November 11, 2004 | Red Cross fires Ted Kennedy

A coalition of non-profits filed suit Wednesday to stop a federal regulation that strong-arms 10,000 charities into checking their employees against a secretive watchlist in order to continue getting donations from government employees.

Here's the New York Time's Stephanie Strom's piece on the lawsuit.

The Combined Federal Campaign, an annual charity drive for federal employees and military personnel that raised $250 million for thousands of nonprofit groups last year, has required participating charities to certify that they do not employ anyone on the watch lists since October 2003.

"This is coming right in the middle of their campaign, which may raise serious doubts among government employees about how their money is being administered," said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the A.C.L.U.

Nonprofit organizations have struggled over the last two years to interpret and comply with the provisions of the USA Patriot Act and other regulations intended to stop the flow of money to terrorists.

Foundations and other grant-making organizations that send money abroad responded first, setting up elaborate systems to check recipients against the lists and adding language to their agreements that required beneficiaries to certify that money would not be used to promote terrorism, employ terrorists or otherwise support nefarious activities.

Domestic charities with no overseas operations were slower to understand the effects of the regulations, apparently thinking that they applied just to organizations with overseas activities. The domestic groups have been somewhat taken aback by demands from some of their financial backers that they use the lists to police their employees and, in some cases, refused to acquiesce.

Now, keeping federal employees from inadvertently giving money to a group with a nice sounding name that funds terrorism is good policy.

But requiring small charities to check the names of their employees against terrorism watchlists?

For those interested, here's one of the lists the charities are supposed to use. It's the OFFICE OF FOREIGN ASSETS CONTROL's SPECIALLY DESIGNATED NATIONALS AND BLOCKED PERSONS list. It is 166 pages long (.pdf).

That's absurd.

The government can't even figure out how to do this with airline passengers without incorrectly snagging people named David Nelson or Ted Kennedy.

How are charities supposed to do this, especially when lists include names such as Manuel Diaz, a name shared by hundreds across the country including the mayor of Miami?

It's not just the civil libertarians who are opposed. The National Council of Nonprofit Associations says the rule "threatens core American democratic values that are fundamental to the role and tradition of the nonprofit sector."

Their policy position continues on to say:

[T]he process of matching an employee or potential employee to a name that appears on the lists is unreliable. In addition to violating associational rights, charities may be required to ask questions that violate privacy rights and existing labor laws of employees and potential employees. For example, birthdays often appear as one of the identifying characteristics on the lists. It is illegal for an employer to request such information from a potential employee. Third, some of the listings include only a name with no other identifying information. Given that many of these names are common Arab and Hispanic surnames, concerns have arisen that the lists may encourage prejudicial hiring if charities do not to hire individuals with names similar to those that appear on the published lists.

Posted by Ryan Singel at November 11, 2004 02:12 PM

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» Feds clamp down on charities over watchlist -- but don't clean it up from W. David Stephenson blogs on homeland security et al.
(Thanks to Ryan Siegal's Secondary Screening for this. [Read More]

Tracked on November 18, 2004 07:10 AM

» Feds work hard to create diverse coalition against flawed watch lists from W. David Stephenson blogs on homeland security et al.
(Thanks to Ryan Siegel's Secondary Screening for this: I liked his headline better than the Times: Red Cross Fires Ted Kennedy . [Read More]

Tracked on November 18, 2004 07:10 AM