7 ms·

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

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?

sparkling 7y ago
Incompetence?
gkoberger 7y ago
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)
ACow_Adonis 7y ago
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.
viraptor 7y ago
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? :-) )
- losteric 7y ago
  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.
  - seniorivn 7y ago
    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.
    - dontbenebby 7y ago
      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)
  - viraptor 7y ago
    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.
codedokode 7y ago
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.
- tinus_hn 7y ago
  Alternatively someone was forced to do something he didn’t believe in and purposefully didn’t erase all his tracks.
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    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.
- wybiral 7y ago
  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?
  - bandushrew 7y ago
    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.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
cyphar 7y ago
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-planted-backdoors-in-cisco-products.html https://www.infoworld.com/article/2608141/snowden--the-nsa-p... [2]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa-upgrade-factory-show-cisco-router-getting-implant/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa... [2]: https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/23/latest-snowden-allegations-nsa-hacks-huawei/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/23/latest-snowden-allegations...
notadev 7y ago
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?
powerapple 7y ago
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.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

sparkling 7y ago

Incompetence?

gkoberger 7y ago

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)

ACow_Adonis 7y ago

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.

viraptor 7y ago

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? :-) )

losteric 7y ago
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.
- seniorivn 7y ago
  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.
  - dontbenebby 7y ago
    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)
- viraptor 7y ago
  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.

codedokode 7y ago

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.

tinus_hn 7y ago
Alternatively someone was forced to do something he didn’t believe in and purposefully didn’t erase all his tracks.
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  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.
wybiral 7y ago
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?
- bandushrew 7y ago
  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.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

cyphar 7y ago

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-planted-backdoors-in-cisco-products.html https://www.infoworld.com/article/2608141/snowden--the-nsa-p... [2]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa-upgrade-factory-show-cisco-router-getting-implant/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa... [2]: https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/23/latest-snowden-allegations-nsa-hacks-huawei/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/23/latest-snowden-allegations...

notadev 7y ago

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?

powerapple 7y ago

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.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]