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Advocacy Blog
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Treasury Releases Information on Complaints Made by Individuals Wrongly Placed on Terrorist Watchlist
In response to a federal court order, the U.S. Treasury Department released to the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights (LCCR) of the San Francisco Bay Area over 100 pages of documents that show that a terror watch list has wrongly linked ordinary Americans to terrorism. The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), an agency within the Treasury, maintains a list referred to as the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list, of over 6,000 names of suspected drug traffickers and terrorists, which includes individuals and organizations. The documents released by Treasury include Congressional inquiries on behalf of constituents and correspondence from consumers who have been told they cannot conduct various financial transactions because their names allegedly appear on the SDN list.
Thomas R. Burke, the lawyer representing LCCR was quoted in the LCCR press release; "The records released today suggest that little if anything is being done by the government to help individuals who are wrongly linked by their own government with illegal activity. … one should question the efficacy of a terrorist watch list that wrongly stigmatizes innocent Americans and provides them no recourse."
On March 28, 2007, Treasury Department Secretary Paulson testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee that the Treasury Department had received 90,000 calls over a one-year period regarding the OFAC list. In court filings, the Treasury Department stated that it does not track details about phone calls it receives regarding erroneous name matches.
The Washington Post covered the story by highlighting some individuals that have been affected. "One man went into a Glen Burnie, Md., Toyota dealership to buy a car, only to be told that a name check revealed he was on a U.S. Treasury Department watchlist of suspected terrorists and drug dealers. He had to be "checked for tattoos," he said, to make sure he wasn't the suspect."
The newly released documents are available on the LCCR website, here.
Posted by Amanda Adams
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