Deliver With Me – Helps you send or receive shipments via passengers | Hacker News Reader

Deliver With Me – Helps you send or receive shipments via passengers

startcup.in

3 pointsmottled6 comments

That will be a legal nightmare. Couriers and post offices has so much paper trails for a reason. They are also absolved of the contents of the packages.

It could work in country but the moment you are out of the border you can be in deep fecal mater fast.

Indeed. If you're a courier and somebody gave you drugs to deliver, that could land you a death sentence in countries like Saudi Arabia or Thailand.

We are aware of the consequences that could arise from security glitches. We already have a few things in place to improve security and we are coming up with many more. We are setting up a semi automated way to filter suspicious packages. Also, We plan to have people stationed at airports who can handover and pick up packages to inspect them before giving to/taking from travelers. We have also teamed up with ecommerce retailers to help deliver to places they dont normally delivery. When an ecommerce company is delivering stuff through you, you have more reason to trust the package contents. Travelers have an option of rejecting packages which they are uncomfortable delivering.

I am not talking about security. Fedex being the scumbags they are allow you to deliver 4 pounds of anything legal, anywhere in the world for a 100$. That is the price you have to compete with. Also post has some more rigorous privacy protections than a real human at the border.

IANAL - so check this things on your own

Thing of the top of my head that could go very wrong with ease:

1. Brown guy bringing anything into the US - the non racially profiling DHS and TSA seem to have random generators that are very good at avoiding WASPs and catching persons with high amounts of melanin in the skin. Also at the US border you don't have reasonable expectation of privacy and the federal government can detain you indefinitely. (check EFF) How much do you expect as a compensation to take that kind of risk?

2. Child porn - the eternal scare. The problem arises from that the definition for CP in most of western Europe and USA and Canada is "anything that the procecutor think is CP". You will be able to filter the real disgusting stuff (lets hope so) but what about family pictures where the mother is playing with her 5-10 year old on the beach. You need just an overzealous prosecutor that needs bodies for the sex offender list and your courier can be in very long and expensive legal battle. Will you pay for that?

3. Anything encrypted in UK or Russia - in UK you are obliged to decrypt anything that the authorities think is encrypted information and in Russia it is just illegal.

4. Anything that could be considered blasphemous in the Arab world and the Muslim parts of Asia.

Should I go on?

We have experts in our team who know what's not allowed in certain countries. There's a Google Adwords like system in place where once you post a package it is reviewed to check whether it's legal to take that thing to the destination city. The traveler is also intimated about any suspicious activity. I understand that this is just a preliminary check an that it's impossible to make the system completely bulletproof considering people find crazy ways to ship cocaine and drugs. But this is a chance we are willing to take. We try to do everything to ensure transparency and will plug all holes one at a time.

"Has anyone given you anything to take on board with you?"

"Yeah, this guy I met on the internet gave me a box. Why?"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com