
Here is a thing that happened - zdw
http://dashes.com/anil/2014/02/here-is-a-thing-that-happened.html
======
tptacek
In case you're wondering: "Blue Sky" appears to be an alias used by LIMMT, a
Chinese company that did business in the US while supplying the Iranian
military with weapons material.

OFAC publishes the contents of the SDN and updates to it.

(This comment is descriptive, not normative).

~~~
pizza
> The defendants, LI FANG WEI (a/k/a KARL LEE, a/k/a PATRIC, a/k/a SUNNY BAI,
> a/k/a K. LEE a/k/a KL, a/k/a DAVID LI, a/k/a F.W. LI) and LIMMT ECONOMIC AND
> TRADE COMPANY, LTD., (a/k/a LIMMT (DALIAN FTZ) METALLURGY AND MINERALS CO.,
> LTD., a/k/a LIMMT (DALIAN FTZ) MINMETALS AND METALLURGY CO., LTD., a/k/a
> LIMMT (DALIAN FTZ) METALLURGY AND MINERALS CO., LTD., a/k/a ANSI METALLURGY
> INDUSTRY CO. LTD., a/k/a BLUE SKY INDUSTRY CORPORATION, a/k/a SC (DALIAN)
> INDUSTRY & TRADE CO., LTD., a/k/a SINO METALLURGY AND MINMETALS INDUSTRY
> CO., LTD., a/k/a SUMMIT INDUSTRY CORPORATION, a/k/a LIAONING INDUSTRY &
> TRADE CO., LTD., a/k/a WEALTHY OCEAN ENTERPRISES LTD.) (LIMMT) were indicted
> on charges of falsifying business records and conspiracy. [0]

[0]: [http://www.iranwatch.org/library/government/united-
states/st...](http://www.iranwatch.org/library/government/united-states/state-
government/new-york-county-district-attorneys-office/indictment-chinese-
citizen-and-his-company-violation)

~~~
PeterisP
Can we be sure that all the other evil, evil aliases - namely 'patric' and 'k.
lee' \- get the same treatement if mentioned in payments, since it's obviously
neccessary for national security?

------
gambiting
I believe that right now every American citizen should write "Blue Sky" in
every possible field on their bank forms when setting a transfer. This is
lunacy and incompetence at the highest level.

~~~
alexeisadeski3
I'm not trying to be inflammatory:

Would you expect anything else from the US gov't?

~~~
jessedhillon
Are you trying to be hyperbolic to the point of obliterating all nuance then?

~~~
alexeisadeski3
If you accept the article as accurate, then it seems odd to consider my
statement hyperbole.

~~~
jessedhillon
Given the text of the article, which entails only a single incident of a
legitimate transaction being stopped based on automatic keyword filtering, we
should conclude that it is entirely reasonable to state that _the whole_ US
government -- every single branch and agency -- is incapable of carrying out
_any action_ competently, at every level _all the way_ to the very top?

Yes, that's a hyperbolic statement.

~~~
jasonlingx
Ah, so this is the first time you've read about something like this...

------
joedevon
The comment about Time Warner Cable was the best part of this article:

"I'm going to write "Blue Sky" on checks sent to Time Warner Cable so they can
never take online payments from anybody."

~~~
elwell
You mean to Comcast?

~~~
awakeasleep
Do you mean AmeriCommunicationsMonoploy Co?

~~~
octatone2
Average American Conglomerate, LTD.

~~~
Jgrubb
The Umbrella Corporation

------
DanielBMarkham
"Hey, let's give wide, blunt political power to a bunch of un-elected
functionaries, then we can start automating whatever their desires are! What
could go wrong?"

And so we're going to end up with a government like Google, where people come
to HN to beg for attention just so they can be treated like a human being.

I think it's time we just all acknowledge that the U.S. has the most onerous
and insane financial laws in the world. The only reason other countries put up
with them is because the U.S. is the sole remaining superpower.

There really needs to be some kind of correction here, but I don't see it
happening anytime soon.

EDIT: Just to be clear, I am specifically referring to the Treasury Department
handling of overseas payments and expats living abroad, not internal tax or
financial regulations. There's a lot out there Google if you want to go look
for it, including how various countries have protested being forced to comply
with U.S. law, expats giving up citizenship at record rates (though still
small in the grand scheme of things), and so on.

~~~
trumbitta2
"I think it's time we just all acknowledge that the U.S. has the most onerous
and insane financial laws in the world."

You should really repeat this to an italian (italian born in Italy, speaking
italian as his first language, not italian born in New York) entrepreneur.

But please record a video then share it. I'd really like to see their face :D

~~~
PeterisP
Italy (and other EU) payment regulations are actually quite reasonable
compared to USA.

Now, Russia - that's a different ballpark; companies transferring significant
money to/from abroad there involves not only tricky bureaucracy, but a bunch
of hidden-gotcha-landmines as well; no wonder their companies tend to open a
subsidiary in Switzerland or Crete or even Italy just to handle their money
flow.

~~~
trumbitta2
Every single medium-sized company is fleeing from Italy towards East Europe
because of:

\- taxes

\- mafia

\- masonry (the italian one, Grande Oriente d'Italia, is not as good as
others)

\- taxes

\- less-than-robust legal system

\- taxes

And, of course, also for the taxes.

------
JoshTriplett
On the bright side, it's hard to think of a faster way to get an insane law
fixed than to have it prevent a law firm from getting paid (except perhaps to
have it prevent Congress from getting paid). Perhaps they might want to take
this one pro bono?

~~~
maxerickson
A bunch of small blue sky political donations.

------
nikcub
"Blue Sky" is the name of an underground drug marketplace. It is one of the
new[1] sites looking to replace Silk Road and is apparently popular.

Onion link:

[http://blueskyplzv4fsti.onion/](http://blueskyplzv4fsti.onion/)

edit: screenshot of the market homepage:

[http://imgur.com/O9fvlxI.png](http://imgur.com/O9fvlxI.png)

[1] turns out it was launched in the first week of December, which makes it
nearly 3 months old - enough time to get it noticed and flagged by the us.gov.

------
pmorici
So if this payment needed to be stopped in the eyes of the bank then why did
they suggest a measure for circumventing their own rules by sending a paper
check.

This is kind of funny I recently purchased a bunch of second hard server parts
from the excess department of a mid-sized bank and they insisted on checking
my name against the OFAC list before completing the transaction. Insane.

~~~
mcherm
What you're missing is that different players in this particular mess have
different motivations.

The goal of the OFAC regulators is to stop money from going to terrorists and
other bad people. So they prohibit the banks from transferring money to "blue
sky" and anyone else on the list. There is no leeway here -- if a bank does
not comply the banking regulators have the authority to immediately close the
bank an seize its assets and give them to a different bank.

The goal of the IT and operations departments in the bank are to implement the
requirements. The IT guys put a simple string match against the text of the
online payments. There is no way to add a clause that checks whether it's
"really" a payment to the prohibited individual or just someone who stuck a
note in the memo field, because computers can't go out and interview the
recipient to find out who they are. They also stuck in code to block that
recipient from receiving payments in the future because otherwise anyone could
circumvent the block completely by simply changing the name on the payment.

The goal of the bank representative that Mr. Dash spoke with was to help her
customer. So she suggested sending the paper check. For what it's worth, the
OFAC office isn't too worried about the person collecting payment on the check
because banks are also prohibited from giving bank accounts to people (or
organizations) on the OFAC list.

------
psychometry
Why even title a post on a blog if it conveys zero information?

~~~
Houshalter
It seems like HN has a ton of uselessly vague titles. I don't know if I should
ignore them or click on all of them to find out what they are.

~~~
beedogs
It's because the powers-that-be decided, in their infinite wisdom, that any
modification of a link's title is "editorializing". Thus we get ridiculous
stuff like this, instead of something more illuminating.

~~~
gus_massa
Official post: "Why we revert to original titles"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6572466](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6572466)
(414 points, by pg, 127 days ago, 220 comments)

I agree that too much editorializing is bad, but textual titles are also bad.
In the last weeks I feel that the rules had been relaxed a little, but I
haven't done any systematic measurement.

------
callmeed
_> In conclusion, I love my country and like our lawyers and hate our bank_

Why do you hate your bank? Chase is probably the best large bank I've ever
dealt with and their online/mobile tools are excellent. It's very likely
they're just complying with their legal obligations.

If you're just using their standard online bill pay, I'd be curious to see
what would happen if you simply added a new payee and slightly changed their
name and attempted to pay them.

~~~
anildash
It blocked several simple variations as being duplicates, likely because the
address is necessarily the same.

~~~
protomyth
Did you add a department (ex. "Billing Department") and move the real address
to line 2?

------
dinkumthinkum
As a side note, I find the hyperbole of "killing trees" as a description for
"writing checks" a little annoying and uneducated. Does one believe that the
energy that makes the Internet possible is free?

~~~
pangram
Not free, but I would suspect that paying electronically is at least a
magnitude less impactful on the environment. That checkbook had to be
produced, shipped to the bank, mailed to you, and then the individual check
has to get moved around as well.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
That wasn't my claim but I don't think the online payments are as low energy
as you may believe. In order to allow the Internet to exist such that online
payments are so efficient, we must necessarily have all the servers, cables,
routers, all the infrastructure, on all the time or otherwise not even a
single online payment would go through. That's a lot of air conditioning,
alone. So, fine but let's not think online payments use magnitudes less energy
by using simplistic calculations.

------
srl
"In conclusion, I love my country and like our lawyers and hate our bank, like
all good Americans." Oh my sides.

I get the dim sense, knowing nothing about this stuff, that the job of that
office is one of the more headache-inducing ones in administrative government.
Preventing people to sending money to (or receiving money from) a list of bad
actors is a horridly difficult thing to begin with, but then when they screw
up (either like this or in the more common case of money getting through),
placing the blame is easy.

On another note, I haven't the faintest idea what the meaning of "blue sky"
is, and I can't find anything by searching. Anybody know?

~~~
smacktoward
The part that gets me about this story isn't the mistaken flagging -- any
screening system is going to have its false positives. It's the "our lawyers
were essentially flagged as an entity which we can never pay through online
bill payment again" part. I could understand a temporary lock on electronic
transactions between these two parties while the case is being investigated,
but once it's determined that the case is a false positive, what's the logic
of not lifting the ban and letting the two parties do business electronically
again?

I fear that the answer is something stupid like "we put you on a list, and now
that you're on the list you can never get off." Which seems like a policy
designed to make life easier for Treasury (or whomever maintains The List)
rather than for the wrongly identified parties who now have to suffer for the
rest of their lives due to somebody else's mistake. At a minimum there ought
to be a process for people who end up on The List by mistake to appeal their
inclusion.

~~~
aptwebapps
In their minds there may be more downside to taking someone off the list than
leaving them on.

"You already had this terrorist-funding org on the list and you took them
OFF?!?!?"

vs

Some blogger complaining that the gummint is stoopid. (Something everyone
already knows).

------
eskil
Amex has a credit card called Blue Sky. Now I kind of want one.

------
raymondduke
How do headlines like this get noticed? It boggles the mind.

~~~
cromulent
It's not the headline but the blogger. Anil Dash was in Six Apart back when
the only real blogging platform around was their Movable Type, about 2001.

------
geon
That last line:

> Customs when returning home to the United States. See? It was all just a
> harmless mixup.

I suppose it was meant as a joke, but I find it chilling.

------
sneak
Bitcoin suffers from no such idiotic and arbitrary denial-of-service attacks
by intermediaries.

~~~
sergiotapia
There's really no need to shoe-horn bitcoin into _every_ hackernews thread.

------
yeukhon
Is it just me or does everyone has to do this: when you need to file more
taxes (you need to pay more to the treasury), do you have to put your SSN in
the memo field? My accountant said I have to which I dont't feel happy about
it...

~~~
maxerickson
IRS asks for it:

[http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/Pay-by-Check-or-Money-
Order](http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/Pay-by-Check-or-Money-Order)

You can probably arrange to make the payment electronically.

~~~
tkrajcar
Yep. The enrollment process is laborious, but it's worthwhile for those of us
that deal with quarterly estimated tax payments.
[https://www.eftps.gov/](https://www.eftps.gov/)

------
altero
... and thats why americans have troubles to open bank account abroad.

------
bobwise
Man what a great title

------
badman_ting
The last paragraph is perhaps more crucial than it may seem.

------
sidcool
It seems the paranoia is getting institutionalized.

------
tw268
I feel bad for him, but his second most recent blog post is odious: why he
only retweets females.

[http://dashes.com/anil/2014/02/a-checklist-of-stupid-
things-...](http://dashes.com/anil/2014/02/a-checklist-of-stupid-things-men-
will-say-when-they-find-out-i-only-retweet-women.html)

Maybe karma works in mysterious ways

~~~
zorpner
It's funny how you can always pick out a sexist by how they refer to women as
"females".

~~~
tormeh
What? I use "females". I thought it was a clever way to get around having to
choose between "girl" and "woman", as I would assume different females prefer
different terms based on their self-image. I'm not quite comfortable with
being called a man (it makes me think of my father), but "boy" is certainly
incorrect. Male is a perfectly fine thing to say.

Basically the girl/woman boundary involves sex, mental maturity, age and other
things I don't really want to touch.

~~~
kaybe
But it sounds like you're labeling a member of some other species or
something.

In professional and unknown context, you can't really go wrong with woman for
anyone above drinking age. (It's the most polite and neutral possible, I'd
say.)

~~~
alanh
> _woman … is the most polite and neutral possible_

Probably true!

> _can’t really go wrong_

Hahaha. ha.

I really wish you were right, but the thing about
ladies/women/girls/females/dames/womyn/gals/femmes is, being individuals, they
have individual opinions on the matter. And being human, they just may have
specific fears and wishes regarding their perception. So some girls hear
“woman” as “old!” and some women hear “girl” as “object!” and so on and so
forth.

Just as in anything else messy and human, there isn’t an easy answer.

