this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2026
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Surveillance strategies in the UK and Israel often go global

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[–] bobzer@lemmy.zip 13 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Was this written by a native English speaker?

It's hard to take seriously with so many grammatical errors

[–] veeesix@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 hours ago (1 children)
[–] TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 13 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

No, beyond the legalese. For example, the comma placement in:

which, unknown to them threatens,

The comma should go after "them", because "unknown to them" constitutes the entire aside.

If you delete the aside in this, it reads "which national security", whereas it should read "which threatens national security".

This is just the first one I found; I didn't go hunting for them. It's one of those grammatical mistakes that actively ruins the cadence of the sentence as you read it in your head.

[–] bobzer@lemmy.zip 5 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (2 children)

And worse mistakes:

where there must be at least possibility that

I have complete sympathy for non-native speakers writing papers, but it also raises the question of whether they properly understand the source material they're referencing.

[–] TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 6 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I will inform you that this excerpt is correct English. There needn't be an article like "a" or "the" before "possibility". It reads awkwardly in everyday language, but that really is just innocent "legalese" phrasing.

[–] bobzer@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 hour ago

Thanks for the correction. Rereading it I can kind of see if they mean possibility as an abstract concept, so I'll take the L on it.

But I still maintain it's a pretty fucked way of phrasing it.

[–] tyler@programming.dev 3 points 2 hours ago

That is perfectly grammatical English, especially in legal texts.