I wrote “ISIS Beer Funds” in a Venmo memo and the feds detained my $42

This seems somewhat pointless - surely anyone trying to tranfer fudns to a terrorist organisation would not use its real name.

I'd also expect quite a lot of false positives if they're simply flagging all transactions containing the word "ISIS", and not just from jokes.

Isis is also the name of the river flowing through Oxford, and hence a part of the name of many legitimate entities with a connection to the surrounding area. Within the unviersity of Oxford, the technology transfer office is "ISIS innovations", and the men's reserve boat race crew is called Isis. There's an ISIS neutron source at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. It also appears in the name of branches of larger organisations (eg. the "Rotary Club of Oxford Isis" and "Oxford Isis Toastmasters"), plus various private businesses (including Isis security and the Isis guest house).

"The moral of the story, I guess, is not to buy $42 worth of beer at a bar in the West Village."

Hmmm, not sure sure that's what I would take away from this.

I wonder how effective this sort of (brain dead) regulation has been at hindering actual enemies of the state.

It's a shame there is no transparency in this system.

Can someone explain the legal justification under which the government can direct a private entity to indefinitely seize a third party's assets with no due process?

Let's hope that real ISIS supporters are thoughtless enough to include the word ISIS in their communications.

No different from being detained and banned from boarding if you joke about a bomb at an airport.

There isn't much incentive for TSA or OFAC agents to apply common sense or attempt to detect irony. Because (1) that requires mental effort, (2) if you get it wrong and decide someone is serious when they were joking, it doesn't hurt you any other than needing to waste some time on paperwork, and (3) if you get it wrong and decide someone is joking when they were serious, then you've put people's lives in jeopardy, terminated your career, and perhaps opened yourself up for legal liability.

It's like rejecting emails as "spam" because they contain the word "spam".

Ridiculous.

I don't have much sympathy - that's a pretty dumb thing to write.

Of course in 99.9999% of cases this is just some dumb joke. But look at it from the FBI's (or whoever's) perspective: if this just happens to be the one time it isn't the press will be all over them saying "My God, how could you not take this seriously?" And the first priority of any bureaucracy is the protection of the bureaucracy.

I think Venmo is more at fault here than the government.

The government prohibits asset transfers between a certain public list of organizations. This list happens to include an organization called "ISIS". Implementing that prohibition is Venmo's problem.

Venmo then wrote a program to just scan all transactions against the list and auto-block all matches, as the least-effort path to compliance.

It's not Venmo's money, so they don't care. Most people whose legitimate transfers get blocked in this filter don't have a media platform to complain about it, so they aren't worried about negative publicity.

Finally, in terms of risk analysis, false positives are much cheaper than false negatives. If they allow a legally prohibited transfer through, then they're going to face a firestorm from the government. Expensive.

But if they block many legitimate transfers, they only annoy a few users and at most have to issue a few refunds. Cheap.

Actually having a human involved in the decision would cost them more, and expose them to more risk.

So, simple dumb keyword filters control our private finances now.

Your government can either provide you with freedom or it can provide you with security. Get ready to pay up America—freedom isn't free.

Would the funds still be held if he was sending the money to reimburse a fiend to one of the many businesses with "Isis", in its name?

http://www.businessinsider.com/companies-with-the-name-isis-...

I can't imagine the incredible stupidity that led to this regulation. As if terrorists are actually going to use the acronym ISIS. They don't even use that acronym when talking about themselves. In fact, I don't think anyone outside the US uses that acronym. Even if they did, I doubt they would be that stupid to use it in an actual money transfer. They are not as stupid as the people making these regulations.

But I disagree with the author. Sounds like the moral of the story is to not send money online whenever possible and when not possible, to always use a benign description, even if it's a lie.

Who's going to be the first to prove how idiotic this system is by DDOSing OFAC with (im)properly labeled micropayments?

Surely ISIS doesn't use the word ISIS when attempting to transfer funds.

pathetic and a sign of things to come.

I'm pretty sure ISIS would not be so stupid as to actually list their purchases as being intended for "ISIS-" anything.

What kind of morons are writing these scanning bots?

smh

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.