Fergie's Tech Blog

CQ: Hoping To Catch Terrorists, FBI Followed Falafel Trail

Justin Rood writes on ABC News' "The Blotter":

Hoping to catch Iranian terrorists in the United States, the FBI analyzed California grocery sales records to find patterns in the sales of Middle Eastern items, according to Congressional Quarterly's Jeff Stein.

The veteran national security writer reported that in 2005 and 2006, FBI agents "sifted through customer data collected by San Francisco-area grocery stores," with the idea that "a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian secret agents."

An FBI spokesman declined to confirm or deny whether the FBI conducted such a data-mining effort. "It sounds pretty sensational to me," Stein quoted spokesman Paul Bresson as saying.

posted by Fergie @ 11/06/2007 10:31:00 AM