Level Playing Field

From our Language Abuse Department.

We all learn in school how euphemisms, exaggerations, and understatement work. We know what lies are, white and otherwise.

We succumb to fashions of language, from crumbling cookies to wazz up, and we have used words like bad in their baddest meanings.

The K-Landnews team prides itself on being aware of language -- we won't claim that many of our posts show that awareness, though. Every now and then, our frustration with a word or an idiom boils over.

Generally, this happens when we see utter carelessness or deception, and the "level playing field" has become our latest peeve in the context of all the nonsense trying to explain to us why surveillance is good or at least necessary.

An article in today's German Zeit online about German police officers on internet patrol did it for us. TheEditor, the master of the painfully obvious, suspects it (he or she) might be suffering from a mild concussion caused by incessant shaking of the big head at police claiming that they cannot keep pace with criminals online. We don't have a level playing field, say our protectors.

There is indeed one tool that criminals can use and that police has no easy way of combating: encryption. Even encryption, though, is not fool proof and not the cure all. Look through the recent spy debate to find out why.

If you look a bit closer, life is stacked against the low level criminal, and most complaints by police really mean the cops don't think their life is easy enough. They need to talk to a judge to get an IP address?

Police get to be on the internet all day browsing around and they get paid for it. How easy does it have to be?

The article said the officers caught "numerous" criminals. No exact numbers are given, which seems to be the way law enforcement in many countries counts these days.

In third grade, we used to joke about fellow students with no math skills: "How does Johnny count to ten?" one of us would ask.
Our friends would respond in unison: "One, two, many".

At least this version of the playing field can now be considered equal.