Charlie Stross describes the FBI Carnivore email-snooper as “an indiscriminate Hoover”. That’s twice this month he’s made a pun such that I can’t tell whether he was aware of it. (The other was “Genetic Algorithm That Ate Calcutta”.)
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Sorry, can you explain it.
The name Hoover is associated both with vacuum cleaners (the sense that Charlie presumably meant) and with the FBI.
“Genetic Algorithm That Ate Calcutta” has the acronym GATAC, which suggests GATTACA, the title of a movie on a genetic theme; each of those letters being the initial of one of the units of genetic code (adenine, thymine, cytosine, guanine).
Charlie said he had not noticed “GATAC” until I asked.