You are what you eat

"FBI Monitored Sales At Middle Eastern Grocery Stores
Congressional Quarterly is reporting that the FBI sifted through customer data collected by San Francisco-area grocery stores in 2005 and 2006, hoping that sales records of Middle Eastern food would lead to Iranian secret agents. The idea was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian agents in the region. The program was the brainchild of top FBI counterterrorism officials Phil Mudd and Willie Hulon. The datamining operation was eventually stopped after FBI officials determined it was possibly illegal to place someone on a terrorist list because of what they ate." (Thanks Marcy).

I hurriedly blogged this post sent to me by my dear friend Marcy. To my readers in the US: please take care when you buy falafel, you don't want to be mistaken for Iranian agents, who, as we all know, can only operate their spying rings if they are fueled with falafel. Buy the ingredients and make falafel at home. You can find the recipe on the net, I presume under the rubric IED (Improvised Eating Devices).