I'm pretty sure the TSA uses a similar approach. I know a woman who shares the same name as someone on the watch list, but no other similarities, and she routinely gets detained and harassed when flying. She basically has to plan an extra day every time she has a flight, since she has no idea how long it will take before they let her into security.

My name got a hit on a watch list when I flew into Australia one time, several years ago.

I was taken into a side room by 2 plain-clothes policemen, who politely asked my several questions about why I came to Australia. At the end of it all, they apologised and explained that my name matched one on a watch list, but my age, hair colour, build etc didn't match - "but it's procedure". They also said it would happen every time I went to Australia (I never did go back tho).

It seemed incredible to me that they would use only a matching name as their reason to be suspicious of someone!

As I said though, they were very polite about it, and I never felt like I was under any kind of threat or danger, and they didn't invade my privacy (they didn't look at my devices, and didn't even search my bags). A stark contrast to my experiences at US border control, I must say...

Here's a good example of OFAC in action. The person's name was only in a memo field...not the payer or recipient: http://imgur.com/a/RnpRm

I’ve seen checkboxes on air travel and bank documents specifically for this reason. Check here if you have a name similar to someone well known/infamous. If your name’s Osmama Bin Laden or Charles Manson check here to avoid extra screening.

One would think that an infamous person would check that box too. The idea seems kind of absurd, either your system knows the difference between Bin Laden and for example a 5 year old kid with the same name or it doesnt.

I've heard from some people who had this problem. It's not so much "avoid extra screening" as "ensure extra screening and do it up front".

If you sign up with name, birthdate, and address, maybe the system comes up with an 85% likelihood that you're that Manson. But if you check the box, you can add in data like place of birth and SSN which prove you aren't the infamous murderer, so the system (or more realistically, a human with override powers) can clear you. That's way better than being silently blacklisted, or having each interaction delayed until it can be separately verified.

Presumably, Manson wouldn't want to check that box because he'd be likely to get arrested, and if he did then the subsequent data would all just confirm there's a problem. It's not a great system, but it's a decent improvement on just making a decision without the extra caution.

I had that thought as well, but I would think that it would just prompt a quick second look by the TSA (or whoever).

They Check the box, then the screen agent takes a closer look, "Hmm, this nine year old indian girl named Charles Manson is probably not the 70+ year old dead man that we were worried about"

Perhaps if you check the box the system doesn’t allocate the biggest clown in the circus to your check and you get someone who can reason like, it says Osama but the terrorist Osama is dead. So it must be someone else.

I’d imagine the system would even show the wanted person next to the person in front of you. But then again the TSA is probably using an abstraction over an Access DB built by the lowest bidder in the early 2000s.