ODE TO A CARNIVORE

(This was written in 1999 when Carnivore was first proposed for domestic email monitoring, and long before 9/11/01. the Japanese Sarin gas attacks, Anthrax scares, and such.)

It’s another sad day in the land of the free

As more of our freedoms are drowned in the sea

The FBI’s listening to you and to me

Scanning each e-mail to see what they’ll see.

Solicitations of money from the vice president’s throne

Or the power behind failed savings and loans,

These were our choices in the political dome,

While the FBI’s snooping around in our homes.

When big crimes go unpunished its easy to see

That they care not a whit for you or for me.

So what can we do – the small folks that you see

Who work for a living and want to be free?

Take small steps, fight the power each chance that you see,

And follow the example set here by me:

With each e-mail you send whether short or a tome

Be sure to use keywords and toss out a bone

To the spies in brown shoes who won’t leave us alone.

Words like uranium, anthrax and bomb,

Al Fatah, plutonium sarin jihad,

Revolutionary terrorist gun shipment plot.

These keywords will prick ‘em, alarms will go off

And they’ll spend hours sifting them out from real talk.

Botulism, communism, don’t forget hash and pot,

It’s words such as this that will get them all hot.

Make them spend hours and work round the clock

To discover the details of the plot that is not.

No, the cops who wear suits won’t keep us free

Of the corporate crime lords who want all they see

And their political stooges who’d sell you  and me

For a lobbyist’s dinner in the land of the free.