Will the FBI be able to solve image problem with kinder, gentler Carnivore?
The Rat's hotline to the Justice Department rang early one weekend morning, and the whiskered one stumbled in his bunny slippers to the flashing phone.
'Please hold for a call from the director's office,' said a voice at the other end. After a few moments of excruciatingly loud hold music, the cyberrodent's peer-to-peer peer at the bureau came on the line.
He could almost hear the wince across the phone line. Obviously, he had guessed right: The call concerned Carnivore, the FBI's e-mail filtering device that has privacy advocates buzzing like hornets.
'OK, so maybe in retrospect Carnivore was not a PR-friendly code name. That's why I'm calling. The director knows how you can churn out soothing technobabble, and he'd like you to consider taking on Carnivore as a free-lance project.
An hour or so later, a pair of sunglasses-sporting Mulder lookalikes arrived at the burrow door with a crate. Soon the Rat was elbow-deep in Carnivore guts and documentation.
The Rat continued: 'So first, there's the name. I know how alpha-male you guys are over there, but Carnivore is just not going to cut it with Congress.
'I don't think weasels match up well with the image we're trying to project,' opined the director's errand boy.
'Uh, Thumper?' queried the confused voice on the other end.
'Yeah, you know'that mischievous yet basically harmless rabbit friend of Bambi's. Unthreatening, cute, family-friendly. It'll win big points with the female demographic. Trust me.
'Sure,' the bureau man said. 'Tell you what. Why don't you keep working on ideas, and we'll take your suggestions under advisement. We'll call you back if we need anything.' The line went dead.
'And what's that, dear?' she asked.
'If you do something poorly enough, you won't be asked to do it again,' the whiskered one sighed with a grin.