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How the US Treasury imposes sanctions on me and every other "Stephen Law"

• ck2 13y ago
  Imagine the hell they are going to go through if they ever try to visit the US.
  • kirab 13y ago
    As if they were even allowed to.. :(
• DannyBee 13y ago
  "email letter to OFAC " I really hope he at least sent a real letter.
  • tedivm 13y ago
    A real letter probably wouldn't have made it through customs ;-)
    • DannyBee 13y ago
      ;) "We destroyed a letter from suspected terrorist Stephen Law before it reached its intended target"
• qbproger 13y ago
  It's so easy for this mistake to happen and inconvenience the wrong person. It seems all they check is your name. What happens if they change their name? Does the entire hassle go away?
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• codegeek 13y ago
  Stuff like this makes one wonder that even though unfortunate, it is time to consider naming your babies with names that are extremely unlikely to be common. heck, may be even add a salt to it while we are at it. Ok the salt part is a joke but seriously, one has to feel for those who share their names with people on these "special" lists by Governments. May be a start-up idea for prospective parents to run the names and ensure that before they name their babies, those are not on some list. But then what if someone gets on the list later on ? So it seems like a very unique name is really the option. Also, do these special lists really flag people just by their names ? really ? I mean how many John Smiths can there be in this world and god forbid if one of them decides to do something "special". What about other attributes ? Is it really hard to have the unique key as (first name,last name, gender, age, place of birth, citizenship, blah blah) instead of just (first name, last name) and boom, you are flagged. EDIT: Based on some comments, it might be a good idea to have a legal name that is very unique and a social name/nickname that is the usual John Smithy type. This way, when you deal with legal/customs whatever, use the crazily unique legal name while on the internet, use a nickname. Also, while we are discussing names, I seriously suggest you to register domain names (and gmail/fb whatever) for yourself and kids if not already. Again unfortunate, but reality of this era. I have already booked domains names for my 1 year old and another one who is coming soon.
  • iheartmemcache 13y ago
    There's an interesting downside to naming your child something very unique- you become significantly more Google-able than "Tom Jones". Potential employers, landlords, spouses, and other people will have a very easy time seeing all of your failures and folly.
    • alsocasey 13y ago
      Legal name and social media name don't necessarily have to match.
      • wlesieutre 13y ago
        Tell that to Google and Facebook
• DennisP 13y ago
  It keeps astonishing me that the U.S. government treats firstname/lastname as a unique key. I don't see a workaround for shipping, but for wire transfers there's bitcoin, if there's an exchange somewhere that won't have to deal with this when converting money back to your national currency. (Perhaps someday, bitcoins will be spendable enough so that step won't be necessary.)
  • rosser 13y ago
    BTC doesn't solve his problem. It just defers it.
  • loceng 13y ago
    And it's not like this person could have aliases or travel pretending to be someone else, etc.....
  • altero 13y ago
    Shipping has simple workaround. Just use different string ("stephan" versus "stefan"). Or in non-english country use local version of name.
    • bigiain 13y ago
      The article mentions that both Stephen and Steven variants of his name are effected…
    • DennisP 13y ago
      Come to think of it, if you pay with bitcoin, there's no name attached. So just ship to your address with whatever name you want.
  • henrikschroder 13y ago
    The saddest part of the obsession with names in the US is that the systems in place are woefully inadequate when it comes to handling names that fall outside the standard US pattern of Firstname Initial Lastname, all in ASCII. My name contains the character ö, so every time I'm asked to give out my true name here in the US, I have to remember to not do that, and instead state my name as it's transcribed to ASCII in my passport. One time I booked plane tickets and wrote my last name as SCHRODER on the ticket, instead of SCHROEDER as it says on the passport. This was a HUGE PROBLEM BECAUSE THE NAMES DON'T MATCH. Yes, but, look, they're both wrong, and they're close enough that surely you can see they're the same? My husband has three first names, the middle of which is his given name, and one last name. For some reason when he applied for his EAD, the last letter of his third first name fell off (I'm guessing character limit in some field in some system), so when we was getting his SSN, there was a huge problem, because again, THE NAMES DIDN'T MATCH!!! So it was just gonna take weeks longer to receive it, presumably because some other human has to look at it and ok it. There was also not enough space in the first name field, so he got some of his first names moved to the middle name field instead. I'm sure this will cause all sorts of fun and hijinks in the future if someone tries to match the name kind by kind, instead of just the full name.
• jey 13y ago
  This is unlikely to get resolved until one of these "terrorists" adopts the name of a Member of Congress as an alias. Until then, this ham-fisted policy is for your protection.
  • danielharan 13y ago
    Senator Kennedy's woes have not resulted in the no-fly list being thrashed. Not sure we'd get a better outcome for financial transaction if something similar were to occur.
  • e1ven 13y ago
    Unfortunately, even that is not sufficient to overcome institutional bureaucracy - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17073-2004Aug19.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17073-2004Aug...
    • dtf 13y ago
      Also Rep. John Lewis. http://edition.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/08/20/lewis.watchlist/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/08/20/lewis.watchlis...
• adambom 13y ago
  Am I the only one who thought, "Maybe he is the Burmese Stephen Law, and this is just a cover story?"
  • fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
    I know, right. Who names their kid Stephen?
  • rwmj 13y ago
    Yes. Even if he was, how is making bank payments less convenient helping? If he's the nefarious Stephen Law, discovered living in the UK, wouldn't it be better to go around to his address and arrest him?
  • tommorris 13y ago
    During my now aborted Ph.D, I had Dr. Law as one of my thesis advisers. I can confirm that to the best of my knowledge, he's not a Burmese drug trafficker but a mild-mannered philosophy professor in London. :)
• tdees40 13y ago
  We were flying with my son (then six months old) recently, and he has a reasonably uncommon name. He was flagged by the TSA as being on the no-fly list, which caused us to have to submit to onerous additional security procedures and miss our flight. So, ya know, way to go, TSA.
  • greglindahl 13y ago
    I have a friend with an extremely common Irish name. There's a suspected terrorist with the same name, and he's on the no-fly list. My friend has a redress number now, but at the time he had to check-in at the counter and show ID every time he flew. Fortunately, different birthday. Now imagine being the unlucky person with the same name and birthday as the suspected terrorist. The financial list discussed in this posting sounds much, much more onerous.
    • JshWright 13y ago
      Thank goodness evil terrorists wouldn't stoop so low as to change the date of birth on their ID...
    • Aloha 13y ago
      Had this exact experience for.. well, 2006-2010 or so, I too have a very common name. Couldnt check in online. Unable to use Kiosk to check in Had to show ID at counter. Had SSSS on every boarding pass - with random extra inspection for every tlight Then one day, it stopped, now knock on wood I can check in online or at kiosk.
  • frandroid 13y ago
    Security by stupidity.
  • mcv 13y ago
    Your 6 month old kid is already a terrorist? Way to go, parent.
    • tdees40 13y ago
• fredgrott 13y ago
  Now imagine the increases in difficulty when we deal with non-Latin names, which often have 2 to 3 ways of being translated to Latin name schemes. This is why any list does not work as its non-specific whereas if we get specific about metadata that is combined with the name than we have an effective block list instead of a government cluster fuck.
  • thebooktocome 13y ago
    Check out pages 304--308 in the list linked elsewhere. All devoted to one guy with about twelve romanizations.
• 300bps 13y ago
  I was thinking about this the other day. My last name is extremely rare; less than 20 people in the world have it. As such, I am completely unable to maintain any level of anonymity in the world today. It's trivial to find anything I've been up to by using Google or Bing. You can even see my entire family and what they've been up to and there's no doubt they're my family because my last name is so rare. I seriously considered changing my last name to Smith. I think it's better to have nefarious people drown in a sea of false positives than it is to give them pinpoint accuracy directly to me (as I have today) or few enough false positives (as Stephen Law has) that they catch a lot of innocent people in their wide net. I actually know some people with the Smith last name. Every time they buy a house, the title insurance company provides them a list of deadbeats with their exact same name and they simply sign a form saying, "Not me" and their transaction continues. Imagine if they wanted to put John Smith or Joseph Brown on the OFAC list. They'd never be able to.
  • greglindahl 13y ago
    I have a friend named John Edward Smith III. There were 2 other people with the exact same name in the employee+student database of our university (50,000 names.)
  • harshreality 13y ago
    If you or anyone else wants to change names, make sure your new one isn't on the OFAC SDN list, and don't pick a name from an ethnicity (non-oriental asian, and perhaps african) that's more likely to end up on the list in the future. That's one list you can check. http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/SDN-List/Pages/default.aspx http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/SDN-List/P...
• timrogers 13y ago
  The full list is pretty incredible. http://www.treasury.gov/ofac/downloads/t11sdn.pdf http://www.treasury.gov/ofac/downloads/t11sdn.pdf
  • unabridged 13y ago
    Just with a brief scan it looks like over 90% of the names are arab, and it seems to cover all of the common names. Does this mean a large percentage of arab people cannot send money/packages involving the US?
  • mnw21cam 13y ago
    There's a lot of As in that list!
  • nightcracker 13y ago
    Peter Griffin is on that list.
• mcv 13y ago
  The workaround for shipping goods seems easy: put a different name on the shipment. As long as the address is correct, it should be fine. Will US customs check the names of everybody who is officially registered at that address in the UK? I suspect not. And if it has to be a real name, just put the name of your spouse, friend or family member on it. Of course all of that just illustrates how utterly ineffective such an OFAC blockade is.
  • vacri 13y ago
    If the postal carrier holds the parcel for any reason, that can backfire, as they usually need ID for a pickup. A not insurmountable problem, but annoying. I once shipped a parcel to a forum acquiantaince under his handle, and he had a mild problem proving to the post office that he was the guy at that address.
• kiba 13y ago
  It seems that the governments try to keep coming up with new ways to punish lawbreakers like drug traffickers without regard to the effect it has on the larger society and the economy. If you're a criminal or marked as such, you couldn't 1) keep your ill gotten money, 2) make money from selling your stories about your criminal exploit, 3) can't make legit money once you get out of jail since nobody hire felons, 4) branded even more if you're a sex offender, 5) can't get on planes due to no-fly list, 6) can't get sent money if you're on the treasury list. All of these are of course, "well intentioned", but it does collateral damages. If your name is even "Stephen Law", you can't get wired money. AML laws forced banks to spend a shitload of money spying on people's finance that would otherwise be spent on more productive activities. Oh, it disallow banks and other money related services from forming, creating olipologies and monopolies. People who aren't terrorists are now on the no-fly list for no reason or because of procedural mistakes. Now they drive and die in motor vechicle accidents. Felons cannot contribute to society or get because nobody wants to hire them, so they became the underclass in societies and some of them will turn back to criminal behaviors. Obviously, there are measure worth implementing, but they must be judged not on just preventing crimes, but also the cost to societies. Heck, some of these measure aren't even effective, and wastes policing resource.
  • notahacker 13y ago
    It's worth pointing out the flip side of that cost-benefit equation, which is that the constant irritation of Western restrictions on their freedom to spend their ill-gotten gains is believed to be one of the main factors behind the Burmese military junta's relatively recent acceptance of reform. Arguably Myanmar's 60 million mostly impoverished people deserve as much consideration as a pretty large number of innocent people with the name Stephen/Steven Law.
    • CamperBob2 13y ago
      Sorry, but punishing me to get at the Myanmar junta isn't OK.
      • cmsmith 13y ago
• tnuc 13y ago
  Why doesn't he just get stuff sent to Steve Law. Problem solved.
  • lstamour 13y ago
    For the same reason presumably that the current law is successful: Certain uses require legal names. Otherwise, why have the check at all?
    • anigbrowl 13y ago
      Stephen M. Law (or whatever his middle initial is). It's cack-handed bureaucracy of course but this is like saying that companies occasionally sending bills to dead people means that computers are a bad idea. This is the price you pay for automation.
• uiri 13y ago
  Anyone else notice that "Peter Griffin" is on this list? https://ofac.data-list-search.com/Entities/ByName/peter-griffin https://ofac.data-list-search.com/Entities/ByName/peter-grif...
• coldcode 13y ago
  Having had to learn this in our "ethics training" requirements at work (what a joke), I was astonished that they actually intend it to be illegal to have any commerce whatsoever with anyone on with a name on this list. I also realized that no US company actually filters their sales and order forms against this data (to my knowledge) and thus everyone is essentially guilt of trafficking illegally with anyone who has a name on this list. Order a trinket from Amazon and use a name on the list? Amazon is breaking Federal law. Rent a hotel room to a name matching one of this list, your OTA is violating a Federal Law. Other than customs and maybe banking I doubt anyone is even aware of this much less actually spends any time filtering their customers this way. Despite the addresses being on the list, like the no-fly lists, the name is the only requirement to match. I've always wondered if the President matched a name on the list, would they hassle him/her as well?
  • wolf550e 13y ago
    Possibly yes: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/20/national/20flight.html http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/20/national/20flight.html
  • cookiecaper 13y ago
    The President doesn't have to use normal airplanes, and almost undoubtedly does not get his goods from Amazon mailed to "Barack Obama, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue".
• omarali 13y ago
  I've had rebate cards blocked because my name "Omar Ali" matched the alias "Ali Omar" of someone who is in detention in the Philippines but still on this list http://www.un.org/sc/committees/1267/AQList.htm http://www.un.org/sc/committees/1267/AQList.htm Adding a letter to my last name was enough to not match anymore.
• ChuckMcM 13y ago
  The silly part here is that while it is a pain, it is certainly possible to change your name legally. And in so doing "vanish" from the list. Of course regular folks won't go through the trouble but terrorists will ...
  • scotty79 13y ago
    The silly part is the whole thing. You may give your friends name when ordering a package.
    • ChuckMcM 13y ago
      I've not had good success with this. Too often the delivery service really really wants to use the name for actual delivery. However it would be entirely possible to start receiving mail for your fictional and non-blacklisted friend to train up the various delivery people. In the article there was also an issue with bank transactions and using an arbitrary name for those is generally frowned upon.
      • scotty79 13y ago
        I think that when you are a terrorist you also can have actual friends that can receive a package for you. Blacklisting name and surname gives no security apart from places where you personally must produce your own ID. It has merit when checking passport on the border but none when you decide whether to ship a package to another country or even to receive money.
  • PeterisP 13y ago
    Well, you can't legally change your name without that change being recorded and published to every govt institution that wants it, and having non-expired criminal convictions generally makes people illegible from name changes as well.
• fosap 13y ago
  I think the word for this is "Kafkaesque".
• kevinalexbrown 13y ago
  I don't think this represents a change in government mentality. Probably more a shift in technical capability. Before, requiring every bank and merchant to check every order against a list would have been onerous. Now, it's fairly easy. I find it curious how so many specific powers that have been granted to government were allowed not because they were universally acceptable, but because they were impossible to enforce widely. As automatic monitoring and enforcement get easier, I suspect we'll have a more robust debate on what types of laws are acceptable, because there will be so little room for leeway.
  • stefantalpalaru 13y ago
    > more a shift in technical capability This is not a recent development. We've had name based no-fly lists[1] since at least 2001. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List
    • cookiecaper 13y ago
      I think his definition of recent is inclusive of 2001. He seems to be referring to the time period before powerful commodity computer systems were easily available and deeply integrated into every aspect of life, probably like '85 on back. For some edgy cases this could protrude into the mid-90s, but I don't see it going any later.
• NAFV_P 13y ago
  In double entry this could be termed an error of commission, four entries are required for correction.
• zacinbusiness 13y ago
  People basically can't just "Google" me. Why? My name is Zac Brown. That's already a pretty common name. But the musician pretty much shields me from everyone. Interesting side note: I occasionally get email that is directed at that Zac Brown. Including a guy asking if I would play a gig at their company retreat (I agreed to), a guy asking about boat decals (I didn't like them), and a guy just looking to catch up for old times sake (I informed him that I was the wrong guy but wished him the best). Somebody who works for the guy even added me on LinkedIn (I accepted because why not).
  • jrockway 13y ago
    People occasionally mail me asking what sort of Japanese rock music they should buy, because my domain is jrock.us. I just search on Amazon and recommend whatever seems popular. (Does Houkago Tea Time count as J-Rock? Probably not. I guess I should change my name to animesong.)
  • billforsternz 13y ago
    Nice. I hope your gig at the company retreat was appropriately awesome. :- )
• jrockway 13y ago
  What a stupid system. If customs is blocking packages, can't the real Stephen Law just have it mailed to Steven Law or Foo Bar or anything?
• juliendorra 13y ago
  It can go very far, sadly: I found the story of a guy killed because he was homonymous when I wrote http://ils.sont.la/post/is-your-name-web-ready http://ils.sont.la/post/is-your-name-web-ready some time ago. Homonymity is never really an asset: you don't control it as you can control anonymity and pseudonymity.
• joshfraser 13y ago
  Names should never be used as primary keys. I am amazed that our government does not understand this or simply doesn't care. I would even question whether we should be imposing these types of sanctions in the first place -- feels like punishment without trial.
  • dinkumthinkum 13y ago
    I'm not defending it but I don't think they are using then as primary keys. Imagine if they did not look at the names or have lists at all, and something happens involving someone with a name of a known terrorist. People would cry "why doesn't the government have a list, are they too stupid to know how to search databases?"
• joesmo 13y ago
  It's amazing with all the spying that the US Government can be so incredibly stupid.
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• vonskippy 13y ago
  Easy solution, setup company name, use company name for all package shipments, wire transfers, checks, etc. Should solve everything but the travel.
• opensandwich 13y ago
  Previous sanctions data analyst here. At my previous bank I worked for they follow a process like this: 1. Screen by name and date of birth (sometimes only year of birth only) for all lists (EU, US, Australia, etc); with some tolerance 2. Manually match against address, sex, etc Now for some of these lists, depending on the vendor which is used, they may also have information on where the person(s) were last seen (perhaps they're from China and recently visited UK based on public information); not only their country of residence. So this means, if you happen to have a birthday sufficiently close to someone on the list (+-2 yrs) and they happen to be last seen in the country you reside in, then they would have to do the whole manual checking. Now this seems like a lot of work, but when you consider things like reputation risk of getting caught and the possible fines, banks would rather screw over their own customer (or outright refuse to do certain transactions to certain countries) than doing what is best for their customers. For the other attributes which are available like sex, it is sometimes used, but often for manual checking. Data is often too messy to have a viable real-time solution for screening. It is often cheaper to get someone from India to do it for you, rather than re-haul a whole database to have it done "properly". This is the unfortunate reality.
  • daemin 13y ago
    And yet there have been many banks willing to money launder and deal in illegal activities if the price (profit) is high enough. I guess ordinary customers just aren't rich enough.
• nctalaviya 13y ago
  Thanks for the update
• linuxhansl 13y ago
  The NoFly list for banks.
• wobbleblob 13y ago
  My dad, who travelled the world for his work, was denied entry to the USA in the 60's because he had the same surname, initials and DOB as a local member of the communist party.
• johnchristopher 13y ago
  Couln't he set up an alias of some kind to manage his earnings and international money related stuff ? It seems common for criminals to get fake ID and associate it with their bank accounts, etc. So it might be an (illegal?) solution.
• judk 13y ago
  Treasury is Breaking the Law
• lilsunnybee 13y ago
  This scattershot approach to inconveniencing suspected criminals seems similar to how the US conducts drone strikes: it doesn't matter how much collateral damage you cause, as long as you're targeting the right guy.