals, government officials, (yes, there are a lot of pro-U.S / democracy government officials in China), entrepreneurs, engineers, doctors even who used to admire the U.S.

This is far more damaging... There will be cost.

Wow, I'm surprised Huawei went to the press with this-- but it's certainly bizarre.

Routing mistake?

You often get the tracking number either before you send the item or as you are sending it.

I think it would be suspicious if you sent a package and weren't given one.

The packages are being delivered in the end, they just seem to be going through the US first.

Could you not plant something on these devices then find them like mythical WMDs never found to justify things against Huawei?

They were documents.

It looks like Huawei's retaliation to Trump's ban. They must have been combing Fedex deliveries for mishaps they could use to build up a case Fedex is working together with US intelligence agencies.

>Reuters could not verify the authenticity of the records. Shown the images of the tracking records, FedEx declined to make any comment, saying company policy prevented it from disclosing customer information. //

So they're confirming that the images are customer data, which makes them authentic. If they weren't authentic then they wouldn't be customer information, no?

>FedEx spokeswoman Maury Donahue told Reuters the packages were “misrouted in error” and that FedEx was not requested to divert them by any other party. //

Which doesn't tell us anything as NSA letters, for example, can IIUC require a company to lie to cover up executive activity.

>The U.S. Department of Commerce did not reply to a request for comment on whether the incident might be related to its move on May 16 to add Huawei to the so-called “Entity List,” //

Which is basically "hey are you being a shithead?", "oh, no comment!". Not even bothering to deny it??

>FedEx declined to give details on what the exception was in this case. //

I mean, it sounds a lot like the response of someone caught with their pants down (ie in the act of committing a nefarious offense).

What is clear is that this is more shots fired -- and TBH the message of "you can't trust USA not to be using security letters to pry in to foreign businesses confidential affairs" isn't anything like unbelievable.

> So they're confirming that the images are customer data, which makes them authentic. If they weren't authentic then they wouldn't be customer information, no?

I don't think that assumption works. Reuters asked for specific customer information: in particular, whether the records were valid. Answering in the affirmative or negative is divulging customer data, and FedEx would be wise to avoid doing so whether or not it's valid.

You're right, I skipped over the "decline to make any comment" part.

But still, "this is not a valid receipt" doesn't reveal data about a customer transaction.

But then when the reporter comes back a few days later with a different receipt that _is_ valid and FedEx tries to give the canned response about not revealing customer transaction data... they inadvertently have. Because if it wasn’t customer transaction data then they would have simply said as much, as they did the last time.

Companies always respond with “no comment” for a good reason: to prevent people from drawing incorrect conclusions by reading between the lines as you are doing now.

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