Treasury Dep't. sued over watchlist

Thomas Burke, a lawyer who worked on our lawsuit about the no-fly list, wrote today to let me know that he is now trying to find out what the U.S. government is doing with yet another huge list of "suspected terrorist" names. Assisting the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights (LCCR), he has sued the Treasury Department for denying access to public records about the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) watchlist of some 6,000 people and entities, mostly overseas, all labelled dangerous suspected terrorists, drug traffickers, and other "specially designated nationals."

This is not harmless bureaucratese...

LCCR explains what is wrong with the way this list is being used:

An increasing number of private companies, including banks, mortgage companies, car dealerships, health insurers, landlords and employers, screen consumers' names against the OFAC list. Few people in the United States are actually on the list, but sharing a first, last or even middle name with someone on the list can trigger a "false positive" match. Consumers discover the OFAC alert when they are told that they cannot make a purchase, open an account, or do business because their name appears on a terror list.

The OFAC list includes many extremely common Muslim or Latino names.

An LCCR report available for download here [pdf], describes numerous instances of law abiding people in the U.S with names similar to ones on the OFAC list having trouble with the most ordinary financial transactions: being turned down for a mortgage, refused credit to buy from a used car dealer, kicked out of PayPal, and denied store credit to purchase a treadmill. Some of these people were able to argue their right to purchase eventually, but all were put through the inconvenience and stigma of being falsely labeled "terrorists."

Businesses screen using the OFAC list for two reasons. First, the Treasury threatens stiff fines if they engage in commerce with someone on the list. (But do they really think a foreign terrorist wants to buy a treadmill?) But additionally, the OFAC list, with its thousands of names that partially match innocent people, provides an easy cover for any company or employee wishing to discriminate against people with Muslim or Latino names.

How easy is it to find yourself on the list? Since businesses checking names often accept partial matches, these people could find themselves turned down for purchases (the matching portion of their names is in boldface):

• Barack Hussein Obama

• Nancy Patricia D’Alesandro Pelosi

• Alberto Gonzales

• George Lucas

You can check out this government list yourself here. Click on Specially Designated Nationals List (SDN List), select the text version, and use your find function to check your own name.

I did. I could get in trouble (again) for my middle name.

I figured I should also check up on the name of a prominent convicted terrorist we've recently welcomed to this country. I learned that Luis Posada Carriles (an anti-Castro Cuban bomber) did not make the OFAC list. How's that for vigilance at Treasury?

With the spreading use of this list, as with the no fly list, airport "security" theater, and repeated "terror alerts," we are all being conditioned to think of ourselves as endangered mice, not free citizens of a powerful country. This artificially heightened fearfulness is both objectively crazy and awfully convenient for rulers who want us cowed.

Cross posted at Happening-Here.

•  We have to watch the watchers!

  Tip jar.

  by janinsanfran on Wed May 16, 2007 at 08:55:52 PM PDT

  •  Lazy Financial Institutions

    OFAC lists are used worldwide by financial institutions in the fight against Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing.

    Matches on names that are alike are common, yes, it's virtually impossible not to have those - which is why financial instituions must conduct due diligence. Just because a last name matches, doesn't mean it's the same person and service must be denied. Financial institutions are required to check for completeness of the match, including birth date - which is available in most cases, if not all.  

    So, if you are EVER denied service because your middle name matches a name on a OFAC list, please tell your bank (or other provider of service) they are under obligation to do the appropriate due diligence.

    Denial of service on a partial match is 100% at the discretion of the bank and to put the blame on Treasury or the list is shameful!

    Treasury is very careful about fines for the very same reasons you estate above. They will not levy a fine for doing business with partial matches to the OFAC list but they will hand out fines for not doing due diligence - and have done so repeatedly.

    BTW, The "terrorist" in your (somewhat bogus) example was not denied service for buying a treadmill, he/she was denied the opening of a financial account which could very well later be used to launder money.

    Should we have better lists? Should Posada Carriles be on the list? No doubt!  My point is, let's concetrate on what's important here which is to ensure that the list is complete - not that there is a violation of civil rights.

    The OFAC list is a valuable tool in the fight against money laudnering - let's not make the job much more difficult than it already is.

    For full disclosure: I am a Certified Anti Money Laundering Specialist (ACAMS) and make most of my living consulting and teaching on the subject in the international field. In my years of training both in Latin America and the Middle East, NOT ONCE have a heard a complaint that the names on the list are racially biased because they contain mostly Muslim and Latino sounding names.

    by Truza on Thu May 17, 2007 at 12:53:02 AM PDT

    •  Sorry

      All I can say is that you are expressing extreme confidence here that benevolent authorities can be trusted to categorize and sort us without due process, error or discrimination. Human history says that that this kind of power without meaningful recourse is often abused. Nothing in the current behavior of our rulers gives me confidence.

      by janinsanfran on Thu May 17, 2007 at 06:35:42 AM PDT

      •  Fine, miss my point...

        nothing in my post remotely implies what you're aluding to

        by Truza on Thu May 17, 2007 at 07:56:47 AM PDT

•  My stepson's name, not his middle name ..

  ...his whole name, is on the list. Well, not really his name. Somebody else's name. Somebody with the same name.

  But, hey, thank god Posada's name isn't on the list. That poor man has had so much trouble recently.

  by Meteor Blades on Wed May 16, 2007 at 09:06:49 PM PDT

•  Voter roll purges

  If you have the same name as a felon, you can't vote.  Tough noogies.

  by willb48 on Wed May 16, 2007 at 09:09:29 PM PDT

•  News on No-fly and TSA watchlist

  Speaking on a panel at the Computers, Freedom, and privacy conference in Montral May 3, Lyn Rahilly, Privacy Officer for the Terrorist Screenng center at HSA claimed that the No-fly and related TSA watchlist had been scrubbed to remove those with no nexus to a threat to aviation security. Further, that birthdates of known same-name individuals has been appended so these folks would no longer face hassles when flying.

  Not sure how much salt to take with this assertion, tho I'd note my flights to Montreal were the first since '01 when I'd not been singled for obvious special attention.

  by ben masel on Wed May 16, 2007 at 09:17:07 PM PDT

  •  Interesting

    The Canadians will be beginning their own no fly list on June 18. They claim to have avoided the stupidities of ours, but we'll see.

    by janinsanfran on Wed May 16, 2007 at 09:48:39 PM PDT

    •  link

      Declan McCullagh's writeup of the NoFly panel at CFP, covers both the Canadian list and Rahilly's presentation.

      http://news.com.com/...

      by ben masel on Wed May 16, 2007 at 10:00:25 PM PDT

      •  Only other writeups on the panel I can find

        In Finnish http://blog.tapanitarvainen.fi/

        and German http://www.heise.de/...

        by ben masel on Wed May 16, 2007 at 10:08:21 PM PDT

  •  i keep it simple. i don't believe anything

    anyone connected with the bushies say now.

    by stodghie on Wed May 16, 2007 at 11:43:11 PM PDT