In a refreshing break from our typical prose, TF’s Jon Henke critiques the NSA’s countless surveillance programs in a reworking of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” in The Atlantic. It begins:
Once upon a database query, while I pondered weak security,
And many avenues of access via backdoor,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a wiretapping,
As of some one gently sniffing, sniffing at our server’s door.
“‘Tis some hacker,” I muttered, “tapping at our server door
Or just a virus, nothing more.”Presently my fear grew stronger; acquiescing then no longer,
“Spy,” said I, “truly your secrecy I deplore;
But the fact is you’re wiretapping, and so quietly you came tapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, wiretapping at our server’s port,
That scarce was sure I’d detected you—and when I opened wide the door; —
a National Security Letter, speak nothing more.
Read the full poem here, and check out or other work fighting for an end to mass surveillance.