Security

First Pizza, Now Falafel as Tell-Tale Sign of Terror

When word broke in 2002 that the feds were picking out terror suspects based on what they ordered for dinner, most observers figured it was a glitch during the War on Terror’s beta test — a one-time overreach. Turns out the strategy has been employed again. "The FBI sifted through customer data collected by San […]

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When word broke in 2002 that the feds were picking out terror suspects based on what they ordered for dinner, most observers figured it was a glitch during the War on Terror's beta test -- a one-time overreach. Turns out the strategy has been employed again.

"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 terrorists," CQ's Jeff Stein reports.

*The idea was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian secret agents in the south San Francisco-San Jose area.
*

The brainchild of top FBI counterterrorism officials
Phil Mudd and Willie T. Hulon, according to well-informed sources, the project didn’t last long. It was torpedoed by the head of the FBI’s criminal investigations division, Michael A. Mason, who argued that putting somebody on a terrorist list for what they ate was ridiculous —
and possibly illegal.

But at least it's refinement to the 2002 version of the technique. Back then, federally-employed data-mining software labeled someone as a potential terrorist "if you were a person who frequently ordered pizza and paid with a credit card."

Persian-American technology scribe Cyrus Farivar, for one, is not amused.

I’m not even close to having the skillz of an FBI agent, but I can tell you three reasons why this plan was doomed from the beginning —
beyond than the fact that it’s totally illegal.

1) Falafel isn’t a Persian food at all. When was the last time you saw an Iranian eating falafel? (And the one time I went with Boyk to
Sunshine Café in Berkeley two weeks ago doesn’t count.)

2) Iranian terrorist? Seriously? Think about that for a second. Name one Iranian terrorist. Go ahead, I dare you.

*3) While the Bay Area may have some Iranians, we’re dwarfed by the number that are in LA and Orange counties. Plus, everyone knows that real Iranians (”terrorists” or otherwise) hit up Mashti Malone’s for totally sweet *bastani.