In terrorism fight, government finds a surprising ally: FedEx
eventually, all will be the state.
[...] By law, all express courier services are required to provide space for U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents at their facilities. Since 9/11, FedEx has gone further and has granted customs inspectors access to the company’s database of international shipments, which includes the name and address of a shipper, the package’s origin and its final destination.The databases also include credit-card information and other payment details that the government is not entitled to solicit outside of a criminal investigation. “Our guys just love it,” says one senior customs official overseeing inspections at international courier companies.
The agents cross-reference the information from FedEx’s systems with their own databases. That helps them flag suspicious packages for a manual inspection and also helps them determine whether credit cards have been used in other suspicious transactions. FedEx and customs officials say the close cooperation allows customs agents do their jobs faster and allows FedEx to avoid shipment delays.
Pat Jones, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection, says having access to FedEx’s database has resulted in the seizure of several packages, including forged Iowa drivers licenses sent from Argentina, although nothing related to terrorism.
Sitting in FedEx’s huge Washington office, which has a commanding view of the Capitol building, Mr. Smith, 61 years old, dismisses privacy concerns stemming from his company’s cooperation with federal agencies. He says people already hand over tremendous amounts of information to the government, including personal-income data and details contained on a driver’s license. [...]