By Amy Alkon
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Fed Ex Is A Delivery Service, Not A Package Contents Assessment Service
Fed Ex — admirably and correctly — refused to pay the government off like UPS did (to the tune of $40 million) for delivering packages of drugs from Internet pharmacies. The government has now indicted Fed Ex for refusing to capitulate.
Per Mike Masnick at Techdirt, the government is trying to spin stories into evidence that Fed Ex “knew” what was in those packages.
Scott Greenfield writes at SimpleJustice:
Maybe it did. Maybe it didn’t. So what? FedEx is in the business of delivering packages. There is no crime in that. It is not in the business of accessing the lawfulness of the contents of the packages it delivers. And this is what pissed the government off.
FedEx is fighting these claims pretty aggressively, insisting that it’s crazy to make it responsible for what’s in the packages:
“We are a transportation company — we are not law enforcement.”
An additional note from Masnick:
The company notes that it has long asked the DOJ to provide it with a list of online pharmacies that it shouldn’t do business with, so that it didn’t have to just guess. The government did not provide the list, and seems to think that FedEx must be psychic (and should know what’s in all packages and whether or not they’re illegal.
This is so important that Fed Ex is standing up to the government on this. As I’ve said about people who stand up for their own civil liberties, they end up standing up for the civil liberties of all of us. And this also goes — and especially goes — for lawyers like Marc Randazza and Ken White (@Popehat), who take cases of those of us who stand up against the near-constant erosion of our civil liberties these days.
More from Scott’s post:
The secondary market offers a terrible way to fight crime, where government pressure forces companies engaged in lawful commerce to risk their fortunes on the legality of their customers, and become liable for not investigating and condemning anything with a whiff of impropriety at their own criminal risk.
There are a list of businesses the government squeezes to shut down those it can’t get legitimately. Credit card companies are pressured to refuse payments to companies the government hates. Banks are pressured to refuse their deposits. Now delivery companies are pressured to …read more
Source: Donkeyrock_BlurBlog