Correspondence with ecommerce companies regarding mystery seeds (U.S. Postal Inspection Service)

To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, I hereby request the following records:

Copies of emails sent to, received from, or copied (cc and bcc) to employees and representatives of Amazon, Alibaba, and eBay regarding the issue of "mystery seeds," a.k.a. unsolicited seed shipments from China, Malaysia, and other countries, being shipped into the U.S. between 6/1/2020 and present.

This phenomenon was covered widely in the media, ex: https://www.vice.com/en/article/akz9qk/hundreds-of-americans-planted-chinese-mystery-seeds

The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.

In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 20 business days, as the statute requires.

Sincerely,

Adrianne Jeffries

Hello,

Thank you for the response.

I'd like to resubmit the request with a clarification, below:

To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, I hereby request the following records:

Copies of emails sent to, received from, or copied (cc and bcc) to employees and representatives of Amazon, Alibaba, and eBay that contain the words and phrases "seeds," "seed packets," "unsolicited packages," "unsolicited seeds," "unsolicited shipments," "or "brushing" between 6/1/2020 and present. Please include the full thread of the emails with responses, going back to the originating email — in other words, if an email in the middle of a thread contains the keyword, please include all emails in that thread from the earliest to the most recent.

This phenomenon was covered widely in the media, ex: https://www.vice.com/en/article/akz9qk/hundreds-of-americans-planted-chinese-mystery-seeds

The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.

In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 20 business days, as the statute requires.

Sincerely,

Adrianne Jeffries