“I have a copy of a Terrorism Blacklist. Should it be shared?” | Hacker News Reader

“I have a copy of a Terrorism Blacklist. Should it be shared?”

reddit.com

73 pointspizza23 comments

>A few years ago, Thomson Reuters purchased a company for $530 million. Part of this deal included a global database of "heightened-risk individuals" called World-Check that Thomson Reuters maintains to this day. According to Vice.com, World-Check is used by over 300 government and intelligence agencies, 49 of the 50 biggest banks, and 9 of the top 10 global law firms.

sounds like "terrorism score" a-la FICO. Of course in case of FICO there are laws and regulations, and you have the right to see your credit report and can contact the related credit bureau, card issuer, merchant, etc. to rectify/challenge the incorrect records...

You've illicitly acquired a copy of a commercial product relating to U.S. national security and you're just throwing your name out there on reddit?

Is you lost your marbles?

Contact a journalist so you can figure out how to properly handle this information. Contact a lawyer to try to cover your ass.

And ask Russia if there's a room down the hall from Snowden that you can use.

Seems to want to be a Snowden-Lookalike. Cheap.

Eh, I don't think we should discourage whistleblowers because it's not "cool" anymore because someone else did it first..

This has little to do with whistleblowing.

Wrong.

And tomorrows reddit posting:

"Help, I've just been forced into an orange jumpsuit, blindfolded and put on a plane to Gitmo. Should I be worried?"

Does anyone have a ballpark guess as to what Thompson Reuters sells this list for? Here is their product page:

https://risk.thomsonreuters.com/products/world-check

Really depends on how you integrate it they have varied level of integration from a simply pass/fail check to full details and analysis. The most common way of using is that you buy user access to https://www.world-check.com/frontend/login/ and just upload CSV's of names and they produce you a risk rating for each name (with some confedence score). The pricing starts at couple of 100K's a year and goes up when you add the value added and bespoke services to it.

The World-Check DB has very little to do with actual terrorism. While it does include a lot of individuals that are also on the US sanctioned lists due to terrorism it's more or less of a risk rating DB for individual and organizations based on many many factors.

It targets, money launderers, people involved in fraud, people who were involved in scandals, people who are the targets of large scale criminal or civil lawsuits and many many other things including political risk of doing business with individuals and organizations.

This isn't the no flight list, this is a DB of potential impacts on your business mainly around direct financial loss if you do business with any of the individuals on that list.

Just to be clear only 20-25% (out of those only 1-2% are due to terrorism, the rest is just normal crime) of the people on that list come from sanctioners like the US government and the European Union, the rest is data they have collected and 75% of their data is about PEP's mainly from media and public records. This is more of a high school gossip list than anything else and the 25% of names which are actually sanctioned are available publically the US and other country do not have secret sanctioned lists.

Let's assume that every single entry on the list is accurate.

Why is Thomson Reuters maintaining a list like this?

Why would payment to Thomson Reuters be the only filter to access a list like this?

It's not accurate. See [1]. Some of the material is sourced from PR statements from foreign governments like Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

It's ironic that an anti-terrorism list is been used by brutal, foreign regimes to co-op British banks and institutions into harassing people whose only "crime" has been becoming members of groups they don't like.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/28/finsbury-par...

A "check if your name/email is on the list" style site with rate-limiting might be a better option, rather than a full public dump. That way it answers a key question for interested people without exposing some of the people who are rightfully on the list. So it doesn't get indexed on google/public search engines or provide the means to auto-notify people, for example.

Although I'm sure there are plenty of people who think information should all be free and accessible, and could potentially exploit that type of system to get all the names.

> my ear will be wide open if you do wish for my copy of the database to remain private and you have any persuasive reasoning.

Is that code for 'if you pay me enough'?

Yeah that seems like a pretty bald-faced attempt to solicit bribes.

It's actually code for: "I'm willing to be reasonable and seriously consider both legal and ethical arguments you may have."

This isn't about money.

[yeah, I'm the original Reddit poster]

I like that you posted this to gather opinions and create a discussion around the ethical implications of it all. Kudos.

I'm wondering why you chose to use your real name though. Seems like there would be little benefit and very high risk in doing so.

I've used it before in reporting large data finds (such as US voter databases). It's really more about standing up and saying "I'm not afraid."

I'm not afraid too! Let's be friends! (David House)

Edit: Public figure ala Snowden. Please reconsider your removal of my personal information, and consider that I am faithful in my motives, ala the poster I have responded to. Kthx. judging of HN increases

Ok, thanks for the clarification. It looked a little strange, that wording.

Or maybe "If you are a journalist who can use this responsibly".

> The database is already accessible to anyone that is willing to pay Thomson Reuters for it.

Nothing to see than someone feeling important. Move along folk, let's hope this private list does not get dumped into the hands of random internet zealots.

It is not difficult to get hold of lists like this when you work in banking.

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