How so? The article is talking about a fictitious person that's listed by name only on a sanctions list despite the government knowing the person doesn't exist. There is no possibility of the real Sean Byrne presenting a government number that is a negative match against the list because the fake Sean Byrne has no known ID to match against. The essence of the entry is just "here's a name to avoid".

The real Sean Byrne can produce a government-issued passport number, but that's clearly not enough for Apple.

I think it's more of a problem of all these "hyperscale" platforms where the cost of not being zealous enough is long litigation and devastating fines, while the cost of losing a single customer (or a thousand) is basically nil. This leads to all kinds of opaque, customer-hostile outcomes like this, also if you trip some filters not related to sanctions / mistaken identities. There's a recurring theme of HN posts along the lines of "an automated process at Google cut my business off, HN plz help".