They Used Falafel to Track Terrorists Down
Of course, the FBI wants to maintain its image of a serious, fearful organization.
However, the ‘Total Falafel Awareness’ operation doesn’t sound that formal, does it?
It’s an event the Bureau doesn’t want to remember, but we do. In 2006, a team mined grocery store data in San Francisco searching for clues of Iranian terrorists. As WIRED explains…
“The idea was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian secret agents.”
Naturally, it didn’t take long until the program was shut down by the head of FBI criminal investigations unit, Michael A. Mason. According to him, the action was most likely illegal.
