The Arcata Eye, a small newspaper in Northern California (BoingBoing.net reported the story today on their blog), is reporting that a US citizen with the middle name "Hassan" has had his credit report marked with the phrase "Son of Saddam Hussein" along with other alerts.

These notations come from the US Department of Treasury&39;s list of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN), that is set up to prevent business with sanctioned nation and narcotics traffickers. The credit bureaus matched these records with Hassan&39;s credit reports based on his middle name:

"Computer software programs are scanning the lists and putting watch list names on credit reports even if it&39;s only a partial match; so if there is a mistake the credit bureaus can just say it was computer error."  Said Sinnar.  She continued, "But credit reporting agencies have a legal obligation to have procedures in place to ensure the accuracy of credit reports."

Hassan has been unable to remove the inaccurate information from his credit reports and mentioned that he has had trouble qualifying for a mortgage based on these records. And other similar cases have been reported accross the country involving people named "Muhammad" or "Hussein."  And the Latino community is also impacted because the SDN list includes common Cuban and Colombian names used by narcotics traffickers.

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