On the morning of April 2nd, 2007, NSA (National Security Agency) computer surveillance was routinely monitoring Internet traffic. A NSA computer stumbled upon a website in New Jersey that, it found, had links pointing to another website in Pakistan. This location, the computer was told by its database, had been a meeting point for terrorists sympathizers. So the computer started to get a closer look. In all the data it collected it found a statistically significant amount of references to 'pecan pie' – quite possibly a key word of some sort. It notified the operator who decided to make 'pecan pie' a search term for a broader surveillance.

Not knowing all this, Mr. Miller, a traveling sales man from Jacksonville, Florida, was searching the Internet for a 'pecan pie' recipe. His favorite search engine also displayed the link to the aforementioned website in New Jersey and, looking for a recipe, Miller clicked it. He found nothing of interest, so he continued his search and soon forgot about it. Not the NSA. They collected all the IP numbers of all people who had visited the website in New Jersey and forwarded all the data to the national telecommunications companies and requested names and addresses. In addition, NSA asked for all of Miller's communication records from his phone company. No warrant or court order was ever obtained, but the phone company disclosed all of Miller's records anyway.

Going through Miller's private communication records, agents found a lot of emails sent and received from several foreign countries and phone calls to Munich, Germany as well as to London and Madrid, Spain. One email even contained the request for a 'walnut pie' (a 'pecan' like nut) recipe sent to Brussels, Belgium.

If they would have asked Miller, he would have explained that he is responsible for international sales of 'Organic Cane Sugar' produced in Florida, that he has a lot of customers in Europe (Europeans are especially fond of Organic Produce) and that he also likes to bake and cook. But they didn't ask. They covertly went through Miller's records, read his and his wifes email (she was using the same Internet access) and even tapped his phone. Every word was cross linked and referenced checked in re-checked.

Miller of course wasn't aware of anything. Nobody would ever tell him that he was a terrorist suspect, that his privacy had been taken away, that his emails were monitored and that maybe somebody was silently laughing about his thoughts sent by email to the pastor of his church.

Eventually, Miller was dropped from the list of potential terrorists. His privacy was stripped from him, his name disclosed to his phone company as a potential security risk, he was even temporarily placed on the notorious 'no fly' list. If he would have needed to go on a business trip, he would have been stopped at the airport, in front of his colleagues, interrogated, maybe even arrested.

Miller will now have his data stored away in some corner of the vast memory of NSA's super computers. Someday in the future and for whatever reason, it may become activated again. But Mr. Miller is not aware of all that. Nobody will ever tell him.

This was fiction. Here is the truth....