Apparently, this makes me a terrorist:
Like Hansel and Gretel hoping to follow their bread crumbs out of the forest, 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.Fortunately, sanity prevailed in this case, but you really have to wonder how many times it didn't, and how many people are now on terrorist watchlists because of what they ate, or what DVDs they rented, or what books they got out of the library...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.
(Hat tip: Paul Krugman)
