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Comment by codedokode | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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