Indeed; but the ‘state’ as in ‘state power’ needn’t be 'state as in ‘nation state’. Towns, counties, parishes states(in the US sense), etc. all exercise some amount of ‘state power’, despite not being nation states. Nation states tend to be the most dramatic, because they have the largest armies and the biggest budgets; but as every story about American cops or British ‘councils’ tends to illustrate, even the Municipal Authorities of Podunk can and do exercise ‘state power’, albeit by the sufferance of the nation-state in which they are incorporated.
(Plus, with the Corporation of the City of London lying entirely within the Congestion Charge Zone, and thus it being a matter of overt public knowledge that every vehicle coming in or out, or moving inside, is tracked with enough granularity(possibly more) to assess that charge and catch violators, The City of London is certainly pretty damn surveilled at a local level(one level higher, since I think that scheme is under the GLA; but not national))
Is it wrong of me to be slightly heartened to know that the ability of the US government to self delude and doublespeak, is shared by the British, who sound so much more intellectual in their dialect than we do across the pond?
I agree that May’s statements are absurd, considering the list of atrocities with which Cory’s article begins; however, I am also fully aware that another list, much longer and more horrifying, could be compiled in reference to the malevolence perpetrated by actual criminals, extremists, and psychos. Are we to rely on anonymous do-good hackers to counteract them? Maybe someone should come up with an alternative to the UK, US, and other surveillance states.
While we’ve got our pedantic hats on, Theresa May is a Secretary of State (as in, one of many), so the headline still stands. Still worth clarifying though…
I used to know someone who was evidence that Michael Howard hadn’t had his humanity completely removed - he personally intervened in their immigration case to allow them to stay.
"We have to make sure that the capabilities can only be used with the right authorisation and with appropriate oversight," she said.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Because clearly there’s been no such authorization or appropriate oversight in the past. Twas just a bunch o’ monkeys in that damned surveillance office up until now.
Godwin’s itself is worthless bullshit at this point, though, as it’s been used too long as a blanket smackdown even when the shoe just plain fits.
Fuck anyone who still cites it.
If you count wars under government-sponsored malevolence, you end up orders of magnitude over anything the non-state malicious actors can even dream about.
Especially considering that Godwin’s Law does not say “Whoever makes a comparison to Hitler or Nazis automatically loses the argument,” as seems to be the popular misunderstanding. It simply points out that the probability of someone mentioning Nazis in an online forum approaches an asymptote with the length of the discussion. While many comparisons to the National Socialist Party are indeed fatuous or perfidious (e.g. “grammar Nazis,” “Feminazis,”) Godwin cannot legitimately be used as a trump card.
