Description: A Tech Blog
The mission: To create a search engine capable of detecting possible matches from our contact entry from with the OFAC Specially Designated Nationals List (SDN).
The background: I was hired to develop a highly compliant software that tracks and facilitates the movement of funds between the U.S. and Israel. Recently, the U.S. government has taken a hard-line against corporations moving US dollars offshore on behalf of US citizens. Compliance demands that customers wishing to move funds must be checked against the OFAC SDN list, as well as the new consolidated non-SDN list which contains smaller lists such as the Palestinian Legislative Council (NS-PLC) list.
OFAC does not provide an API for querying this list, but has launched a search page alongside their publication (and regular updates) of plain text files. The search page description provides adequate details regarding their matching algorithms and basic expectations, those being character and word matching, and phonetics. Phonetics allows for basic spelling mistakes or discrepancies, particularly when dealing with non-English names.