How A Treasury Terror List Is Preventing Americans With 'Scary' Names From Using Online Services
from the scary-names dept
We've talked a few times before about the US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, a government office theoretically designed to keep money from flowing to and from scary people in scary countries or whatever. Its work typically amounts to keeping businesses from doing business-y things with people in places like North Korea and such. On the other hand, sometimes the folks at the OFAC get their knickers in a twist over a graphic novel about some of these scary people, so it's not like these folks have a spotless record when it comes to keeping the proper targets in its collective sights.
But a couple of stories have been trickling in having to do with non-scary people who share names too-closely associated with actual scary people suddenly being denied online services due to the OFAC scare-list. The first of these concerned a man named Muhammad Zakir Khan being refused a registration for a multiplayer video game.
Gamasutra, which broke the story, reports that when Khan submitted his request, he received an unusual denial, one explaining that his name had come up as “a match against the Specially Designated Nationals list maintained by the United States of America's Office of Foreign Assets Control.” Epic was, in other words, refusing Khan the opportunity to try out its new game simply because his name resembles that of someone who might be financially involved with terrorism.Which, you know, good for Epic Games. And I wouldn't really refer to this as "islamophobia" so much as I'd refer to it as broad laziness by both a government agency and a corporation. Let's think this through for one moment. If our Treasury Department is going to cast a worried eye towards Islamic terrorism such that it compiles a list of names that businesses are refused from interacting with, and if those names come from a region of the world where there is a certain repetition of these sorts of names (Muhammad Khan sounds like it could be akin to John Smith), then how useful is this directory of scary people to begin with? The point of the list is to identify bad actors, but if innocent folks are getting caught up in it, then it isn't serving its chief function particularly well, now is it? But no matter, says the government agency. Just add the name to the list and damn the fallout to hell.
Khan tweeted a a screengrab of the rejection form and hashtaged it “#Islamophobia.” Surprisingly, Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney replied to another tweet about the issue, claiming that it had been caused by an “[o]verly broad filter related to US trade restrictions.”
The broader question, of course, is why an online game should be checking registrations against the CFAC list to begin with. In this particular case, it appears the check was ported over from the game engine itself.
Unreal Engine 4 has a wide range of uses, both domestic and foreign, that apparently bring it under the umbrella of trade guidelines. Under ordinary circumstances, those restrictions should only apply to people who are using the engine to create new games. (For instance, the U.S. government presumably doesn't want ISIS to use the engine to create a recruiting game.) But when Epic used the engine to make Paragon, it accidentally left those restrictions in place. Thus, the filter shouldn't have been there in the first place, and no one should have been banned from Paragon, regardless of whether they show up on a watch list.As I said: government laziness and corporate laziness combine to keep an innocent person from playing a video game. Success!
Such innocent circumstances don't appear to be replicated in the story of Noor Ahmed's attempt to sign up for a payment app called Venmo, which is normally a cinch to register for, but for which Ahmed still isn't able to use.
When she tried to sign up last year, Venmo refused to add her. The company sent her an email instead, asking Ahmed to provide a stack of additional information to verify her identity. What followed was the opposite of simplicity: Ahmed had to obtain paper copies of her utility bills as well bank statements, and then find a fax machine (a practically unheard of technology for many younger people) to send them to Venmo. After complying with this rigamarole, Ahmed still was unable to sign on to Venmo.Whatever your thoughts on terrorism and international politics, it's quite clear that this isn't helpful. It isn't stopping a terrorist from using the app; it's stopping a US citizen from using it. It isn't helpfully identifying a person for a US business to steer clear of; it's mis-identifying a US citizen. Hell, the list can't even keep men and women straight. For the CFAC list to useful, never mind non-discriminatory, it should at least be able to keep a valid US citizen from being caught up in the web.
It turns out that she, like thousands of other Americans, shares a name with someone on a list created by a Treasury group called the Office of Foreign Assets Control. This list is called “Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons,” and includes (on page 33) a 41-year-old Afghan man also named Noor Ahmed. The New York-based Ahmed, said she is familiar with such mix-ups.
“I was born and raised in California, but I’m taken into secondary customs at the airport no matter what because of my name,” said Ahmed. “I think it’s now extending to other parts of my life.”
If it can't manage that simple task, it's probably worth revisiting whether this list should be employed at all.
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Filed Under: ofac, office of foreign asset control, terrorists, treasury department, watch list
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Gamasutra is poison
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@AC: you know, if you tried typing what the hell you're on about here, you'd not only have a chance of getting people to join your boycott, but you'd be typing less words while doing it. Just a thought.
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2. That would not result in other people typing bizarrely hilarious sentences like, 'Why am I getting the feeling that this all amounts to how terrifying women are?'
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Gamasutra is poison
Not for those of us reading an article about a Treasury Dept list and wishing to discuss the actual subject of the article. If you find that subject tedious, might I suggest an actual gamer blog to post on, rather than one that happened to state the name of your nemesis in passing?
"2. That would not result in other people typing bizarrely hilarious sentences like, 'Why am I getting the feeling that this all amounts to how terrifying women are?'"
Hilarious as he's got a point? Or hilarious because you're congratulating yourself over how much your non-statements have made people think you're referring to something else?
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There really are such groups, since gaming is now a mainstream activity and the kinds of misogynist people who fear women (especially powerful ones) are undoubtedly within that group. As are people who don't fear women and, of course, women themselves. Similarly, there are people who hate women who never play games. That's what happens when an activity becomes mainstream, you get a lot of people, good and bad, in the group who perform the activity. Not a problem unless you have a need to define yourself solely by that activity.
But, this is what happens when you utterly refuse to state what the hell you're blathering on about. People have to make guesses, and since you refused to clarify any actual facts, you can't really be annoyed that people came to the wrong conclusion.
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I'm suspecting marketroid at work. Troll creates buzz. The more controversial and obfuscated (suspense!), the better.
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While I once was a gamer, I've long outgrown that label. However, I suspect that this all revolves around that crapfest that is known as Gamergate.
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If people truly aren't a threat, they won't be on the list of specially-designated nationals, amirite? So clearly if you don't understand why gamasutra is poison and the enemy of free speech you can't be in our club and we'll add you to the list of non-gamers.
Alternatively we can reject his no true Scotsman argument and leave him to his conspiracy theories. I play games; I'm pretty sure that qualifies me as a gamer. I don't pay much attention to games journalism so I have no idea what he's talking about since I have other interests besides gaming and don't feel the need to spend my non-gaming time reading hype-generating PR generated by publishers.
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The no true Scotsman schtick WAS just a pose. If you want to act like the fact that I said 'real gamers' is an important detail, have at it.
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Cool. There's a lot of people who really don't like hardcore gamers. There's a lot of people who really don't like a lot of things that I and many other people are into.
But, I'm sure they'd at least have the courtesy to state why it should matter to the rest of us, even if the reasons they gave were easy to dismiss. I can't speak for everyone here, but I'm curious as to why you've wasted all that time typing, while refusing to say anything.
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No, I knew that (the snowflake icons show you're on the same IP between those 2 comments), I just wasn't sure if you were trying to play games by referring in the 3rd person like that.
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I see what you did there.
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I'm guessing hardcore gamers* are a pretty small part of Techdirt's audience, so I doubt they're worried about that.
* yes lots of us play video games often, but I think we're talking about the people who follow video game journalism, watch twitch videos, know the names of professional gamers, etc.
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I'm not saying anyone should die for not believing as I do that Gamasutra is poison. I'm not even trying to convince anyone. This is why I have made no case for it. In fact, I specifically said multiple times that if you don't know why it's poison then you don't need to know and should just enjoy the site.
It's just that at this point, either you know the ways in which Gamasutra have proven themselves to be trashmongers, or you are blissfully unaware and will likely stay that way regardless of what any gamer says about it. The shit they did wrong was very big news. If you don't know already it's because you didn't want to know.
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Then, what are you trying to do?
"In fact, I specifically said multiple times that if you don't know why it's poison then you don't need to know and should just enjoy the site."
Cool. You know what makes most peoples' time here more enjoyable? Not scrolling through a bunch of comments that not only refuse to explain what they're talking about, but are only tangentially related to the subject in the article.
"The shit they did wrong was very big news"
In your community perhaps. There's a lot of people here not in that community, be that because they're not gamers or just because they're not as "hardcore" as you seem to be. Why do you refuse to explain what the problem is?
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I don't normally go to that site, but if this is the maturity level of the people they're pissing off they must be doing something right. Thanks for handing them free clicks!
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Are they in need of saving? I'm going to guess you'll give the same refusal to answer that question as you have to the one about why any normal person needs to dislike them.
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You do realize you're starting to sound like religious fundamentalists, right? "Don't eat the pork. It's the devil!"
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The problem is that YOU won't tell us why you're disagreeing with us....
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Much like the way you and others are pretending as if I'm trying to convince everyone here of my opinion, so you can crow about the fact that you are not persuaded.
As for the most logical question, it has yet to be asked.
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You said absolutely nothing in this thread, from the first comment. People were asking you what you were blathering on about, that's not a "talking point", that's an honest question.
"As for the most logical question, it has yet to be asked"
Is it "What time did you remember to take your meds?"
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That said, what I am asking you and you are failing to provide is reasons why is it poison. You know, you got me curious to the point I'm considering checking the site. From your tonne I'm inclined to believe other comenters here may be right.
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To be fair, he did mention in his second comment that he has no intention of explaining himself.
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You have described the internet bubble that defines the group of whackjobs who are apparently so afraid of censorship that members now won't even make their arguments outside of their bubble. It is all about ethics in bubbles!
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Someone makes a humorous characterization of your point of view and you retreat to literalism. The funniest thing here is how guys like you are always arguing that the people you don't like are thin-skinned and yet you guys are by far the most thin-skinned of any one.
Its like how the most virulent homophobes always turn out to be closeted gays trying to convince themselves they are straight by attacking anyone who is publicly gay.
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What I do find humorous is the way you are accusing of me of being 'thin-skinned' in the course of labelling me as the sort of person who calls people 'thin-skinned' even though I did nothing of the kind. It's amazingly easy to call out hypocrisy when you give yourself licence to just invent what a person believes, and then invent something contradictory for them to believe, and then point out how they're contradictory. Right?
Keep on keeping on...
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The guy is obviously trolling. Everybody please stop feeding his ego.
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But apparently I'm not a "real gamer" because I don't know what one specific example that you're talking about. I'm curious what your definition of "real gamer" is.
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But my qualifications as a "real gamer" shouldn't be in questions because of on specific instance in which I don't tic your checkbox.
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Probably not the same people saying those two things.
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*Waves at Bartender* I'll take two of what ever the fuck HE'S drinkin!!!!!
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Hitpiece they had, written by David gallant.
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The fatal flaw...
Bad guys can't change their names or use different ones.
If a given person's name is on the list, and they really do have nefarious intent, it's not difficult at all for them to simply use a forged ID and completely bypass the checks, leaving yet another system that impacts primarily the innocent, while not even terribly inconveniencing the ones it's meant to catch.
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Re: The fatal flaw...
These lists are inherently racist and xenophobic: there is no way, for example, that "John Smith" will ever, EVER end up the list even if a John Smith blows up the White House. They're reserved for scary brown people with scary names from scary countries, and their purpose isn't to stop terrorism: it's to provide the comfortable illusion that something is being done.
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Actually it isn't - for two reasons
1) Islamaphobia isn't actually a thing. ( A phobia is an irrational fear - Islamaphobia is not necessarily a fear and it is definitely not irrational.)
2) Just because you have a name with historical Islamic associations doen't mean that you are a Muslim. Christian Bale isn't necessarily a Christian. Sam Harris has a name with Judeo Christian associations - he is an atheist.
Thise who label something like this as Islamaphobia are themselves trying to hijack the situation to advance a political cause. - You know what Christopher Hitchens (Not a Christian - despite his name) said about it.
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I'd say it's an irrational fear considering how it's used as a pretext to abridge our rights...
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Let me clue you into something that you should have learned in high-school. Words often have more than the literal meaning of their components. When you try to dictionary-pedant away the entire concept that word represents to the people using the word you are just admitting you are wrong.
> Just because you have a name with historical Islamic associations doen't mean that you are a Muslim.
Lol, more pedantry for the fail. Just because there are corner cases don't change the common case.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The fatal flaw...
The corner cases cause the common solution to fail. Just because something looks like a duck doesn't mean it's a duck. It could even be a decoy; not even remotely comparable to a duck.
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This is true with "natural" words - however when you are dealing with words that have been devised to serve a political purpose then it makes sense to deconstruct them in order counter the purposes of their inventors.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: The fatal flaw...
This lack of awareness, of ethnic and religious and national distinctions, serves the actual cause of fighting terrorism poorly: how can you possibly claim to have definitive information on anyone if you can't get a few basic facts right? And it also abuses, insults, and discriminates against many people who are completely innocent and just trying to get through their day.
This is not how competent agencies work. This is not how the United States is supposed to work. They and we should be better than this.
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Re: Re: The fatal flaw...
Insane policies by insane people.
Meanwhile.
Here in Salt Lake City, meter maids (mostly beefy males with pony tails, loud mouths to yell at people walking outside the lines, ride around in gangs on bikes ( it takes three of them to photograph and ticket a car) - all wearing jackets emblazoned with the words, "Compliance Enforcement."
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Re: The fatal flaw...
The fatal flaw is, the list is unconstitutional.
For explanation, I invite your attention to the 'no-fly list'.
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Re: The fatal flaw...
Bad guys can't change their names or use different ones.
IMO that isn't the fundamental weakness, but it points to it: it's not a list of people, it's a list of names. That means that even if the dangerous people are correctly identified, false positives are guaranteed, in addition to the problem of changing names or aliases leading to false negatives.
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Re: The fatal flaw...
When something, somewhere, blows up and some foreign-name is attached, and the next Woodward and Bernstein wannabe digs up that name in one obscure email: heads roll as Congress tut-tuts about 'Intelligence Failures.'
Solution: Put every name that may conceivably show up in anything that begins with "T" on a watch list. Exclude names of celebrities, elected and appointed officials, and anyone else that actually matters so they don't run to the press and embarrass you.
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Terrorist manual in the making
However, even if you believe that, it should be easy to solve. A little additional info like a copy of an ID or an SSN should be sufficient to confirm your non-terrorist status. Of course an e-mailed scan would be much better than a fax.
The whole process is obviously stupid though. It's now clear what terrorists need to do: They should all use common American names, like the aforementioned John Smith. If they play their (credit)cards right they can block the funds of a large chunk of US citizens.
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i thought all this complete scare-mongering went out with the 'reds under the bed' at the end of the 50s-60s. seems i was wrong!
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So... anyone going to trot out the Eric Schmidt approach and...
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Re: So... anyone going to trot out the Eric Schmidt approach and...
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Is that what we're calling him now?
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I have put your name on the list. You are now branded a _____. Though you have done nothing wrong other than having this name, we will now use the full power of the government to harass you every chance we get. We will continue to harass you until you break down and lash out in a ______-ic fashion. Then we will have been correct all along that you were a _______.
Fill in the blanks.
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This goes double for "undifferentiated routine stuff" type things like account management. Very few applications do anything really unusual for account management (which is why things like facebook login are practical), so why spend time looking at it closely?
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Evidence that (a) following this list is a new and burdensome procedure for Venmo, and (b) that Venmo has not got identification procedures working yet.
If their identification procedures were working, she'd have been able to sign on. Perhaps they were unable to correctly use what she sent them. Perhaps they asked for the wrong things. I can't guess usefully.
But since Venmo did not correct their procedure - and work with Ms Ahmed - bringing the incident into the news spotlight is the correct answer.
Positive reinforcement, in Epic's case. Negative in Venmo's.
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Censorship
This occurred because the issue contained research on a particular use of a pharmaceutical that had not been approved by the FDA.
Yes, Sandoz is big pharma. But how can the US justify censoring apolitical data? Yet it has been going on for decades and centuries. Keep 'em ignorant and happy.
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re: Gamasutra is poison
Meanwhile, hundreds (thousands?) of innocent Americans _still_ can't access financial services and _still_ get extra attention at the airport. But oh no let's not talk about that.
Anonymous Gamasutra-hater, if this is your ethics then I'm glad you're not in journalism.
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Re: re: Gamasutra is poison
Meanwhile, hundreds (thousands?) of innocent Americans _still_ can't access financial services and _still_ get extra attention at the airport. But oh no let's not talk about that.
If you go back and read carefully, you'll find numerous people talking about that.
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What's in a name?
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The magic technology would automagically check the people signing up against the list and it would know who was bad and who was good.
The problem is this tech only exists as a plot device in movies. They expect the problem will be solved by someone else and no one would object to keeping "bad people" from being able to do more bad things.
They add all sorts of names to these lists, because in their world they've never met different people with the same name (other than those Smith guys they see at the hotels). Ignoring people who mentioned this might be a stupid system, they built it... then it HAS to keep running because "bad things". Isn't being delayed/denied things a small price to pay to be safe? People line up in cattle lines and hand over their children to be felt up by peopled hired from the tops of pizza boxes because a name matched.
This is more crap law passed as kneejerk reactions, which causes way more problems than it will ever solve. One might like to note that this list kept 2 people from using services without hassle, yet bankers laundered huge piles of cash and didn't even miss lunch.
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look at that
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Re: If it can't manage that simple task
Though we ARE getting better at it. During WWII, there were whole towns that were leveled by accident. (oops)
No worries though. My expectation is that terrorist keyword sampling will eventually be integrated directly into Amazon Echo (or an equivalent device) user profiles... Say the rights words, and zap. Your dead.
It'll certainly create a whole new hobby for people who are into swatting, or hacking wrt54's. the fun thing is how many people in privileged positions don't realize those microphones are ALWAYS on. Judges, lawyers, shrinks etc, are keeping these in their offices. They auto update. Duh...
Who'd have thought during the cold war that all you had to do to create a global sensor net, was to make a little box that told people how awesome they were all day.
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