Updates from the OpenSanctions project, including new features, technical deep dives, and analysis.
: Understanding interrelationships in the ‘Security State’ in the Middle East
Canadian data scientist and activist Wael Alalwani wants to map relationships between members of what he calls the ‘Security State’ - business elites, political actors, army generals and others.
: Introducing the new OpenSanctions API
As we’ve been speaking to businesses and organizations interested in OpenSanctions, we’ve seen a clear need amongst them for an easy-to-integrate, software-as-a-service API.
: Digging into sanctioned companies using OpenCorporates
Both OpenSanctions and OpenCorporates provide powerful data building blocks for compliance. By linking our databases up, we make it easier to track assets or assess exposure.
: Weaving a deeper sanctions web using data enrichment
We're adding linked data from the GLEIF company database and the ICIJ OffshoreLeaks to enrich the corporate targets in our system with relevant ownership or officership relations.
: Self-hosted and extensible: the OpenSanctions API
In this post, we’ll explain how you can use our open source components to build a customized sanctions and PEPs matching service - on your own premises, with your own data, with complete privacy and meeting your own requirements.
: Improving the way we score matching results
Our updated API uses a statistical model to determine if your query matches one of the entities in the OpenSanctions database. As we do this, we put a premium on transparency and share both the training data and scoring code.
: What is next for OpenSanctions?
Since its launch last September, OpenSanctions has nearly doubled its scope to 204,000 persons and entities of interest from across 43 data sources.
: Using graph analytics to find evidence of corruption
In cooperation with Linkurious, we worked to develop a network graph view of the OpenSanctions data and demo how it can be used in anti-corruption and money laundering investigations.
: How-to: Using the matching API to do KYC-style checks
Know-Your-Customer (KYC) checks are a different challenge to normal text searches: your query is supposed to describe a person or company in some detail to allow the OpenSanctions API to check if that entity (or a similar one) is flagged.
: We're now integrating persons of interest from Wikidata!
The structured-data edition of Wikipedia offers a compelling source of information on many persons in the public eye. Mining the data is, however, not for the faint of heart.
: The CIA lost track of who runs the UK, so I picked up the slack
A guest post from Tony Bowden about his efforts to build an open source dataset of world leaders inside of Wikidata, the structured-data version of Wikipedia.
: How to sanctions-check a spreadsheet using OpenRefine
OpenRefine, a power tool for data cleaning, offers a way to quickly check hundreds or thousands of names against the OpenSanctions database to find the ones that might be persons of interest in an investigation.
: Introducing business licenses for OpenSanctions
We are introducing business licenses for OpenSanctions as a way for companies using the data to support our long-term sustainability.
: Using ICIJ DataShare to sanctions-check a document leak
OpenSanctions is a resource for journalists to find leads in document stashes. But in order to use it, you need a tool that can help you search sanctioned entities inside your documents.
: How we deduplicate companies and people across data sources
One key function of OpenSanctions is to match and de-duplicate data from many sanctions lists. In this article, we discuss our approach to matching and merging list duplicates.
: Presentation: What is OpenSanctions?
Our colleagues at the OpenOwnership initiative gave us an opportunity to present a very quick introduction about the OpenSanctions project. Have a look at the recording!