CovOps
 Location : Ether-Sphere
Job/hobbies : Irrationality Exterminator
Humor : Über Serious
 |  Subject: You're just collateral damage: Terror Watch List Claims Innocent Victims  Wed Mar 26, 2008 7:28 am | |
| Being falsely identified as a terrorist surely is a nightmare. But when everyone involved in making the mistake refuses to help, well, that must be pure hell. Just ask Thomas Kubbany, who lost a chance to buy a home two years ago solely because his middle name is Hassan.
That simple fact led some still-faceless bureaucrat to the absurd conclusion that he might be a relative of Saddam Hussein identified on a watch list compiled by the U.S. Treasury Department. (The listed terrorist is also about 30 years younger than Kubbany.)
You might think such a blunder would be fixed quickly. But it took Kubbany six months and the help of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area to clear his name. By then, he'd lost the house.
There is no way of knowing how many people are affected by such problems because the Treasury Department makes no effort to find out. But Kubbany's experience stands as a tale of bureaucratic indifference in need of a remedy.
Kubbany's problems began after he got word that he and his wife Nancy were eligible to buy a home through a low-interest loan program offered by the city of Arcata, Calif. But when a lender checked his credit, an alert delivered by TransUnion, one of the nation's three main credit agencies, linked Kubbany to the terrorist list. For Kubbany, born and raised in the USA, the report was devastating. Because companies doing business with anyone on the list face large penalties, he became a financial pariah.
Who exactly is to blame remains murky and the subject of a lawsuit Kubbany has brought against TransUnion. But this much is clear: No one wanted to help. TransUnion, which declined comment, initially told Kubbany's lawyers in 2006 that the alert was "not TransUnion data" so the company couldn't delete it. The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, which created the list, told a congressman seeking to clear Kubbany's name that it, too, could do nothing. The agency's director, Adam Szubin, wrote that Kubbany should contact — you guessed it — the credit bureaus.
Passing the buck is easy, but it is irresponsible for government agencies that create watch lists that entangle innocent people. That's true whether it is the no-fly list that prevents suspected terrorists from boarding planes or Treasury's list of "specially designated nationals," — SDN for short — which flags suspected drug traffickers and terrorists so their their financial transactions can be blocked.
Documents released last week by the government under a court order show a wide range of complaints resulting from mistaken SDN identifications, from an 18-year-old trying to start his own business to a former police officer trying to buy a car.
At least the agency running the "no-fly list" created a system to address complaints from misidentified fliers. The Treasury Department hasn't even taken that first, minimal step. It's still sending consumers to credit bureaus, which insist it's not their problem.
In other words, no one responsible really gives a damn. If this happens to you, you're just collateral damage.
No one argues with the need to block transactions by terrorists. But when innocent people get hurt the way Kubbany did, something needs to change.
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