CQPolitics reports that, "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. 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."Meanwhile, the LAPD announced last week that they planned to map Islamic neighborhoods, then bowed to protest and declared that they would drop the mapping aspect in favor of "outreach."
Puh-leeze. Can we stop the nonsense? The only results such clueless, arbitrary profiling of ordinary folks can reap are alienation and resentment -- and that's fodder for real terrorism.
As Carrie Meathrell wrote on LAist, "If eating falafel = terrorism, well, call me the Unibomber and pass the hummus."
illustration Goolgle Images
