On Jan. 21, 2011, 40-year-old telecommunications sales manager Saad Allami of Quebec sent a text message to colleagues encouraging them to "blow away" the competition at an upcoming trade show in New York City. His innocent intent, he claims: to "pump up his staff." He was arrested without warning days later, detained, searched, and presumed to be a terrorist. And that was just the beginning. (via @weldpond)

  • http://www.facebook.com/HyperionToASatyr Jack Holmes

    …Ugh.

  • Marc45

    Obviously he didn’t read the “Muslim’s guide to texting”.
    This business of arrest first, ask questions later makes me want to find another planet to live on.

    • Antinous / Moderator

      Obviously he didn’t read the “Muslim’s guide to texting”.

      TWM is the new DWB.

  • http://goodsharer.com/ Aloisius

    So it is clear people are monitoring SMS. Maybe we should all text each other vaguely threatening/sarcastic messages about digging up corpses or blowing it out of the water. Be sure to include allah in there if you can. I’m sure any mention of that dude is sure to bring the feds down on you.

    • p96

       Sounds like a plan, what’s your number?

    • SamSam

      Like when people first heard about the Echelon Project and started putting “bomb kill president white house allah” in their email signatures. Well, I know my mother did at least…

    • Forkboy

       Or maybe he pissed off some coworker and that coworker decided to take some anonymous revenge ?

  • joeposts

    In related news, Harper has ok’d the use of information gained through torture. All Canada has to do is to find some lonely Afghan cab driver, remove his fingernails and get him to say the name “Saad Allami” and we wouldn’t have to pay for this lawsuit.

  • teapot

    C’mon Canada… what the fuck happened to you? Go back 5 years and I would’ve happily lived there. Now your country looks like a backwater hellhole with shit internet and America’s pus-squirting dick in your mouth.

    • http://twitter.com/bazimmerman Brad Zimmerman

      I’d agree with all of that except that the last bit has been going on for quite awhile …it just still somehow seemed that Canada was …Canada.  Now I don’t know WTF it is.  I wonder if any Canadians know?

      • Anon_Mahna

         http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/US_annexation_of_Canada

  • Guest

    I hope he wins all of it.

  • scatterfingers

    Well, if he didn’t want to be a terrorist before, I bet he does now.

  • bardfinn

    In other news, y’all black people betta be out of town befoah sundown, y’all wimmins betta git back in the kitchin fo i givs ya the back I mah hand, and bwah go cut me a switch.

    Seriously fuck the us government.

    • http://www.xeni.net/ Xeni Jardin

      this was Canada, actually

      • bardfinn

        Oh good. Not flamed. I blame the us govt. for the original push to scapegoat Muslims.

        • petsounds

           Harper is quite happy to grab the baton and run with it. There’s many to blame here, but in this case the Canadian government bears the brunt of it.

        • joeposts

          For anyone who doesn’t pay attention to Canadian politics (I guess that would be 99.99% of the world, including Canadians) but is shocked at our government’s violation of simple human decency in the name of 9/11, maybe take a peek at this Wikipedia entry sometime. Just like all the other civilized countries, we’re embracing torture, assassination and bombings … but hey, they did it first!

      • benher

        “was” being the operative word. 

  • http://www.mrericsir.com MrEricSir

    Thanks to NDAA, next time this happens they’ll just take the guy out with a drone.

  • http://twitter.com/shay_guy Shay Guy

    Is it just because they’ve been posting these “don’t joke about X, we’ll take it seriously” warnings and they don’t want them to be invalid? Better a stupid policy than a policy you don’t follow through on? Is that it?

    • teapot

       He wasn’t joking about anything though. Combat-styled language is commonly used in business… maybe the fools who decided this guy was a threat should either: learn the English language and its common uses (which they are seemingly ignorant of) or get someone with a grasp of English to add exceptions to their active filter for common business phraseology.

      Off topic: Can we agree to capitalise “US” please? I frequently leave capitals off countries and companies I hate, but you can’t leave capitals off acronyms – especially when the combination of the letters form a word.

  • bardfinn

    And the Canadian government for following the us government’s lead.

    Sigh I’m sure I’ve been flamed by now.

  • yeahyeahwhtever

    Once again:   everybody needs to understand that all transmissions and transactions are filtered for particular content.

    • bardfinn

      They should also understand that despite this, they should still have an expectation of privacy.

    • Jer_00

      But this isn’t just about content, it’s also about context.  Because do you really think that if the sales manager’s name had been “Larry Smith” anything remotely like this would have happened?

      • Nick Hayday

        You mean like the white British guy who was going to “destroy America” and got sent straight back

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Justin-Forposting/100002531076048 Justin Forposting

    The terrorism/Muslim angle is just a ruse to cover up the new policy of rounding up sales managers.  (a policy which I am in support of.  Hey, I’m not a sales manager so why worry)

    • MrsBug

      When they came for the sales managers, I said nothing, because I am not a sales manager.
      when they came for the receptionists, I said nothing…

  • forzaq8

    sending sms is nothing , try singing songs these days

    Boom by snoop and Tbane ?

    • Forkboy

      * Word to your moms, I came to drop bombs … *
      BRB, doorbell.