DHL pioneered the sharing economy (2016)

Anecdotally, I once had an outrageously difficult time explaining to a German customs officer that the bag I placed in the scanner had items belonging to both my sister and myself. It didn't help that we were travelling together, and she was also there to back my statements up. He simply would not accept the fact that there was an electronic device (e-book) that belonged to her, in a bag that belonged to me, which we forgot to take out before the scanner.

> At first, AirWayBill’s managing director, Khaled Sehly, declined to discuss whether the app could be breaking any TSA regulations, asking to go off the record. (I refused.) He then asked me to wait four weeks until they had real users, saying that the reviews left on the app were actually from peers rather than customers. In our next series of broken calls, Sehly directed me towards the app’s terms and conditions and privacy policy, which he says were designed by a reputable law firm. Section 8 of the terms and conditions states that users must comply with technical and legal obligations and restrictions, including customs rules. However, it also indemnifies AirWayBill for liability related to shipments, stating that “any request will be made or accepted at the Members’ own risk” and that unless it’s explicitly specified otherwise within the platform, “AirWayBill’s responsibilities are limited to the correct functioning of the app and its service to the interested parties.”

> Unfortunately for wary couriers, AirWayBill is not planning on running background checks on anybody using their services. Sehly says that delivering packages for strangers—or at least friends of friends—is something that he’s seen done in an unregulated way in the Middle East and parts of Europe, with people asking if someone could deliver items ranging from documents to baby food to their families. Still, the possibility of inadvertently smuggling who knows what still remains. “We always urge people not to carry anything that they are not super confident about,” Sehly says, pointing out that deliverers can inspect the items they plan on transporting.

So the company is obviously taking the caveat emptor aka “f around find out” approach. Drug smugglers already have a lot of skill hiding drugs in seemingly innocuous items (sewn into teddy bears, etc.), so it is not at all an “aggressive assumption” to think being a courier with this service has potentially life changing (i.e. incarceration) risks.