it's rather hard to believe, right? i found it hard to believe. after a friend sent me a blog link about this i had to check the source because it's so far out (source: jeff stein, congressional quarterly -we can believe this).this data mining venture is the brain child, i mean brain fart, of two top fbi counterterrorism officials. the 'falafel sales means terrorists in san fran' project didn't last very long because the head of the fbi's criminal investigation division, michael mason (soon to be head of security for verizon), "argued that putting somebody on a terrorist list for what they ate was ridiculous — and possibly illegal."
possibly illegal?
top counterterrorism officials truly believed that they could justify declaring war on iran by scaring the 'stupid american people' into thinking that we have iranian terrorists in this country, and we know this because falafel sales are WAY UP.
think about this next time you go to the grocery store and pay with plastic or use your grocery store's 'reward card' - it's all data that is mined and your innocent purchase of falafel, hummus, saffron, or basmati rice might result in your name being added to a terrorist list and the u.s. government having 'proof' of iranian terrorists in this country.
it's so hard to believe, but we can believe this.
2 comments:
I am going to buy more hummus just to fuck with the feds. Are you tracking the Yahoo privacy violation that led to Shi Tao's imprisonment? CEO Jerry Yang really screwed the pooch on that one.
Now that you mention it, I *do* love falafel. AND I've got the terrorist beard thing happening! (I was actually telling someone about this story earlier today. He'd not heard of it yet.)
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