The federal government expects you to do your part to help catch terrorists, by screening everyone you do business with against a public blacklist of suspected terrorists and drug traffickers maintained by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. Worse, people are actually starting to do this, and the national credit reporting agencies are now putting the government’s black marks on the wrong people’s credit reports.

Last year I told you about the Specially Designated Nationals List, a “no-buy list” of people whom Americans are prohibited from doing business with by federal mandate. Government officials ultimately want everyone in the country to screen every person they engage in business with, all the way down to your common grocery shopping, and refuse to do business with anyone on the list. And they’re willing to back up that threat by fining you $10 million and putting you in prison for 30 years if you sell so much as a newspaper to someone on the list.

Naturally, banks and other financial institutions are all over this. So, oddly, are car dealers, landlords and even fitness equipment vendors.

A report (PDF) released this week by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights gives examples of several people who had trouble obtaining mortgages, car loans, and even a treadmill because of the blacklist.

“Few people in the United States are actually on the list,” the report explains. “But because many names on the OFAC list are common Muslim or Latino names — such as “Mohammed Ali” or “Carlos Sanchez” — people in this country with similar names are increasingly getting snagged. Even a shared first or middle name, including some of the most common names in the world, can lead to consumer transactions being denied or delayed.”

Unfortunately, the lawyers recommended that the government regulate itself to fix the problem it created. As if that was ever going to work.

“The law is ridiculous,” said Tom Hudson, a lawyer in Hanover, Md., who advises car dealers to use the list to avoid penalties. “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.”

Molly Millerwise, a Treasury Department spokeswomen, acknowledged that there are “challenges” in complying with the rules but said that the department has extensive guidance on compliance, both on the OFAC Web site and in workshops with industry representatives. She also said most businesses can root out “false positives” on their own. If not, OFAC suggests contacting the firm that provided the screening software or calling an OFAC hotline.

“So the company is not only sure that they are complying with the law,” she said, “but they’re also being good corporate citizens to make sure they’re doing their part to protect the U.S. financial system from abuse by terrorists or [weapons] proliferators or drug traffickers.” — Washington Post

And to be perfectly fair, if use of the blacklist had been more widespread prior to 2001, it might have given Mohammed Atta a bit of trouble buying a used car, the government says. Yeah right.

The Post piece closes with a hearsay account of a used car dealer who wished he’d used the list in 2001 so he wouldn’t have sold a used car to Mohammed Atta. Of course, we could say that Atta would have then just bought a car from a private citizen listing his Impala in the back of the newspaper, but instead we’ll be productive and close our own loophole of negativity by suggesting that all purveyors, from boot sellers to cappuccinio [sic] slingers, should be downloading the list right now and preparing to check each customer’s identification. Remember we are all in this together. — 27B Stroke 6

Someone reading this can tell me what the point of this no-buy list originally was. It probably has something to do with “disrupting terrorist financing” or something similar. And who cares if it disrupts Americans’ financing? Any amount of inconvenience is acceptable as long as you label it “terrorism” related. Who cares if it actually catches any terrorists or how many Americans have to be falsely matched to the blacklist. Can’t you understand we have to keep you afraid?