I’ve been working on decyber for giggles – and tuning it a bit; a new feature (just gone in) is a show changes checkbox – at which point something clearly leaps out.

Journalists tend to stick to basic cyberterminology and just overuse it – which triggers the rewrite rules that replace each cybercliche with something a bit more realistic:, for instance:

The UK government has today released its 2011 Internet Security Strategy.

With an increased focus on ****crime, and renewed focus on the internet as an engine of economic and social prosperity, the strategy continues to hone Whitehall’s understanding of this vibrant, complex and increasingly global domain.

Many of the strategy objectives – in particular those related to securing critical infrastructure – will require close engagement with the private sector.

These public-private partnerships are essential, and, as noted in a recent Chatham House report on critical national infrastructure, they require awareness, engagement and trust among senior decision makers on all sides.

This is not an easy process and requires a keen understanding of the incentives that guide actions in the public and private sectors.

…where boldface represents an edit and **** an elision/removal. Mostly I have managed to hardcode phrases that journalists use and the number of elisions is relatively small.

This is in rampant contrast to government documentation where use of “cyber” is much more creative, and the rate of elisions is huge:

The UK is a world leader in internet security research, development and innovation. GCHQ is the lead in this area and the new strategy aims to capitalise on this through an innovative approach which will explore options with UK industry to harness this expertise and know-how for the benefit of the UK economy.

This strategy also outlines our plans for a new **** Crime Unit with the National Crime Agency, to be up and running by 2013. This unit will build on the ground-breaking work of the Metropolitan Police’s eCrime Unit by expanding the deployment of ‘****specials’ giving police forces across the country the necessary skills and experience to handle **** crimes. We will also ensure that the police use existing powers to ensure that **** criminals are appropriately sanctioned as well as introducing a new single reporting system to report financially motivated **** crime through the existing Action Fraud reporting centre.

To defend against significant threats we need to continue the work we are doing to protect and prepare our Critical National Infrastructure. We also need to update our military defence capabilities for a new **** world; this strategy outlines the creation of a new Joint **** Unit hosted by GCHQ which will develop our military capabilities to give the UK a comparative advantage in the internet.

It’s painful to keep up; who would have thought of cyberspecials, ie: internet-savvy volunteer police officers? And cyberworld? Cyberunit?

But (say) cybercrime is just crime by other means, so elision is the right way to deal with it.