h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Were the Stasi spies? Or police? The two aren't mutually exclusive, are they?

(Q: How do you know the Stasi have put a bug in your bedroom? A: You've got a new wardrobe)

Indeed:

Spies: 3rd person singular present, plural of spy
Noun: A person who secretly collects and reports information about an enemy or competitor.
Verb: Work for an organization by secretly collecting information about enemies or competitors.

... and all this detracts from & seeks to shut down discussion of Otto's point.

... & my rebuttal (comment 15).

I object to the implication that I sought to shut down discussion. I have neither the ability nor the inclination to do so.

I seriously object to being accused of seeking to shut down a discussion. And now I'm off since it's almost impossible to bring real world experience to this discussion without having to hunt you all down and do terrible things.

before i go: as we know from bitter experience the Stasi were everyone. However, there are distinctions - your neighbour might have been a Stasi informer but they aren't the ones who did the rounding up. Perhaps a better definition of what a spy actually is, and an understanding of what they actually do would be in order?

Your "Spies don't round people up." was like commenting on split infinitives rather than content ... and the "spies" association was following on from the language used by Otto which was the comment I was commenting on. Anyway it's good we can all debate about issues in general without getting too narky about form etc.

Sho, you're right. Defining terms is always good. But you can't use a word like "spies" as if it is a job description. It's not.

I think "spies" works pretty well as a job description. I think most people, i.e. people not trying to derail the discussion, understand perfectly well what it is that spies do in the real world, which is to say, they spy. They work in secret, they collect information, and they report it, quietly, to some overseeing body, usually a government (although you have industrial spies, too, stealing technological secrets).

And then that overseeing body makes a decision as to whether or not to send the boys round... "the boys", in this case, being, say, the police. Or the SAS. Or whoever.

But generally, "the boys" who get sent round are not the same people who discovered the information that leads to the sending, for the perfectly sensible reason that the job of covertly discovering information and reporting it requires a very different set of skills and aptitudes than the, er... going round.

^^ that is what I was trying to say.

Because although spies is naturally a very unprecise term, there is a separation, generally, between the collecting of information and the execution of whatever the govt does as a result of seeing that information.
not that I know too much about it

sorry, went too early: the SAS of curse being one of those murky areas where the lines are blurred and it might very well be that the guy who grips you by the elbow and walks you to the van is the very same one who has been watching your nefarious activities.

I'll ignore the fact that what you have described is a behaviour rather than a job description, and let you get back to the question.

"most people, i.e. people not trying to derail the discussion, understand perfectly well "

Hmm, covert operations like assassinations and sabotage are widely considered within the remit of 'spy stuff', at least in a colloquial way. Having said that, I suspect a lot of people who think this way are not really thinking about it too much, and basing their judgement mainly on James Bond films...

Can we stick to Le Carre terminology here? Are we talking joes, scalphunters, lamplighters or moles?

"covert operations like assassinations and sabotage are widely considered within the remit of 'spy stuff' [...] basing their judgement mainly on James Bond films..."

Which was why I was careful to specify in post 29 the phrase "in the real world". Real world spies have mostly really boring jobs in offices, and there are THOUSANDS of them. At any given time the UK is probably employing no more than a few dozen people who get up to properly James-Bond-style stuff, and most of them will be drawing Army salaries rather than civil service.

Your point was pretty close to mine, actually.

indeed it takes a particular sort of geeky train spotter type to find all that stuff interesting. I can't say I found that kind of work boring at all