"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."

Trying to find terrorists by tracking purchases of falafel is ridiculous and pointless if you fail to distinguish between those brands which offer "more authentic Middle Eastern flavor" and those which are merely "leading brands."