Federal grammar

[robinturner]

It's nice to know the FBI have a good grasp of syntax. I quote from the recent subpoena issued to Google:

"And" and "or" shall be construed either conjunctively or disjunctively as necessary to bring within the scope of the request all reponses that might otherwise be construed to be outside of its scope.

Of course we still do not know whether the "or" in that sentence is conjunctive or disjunctive.

Comments

[vret.livejournal.com]

I always thought that J. Edgar Hoover looked like a giant egg.

holy underspecification, batman!

[(Anonymous)]

wow. I first read it without "otherwise", which makes this like the Humpty-Dumpty: "when I use a word, it means just what I intend, and nothing else." (ah, I just understood the comment above my own).

Even with the "otherwise", this clause effectively says "for the purposes of this document, 'and' and 'or' are equivalent in specifying as large a set as possible", which is pretty fast-and-loose with the language.

Re: holy underspecification, batman!

[trochee.livejournal.com]

blah. that was me. don't know how I got logged out.

Re: holy underspecification, batman!

[vret.livejournal.com]

Everybody got logged out as part of a one-off security upgrade.