FBI May Have Datamined Grocery Stores With Help From Credit Companies

An anonymous reader writes "Recent media reports indicate that in 2005-06, the FBI went trawling through grocery store records in order to track down Iranian terror cells. They hoped to locate 'Middle-Eastern terrorists' through the purchase of specific food items. Many of these items, though, are not sold through big-box supermarket chains, and the majority of mom and pop ethnic markets do not have the detailed computer purchase histories that Safeway or Whole Foods have. What the FBI seems to have done is instead put together a list of everyone who shopped at a Middle Eastern food market. All signs point to the credit card companies providing this data, and not the individual stores. If so, this could be the tip of a (potentially illegal) data-mining iceberg."

Comments

Absurd comments

[huckamania]

"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.

A check of federal court records in California did not reveal any prosecutions developed from falafel trails."

I'll be glad when the 08 elections are over and all you chicken littles will be scratching the dirt looking stupid.

Well actually a terrorist

[wsanders]

Next question, tinfoil hat people?

Do I hear a few tens of thousands of 9-11 victims and their relatives agreeing with me? Seeing as how I myself am two degrees of separation from 4 or 5 Unabomber, 9-11, and Murragh bombing victims.