Businesses use anti-terror lists to screen customers

Should a terrorist be allow to lease a car, even if the terms are bad? That is the question being raised this week in Washington, D.C. after reports that the

Office of Foreign Asset Control’s list of 3,300 “specially designated nationals” is being used by business to screen consumers looking to buy cars and rent apartments, among other commercial activities. According to the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, dozens of individuals have had their applications denied or delayed as a result. “The way in which the list is being used goes far beyond contexts in which it has a link to national security,” said Shirin Sinnar, the report’s author. “The government is effectively conscripting private businesses into the war on terrorism but doing so without making sure that businesses don’t trample on individual rights.”

For the businesses involved, using the watch list is an easy way to comply with federal laws that punish anyone doing business with those on it with fines of up to $10 million and thirty years in jail. “The law is ridiculous,” said lawyer Tom Hudson, who advises businesses to comply. “It prohibits anyone from doing business with anyone who’s on the list. It does not have a minimum dollar amount… . The local deli, if it sells a sandwich to someone whose name appears on the list, has violated the law.” The vagueness also leads businesses to be overcautious. In one unfortunate case, for instance, a man Tom Hassan Kubbany was flagged while applying for a mortgage because the watch-list indicated that his middle name meant “son of Saddam Hussein” — a worrisome thing if the same report did not also indicate that Kubbany was born in Detroit in 1949. “She just talked with a bunch of lenders over the phone and they said, ‘No,’ ” Kubbany recalled, referring to his lender. “So we said, ‘The heck with it. We’ll just go somewhere else.’ ”