6 ms·
How this happened [1]: In a late-night session of Congress, House Speaker Paul Ryan announced a new version of the “omnibus” bill, a massive piece of legislati
by randomname2 11y ago
How this happened [1]:
In a late-night session of Congress, House Speaker Paul Ryan announced a new version of the “omnibus” bill, a massive piece of legislation that deals with much of the federal government’s funding. It now includes a version of CISA as well. Lumping CISA in with the omnibus bill further reduces any chance for debate over its surveillance-friendly provisions, or a White House veto. And the latest version actually chips away even further at the remaining personal information protections that privacy advocates had fought for in the version of the bill that passed the Senate.
Snowden's comment on this:
Shameful: @Facebook secretly backing Senate's zombie #CISA surveillance bill while publicly pretending to oppose it. https://t.co/du7RK7V1WJ https://t.co/du7RK7V1WJ
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) October 25, 2015
[1] http://www.wired.com/2015/12/congress-slips-cisa-into-omnibus-bill-thats-sure-to-pass/ http://www.wired.com/2015/12/congress-slips-cisa-into-omnibu...
- mtgx 11y agoIf the USA Freedom Act was 1 step forward for privacy (also debatable if even that), this is 5 steps back. The US really needs to break away from its 2-party system, and the only way to do that is to kill the FPTP voting system. Otherwise, Americans will never have real choices for stuff that really matters.
- fixermark 11y agoI'm not convinced that even a flat popular vote wouldn't have supported CISA. Maybe this is just the generation of internet users who are willing to trade other people's freedom for their own security, given the chance?
- nakedrobot2 11y agoCan someone explain why/how the CISA portion of the bill can or can't be removed later?
- maaku 11y agoNot by any likely means.
- jessriedel 11y agoWhat are you asking exactly? In order to be attached to the bill, the amendment must be approved by a majority of the chamber. So that means it's already garnered support from congress, and congress is unlikely to take it off again before voting on the bill as a whole. Once it passes congress, the only way for it to be defeated would be for the president to veto the enormous budget bill based only on the amendment, which he is very unlikely to do (even if he did disapprove of CISA, which I don't think he does).
- natch 11y agoI think he means, while they approved the bill, warts and all, that doesn't mean everybody likes all the warts. (Although it is congress, so we have to assume they DO like warts... but let's put that aside). He's asking if they can come back and remove some of the warts, essentially, in a separate action at a later time.
- jessriedel 11y agoBut a majority of congress did like the wart. That's why the amendment adding the CISA text to the omnibus bill passed, and that's while it's very unlikely to be repealed later. (Of course it's possible to repeal it later, as is true for all laws; they didn't pass a constitutional amendment.) The public-choice situation as I understand it is that CISA was a bill that concentrated interests (large tech companies) liked but which the public as a whole did not like (insofar as they bothered to know about it). The key to passing such a bill is to minimize publicity and bundle it with a distraction.
- tptacek 11y agoBoth CISA and PCNA passed with large amounts of publicity and long review periods.
- jessriedel 11y agoOK, I don't necessarily disagree, but why tack CISA onto the omnibus budget bill if not to avoid publicity? There was no compromise justification (i.e. no argument that CISA + budget bill would pass even though neither would pass alone), correct?
- harshreality 11y agoThe law is not append-only. Bills can add and remove anything to/from the current body of law previously passed by the legislature (as distinct from the Constitution—there's a more complex procedure for ammending that—and as distinct from executive branch regulations—which can be effectively neutralized [requiring an executive rewrite] by legislation banning programs or actions or by denying funding, but Congress cannot directly rewrite exec regs). Congress rarely removes anything because there's rarely a benefit to the representatives to remove existing law. Special interests prefer exceptions carved out rather than striking out broad provisions that are currently active.
- merpnderp 11y agoIt's useful to note that Paul Ryan gained his position by saying shady backroom deals like this, plus giving Congress almost no time to read and think about the bill themselves, were the exact things he promised to stop. So his very first act as speaker is to break every single promise he made to become speaker.
- SturgeonsLaw 11y agoI am Jack's complete lack of surprise
- owly 11y agoIndeed.
- twoodfin 11y agoIt's useful to note that Paul Ryan gained his position by saying shady backroom deals like this, plus giving Congress almost no time to read and think about the bill themselves, were the exact things he promised to stop. He did? I thought he got the job (after much cajoling) because he was the only candidate the moderate and right wings of the GOP could agree on.
- tptacek 11y agoYes. He had to be courted; the House Freedom Caucus had to make concessions for him to accept the job. The modal HN user has either a DailyKos or RedState (mostly Kos) understanding of US politics.
- robotkilla 11y agoI feel like I'm living in a twilight zone episode. I don't think we're ever going to see an end to this and I think its going to get worse and worse and no one is going to notice until there really is no way out. I'm sick of seeing comments about voting bad / good lawmakers out / in. Clearly that doesn't work because most citizens don't give a shit because they're too stupid to understand what is happening. Even when you educate them they're so shell shocked by the news that they're willing to let the powers that be shepherd them into servitude. We're all megafucked. Just wait until trump worms his way into office and uses this to round up whomever he hates at the moment. Imagine if bush had this level of power when he made the comments about atheists not being real citizens... i'm genuinely worried about the future.
- Aaronik 11y ago> Even when you educate them they're so shell shocked by the news that they're willing to let the powers that be shepherd them into servitude. We're all megafucked. The shell shocked attitude that's followed by complacency is exactly, "We're all megafucked," possibly in other words. It's exactly that attitude that we need to steer away from, no matter how grim the landscape looks. That's step 1 to change.
- robotkilla 11y agoif correcting one's attitude is step one, what is step two? voting? what real victories have been won on this front recently? and i'm not advocating for extremism nor am i advocating for complacency, the game just seems stacked with zero possibility of change.
- raintrees 11y agoI have recently gotten involved in local government and local community-supporting non-profits. The US as a world power and example of virtuousness seems to be on its way to the dustbin, so I am focusing on protecting/making healthy my community. If our local community can become strong enough, we may have a chance to survive to see what the next attempt at national/federal(/world?) government might look like. It's one of the few ways I can think of to do something positive and legal. And non-violent.
- MichaelGG 11y agoI'd love more reasons to hate Facebook, but is there any real sourcing for that? @Snowden seems to be linking to BoingBoing, who then links to Fight for the Future[1], which just claims secret sources. OK, but are they known to historically have had accurate secret info? Their landing page has this quote "If CISA passes, all your photos, posts, relationships, and likes will have a path to government databases." Which, from what very little I understand, is not quite true. At a minimum, "government databases" already have such a path via subpoenas, NSLs and such right? I want to believe FB is worse, yes. I'd just like a more convincing source to give people. 1: https://www.youbetrayedus.org/facebook/ https://www.youbetrayedus.org/facebook/
- propogandist 11y agoFB made it seem as if their CEO was donating his wealth to charity, even though his wealth was going to a private LLC. Most people believe Zuckerburg is a saint and just know the story propogated by the PR firms. People are not going to distrust a [free] service they use daily, they'll give FB benefit of the doubt, time and time again. It doesn't matter how good the source, today's users are addicts.
- DavidSJ 11y agoAll I can find from that Snowden tweet is https://www.youbetrayedus.org/facebook/ https://www.youbetrayedus.org/facebook/ . Are there any news articles explaining what the source of this claim is? That's a big deal if true.
- peter303 11y agoThe bill was online for two days before voting. I looked at sections of it. Any Congressman could have read in advance. It was very long and had lots of number amounts. Only an expert could tell if these were increases or decreases.
- caseysoftware 11y agoIncreases. There have been very few true "cuts" at the Federal level in the last few generations. The secret is Baseline Budgeting[1]. If your agency got $100 this year, you ask for $110 next year and that becomes the "baseline." Now when the actual budget negotiations happen, you may only get $105. Most people would call this a 5% increase but instead they consider it a (roughly) 5% cut from the baseline. This is how the government can claim they're "cutting the budget" while still spending more than last year. For a bonus, imagine the above agency is sympathetic - like the food stamp program - and requests $200 next year. When some Congressperson says "No wait, you only need $110," they're accused of "cutting food stamps in half" and "wanting people to starve!" It's effective for tearing apart the other person, not effective for actually getting things done. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseline_(budgeting) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseline_(budgeting)
- rgbrenner 11y agoyou make it sound like the numbers are out of thin air.. but your link says: Baseline budgeting uses current spending levels as the "baseline" for establishing future funding requirements and assumes future budgets will equal the current budget times the inflation rate times the population growth rate. Sounds reasonable to me.
- caseysoftware 11y agoThat's the idealized definition, yes. But in practice, that's not how it works. There are one-time projects, ongoing programs, an ever-changing list of agency priorities, and - like any negotiation - groups start higher than they need so they have wiggle room. And yes, many of those things are out of thin air or completely arbitrary.