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from the making-a-list-and-checking-it-twice dept.
c0lo writes:
An Australian blogger shares his personal experience with orders put on hold by the Australian subsidiary of Element 14 (the former Farnell shop), reportedly based on a watch list maintained by US govt.
From the blog:
The counter person wasn't sure, so checked with someone else who came and wasn't 100% sure, but knew that the system does automatically flag orders based on various identifiers. It could have possibly been one of those stupid US government trade restriction things, because, you know capacitors and opamps can be used by evil terrorists and the like... (International customers have to fill out silly forms with US distributors and manufacturers saying we won't use the parts in nuclear weapons - seriously)
But they enquired further with someone else and the word came back that it wasn't the parts that had been flagged, it was my NAME that was flagged. And they said it was a US government watch list of some description. I was stunned, and it seemed like they didn't quite understand why I was so shocked at this. Because, you know, the whole world has to just sit by and let the US government dictate everything at will.
...
So lets see if I have this straight - An Australian subsidiary, owned by a UK parent company, listed on the UK stock exchange, has an ordering system that automatically matches generic names against some secret US Government watch list, and flags those orders and puts them on hold, for parts that are already stocked in Australia, are likely not made in the US, and likely have come from the main UK warehouse. Call me stupid, but something doesn't seem right with that...
(Score: 1) by alioth on Thursday February 27 2014, @11:07AM
David Jones (the author) mentions he noticed orders taking a day or two longer than they used to, and the Element14 rep said that this was the reason.
My surname is Smith (a pretty damn common name). I use Farnell (the parent company in the UK) quite a lot for my electronic supplies. They've always given good service but I've noted in the last year or so that orders that used to show up the next morning now usually take 4 or 5 days to arrive. I guess I can deduce that my name is now also on some US watch list.
Seriously, how retarded is it to base a watch list on just the name of a person which is hardly unique? Especially if you're a Smith (most common surname in the English speaking world) or Jones (probably the 2nd most common surname). The watch list is worse than useless due to the amount of false positives it generates - the real positive will actually get lost in a sea of useless noise!