Waymo, a ride service that uses self-driving “robotaxis,” recently changed its user policies after San Francisco-based LGBTQ+ rights activist Dr. Nasser Mohamed sued the service’s parent company, Alphabet. Waymo had banned and denied him service for years because his name resembled other Middle Eastern names on a government terrorist watchlist.
When Mohamed registered his Waymo account in early November 2023, the company forbade him from booking rides in its self-driving cars. For two years, he thought it was a technical error. He submitted numerous support requests, but the company repeatedly closed them without explanation, The San Francisco Chronicle reported.
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When he complained about this on social media, some Waymo employees informed him that his name had been banned by the company’s identity verification service, which cross-checks users with a list of foreign agents, terrorists, drug traffickers, and national security threats maintained by the U.S. Treasury Department.
The list, entitled the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) List, contains over 19,000 names of individuals, entities, and associated aliases. People whose names appear (or resemble others) on the list can be prevented from conducting various financial transactions. The list has a history of generating false positives, spawning an industry for those who help correct such issues.
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Mohamed sued Alphabet, noting that the list didn’t even contain his name. Rather, his name was merely similar to “one or more Muslim or Middle Eastern names on the list,” his lawsuit stated. He also said he only sued because he couldn’t get a human at Waymo to actually address his issue.
However, he dropped his lawsuit after Waymo instituted a process for users to request Waymo workers to conduct an audit of their ban. Mohamed’s request was the first to be handled by Waymo’s new process. The system forwarded his request to a human within a week, who verified that he is not on the aforementioned terrorist watchlist.
But while Mohamed has since become a verified user, he has yet to book a ride, preferring Zoox, another robotaxi service that approved his profile immediately.
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