It’s almost unbelieveable, this AP story via Yahoo! on how Western Union is blocking money transfers to/from people named Mohammad or Ahmed. From the article:
Dubai-based representatives from Western Union Financial Services, an American company based in Colorado, and Minnesota-based MoneyGram International said their clerks are simply following U.S. Treasury Department guidelines that scrutinize cash flows for terrorist links. Most of the flagged transactions are delayed a few hours. Some are blocked entirely.
I read the article twice, dumbfounded by the stupidity. I may need to read it another two or three times to really let it soak in. Holy fucking shit. But how surprised should I be at this? The U.S. Treasury Department, still under the leadership of that genius John Snow, has really thrived, eh? It seems like the wonderful guidelines set in place during this administration have worked wonders.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe Mohammad is the single most popular name in the world. It’s like John or Michael, but more. Can you imagine every ATM withdrawal by a person named John delayed or completely blocked? How about narrowing that down to all those named John Smith.
This is another one of those stupid “safeguards” put in place by those geniuses up top. How hard could it possibly be for a well-funded terrorist network to get a few fucking fake IDs. I can probably go get one quite easily. I’m confident that I could get a perfectly good looking form of identification right here in Philly in twenty four hours for $100 that could handily fool the incredibly close inspection of a Western Union clerk.
And what have all these disrupted transactions resulted in? Jack fucking shit.
At another Western Union office, an executive who deals with security measures said about 1 percent of the store’s 30,000 daily money transfers — about 300 a day — are delayed or blocked because of suspected terrorist links. Thus far, all have proven false, the executive said on condition of anonymity, because she wasn’t permitted to speak to a reporter.
Big surprise.
via /.