You may already be a terrorist

If your name -- or any monicker close to your name -- appears on a lengthy list of "specially designated nationals" maintained by the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, you may be unable to get a mortgage, buy insurance or purchase a car. That's because the federal government makes it illegal for businesses, under threat of both civil and criminal penalties, to have anything to do with individuals and organizations whose names appear on the list. As the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area puts it in a recent report (PDF file):

[T]he law covered not just financial institutions or other businesses particularly susceptible to terrorist financing, but extended responsibility to all U.S. citizens, permanent residents, entities organized under U.S. law, and anyone present in the United States. In addition, the order made no exception for minimal transactions, so even a sale worth pennies could be penalized under the law.

Not surprisingly, many businesses choose to err on the side of caution rather than risk fines and jail time -- with civil penalties accruing for even inadvertent transgressions. The result is that innocent people have found themselves turned away for loans, purchases and insurance with little recourse except a drawn-out and potentially expensive effort to prove that they are not the same person as a sometimes vaguely identified terrorist on the watch list.

It's not a theoretical problem. The report, compiled by Shirin Sinnar, contains chilling anecdotes about normal people with common names turned away by mortgage brokers, car dealers and name-brand businesses like Western Union and PayPal.

In fact, the problem might be even worse except that many businesses aren't obeying the requirement that every potential customer be screened for terrorist connections. Many don't know about the law; others find the cost of compliance daunting, even in light of the penalties involved.

Major banks spend millions of dollars annually on checking the OFAC list and following other post-9/11 regulations. For smaller businesses, such as mini-marts that offer check cashing services, the burdens of implementation are even more formidable. The purchase of screening software alone can cost businesses thousands of dollars. ...

Theoretically, before a grocer sells a pint of milk, a deli serves a sandwich, or a doctor treats a patient, they should all be checking the OFAC list to make sure they are not assisting a person on the list.

Can you imagine how many thousands more Americans would become unpersons if the law was better known and more easily obeyed?

Your government -- protecting you from some guy with a slightly suspicious name.