5 ms·

From net neutrality to digital privacy, Congress does diddly

100 points by evo_9 9y ago

fosco 9y ago
Anyone have thoughts on exams that require a passing grade to serve in Congress? I.e. demonstrate certain levels of knowledge in order to participate in certain conversations with new bills listing requirements at top thereby eliminating the ability to vote if that Congress person has not met the minimum? I realize this may be a bit off topic but my thought is that if more people in Congress (or other agencies/departments/commissions) understood technology they may behave differently, same goes for other areas. Thoughts?
- rayiner 9y ago
  Aside from being unconstitutional (http://www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/articles/1/essays/5/qualifications-for-representatives http://www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/articles/1/essays/5/...), it’d be undemocraric and tyrannical. If people wanted to be governed by people who had more book learning they’d elect them.
  - thaumasiotes 9y ago
    Sure, unconstitutional and undemocratic. But I don't see that the "undemocratic and tyrannical" argument applies any more to a test requirement than it does to the existing constitutional age requirements for holding office.
- make3 9y ago
  they are democratically elected, this would be questionable.
- ajmurmann 9y ago
  Ignoring the fact that this is never going to happen, it also is a unrealistic expectation. Not everyone can be a expert on everything but has to trust their colleagues and staffers on how to vote on some issues.
  - philhartmanonic 9y ago
    The problems with Congress isn't stupidity (not that they aren't stupid), it's corruption. There's no quiz for that. Beyond that, considering the history of tests as a precondition for participation in American politics...funny that it comes up as often as it does. Plus, if there was a test, isn't that something that'd quite possibly be on it?
    - zavi 9y ago
      Is there any evidence that there's corruption in US congress?
      - nthitz 9y ago
        Call if what you will. If Congress is serving corporations rather than the people that could lead to trouble. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying_in_the_United_States
- ISL 9y ago
  One should view with great suspicion any limit on anyone's access to government. Limits are easily bent to suit the will of whomever is in power. If Congresspeople aren't doing a good job, it is on us attempt to convince our representatives to change their minds. If that fails, it is on us to vote them out, and to convince others to vote in superior candidates.
- superquest 9y ago
  American democracy is designed to elect a geographically representative legislature. I wish it could also elect an ideologically representative legislature. Currently, I really appreciate how Senator Ron Johnson is fighting to give small business the same preferential tax treatment given to corporations by early drafts of the tax bill [1]. And you guessed it, he's doing it because he spent much of his career as a small businessman, unlike most congresspeople [2]. I have no idea how to achieve more of this, I don't think an exam would help at all! [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/27/us/politics/senate-tax-bills-potential-hurdle-republicans.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/27/us/politics/senate-tax-bi... [2] https://www.ronjohnson.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/biography https://www.ronjohnson.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/biography
  - harryh 9y ago
    That's not what Ron Johnson is doing at all. The changes in pass through rates are, quite literally, the worst part of the bill. Large businesses (C Corps) pay corporate tax and then when shareholders profit from their shares (either via dividends or cap gains) they pay individual income taxes. Small businesses (LLCs and S corps) don't pay corporate taxes but individual shareholders pay individual income taxes like above. What this bill does (and Johnson is trying to do more of) is create a whole new system for shareholders of LLCs and S Corps so that they don't even pay regular income taxes but a new tax at an even lower rate. This isn't giving preferential tax treatment to small businesses that corporations already get. It's creating a whole new thing that shouldn't exist in the first place.
- zavi 9y ago
  A more practical approach would be to have an aptitude test for general voting (higher score means heavier weight for the vote). Additional requirements could be added to gate voter eligibility such as having paid more federal taxes than consumed via welfare in a given year. All of these would, however, be unconstitutional, including the original proposal in the thread.
  - rtkwe 9y ago
    Wow not only wildly unconstitutional but given the wild imbalance in educational outcomes and just raw availability of educational resources anything like that is pretty much a new round of Jim Crow laws. And why spend any resources improving the education of this new second class groups because even if you slightly improve their lives their votes are worth less. Just an all around horrible idea.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
dingo_bat 9y ago
> In the case before the court, Timothy Carpenter’s cellular provider supplied investigators a record of his smartphone’s whereabouts. The pings placed Carpenter in the vicinity of several armed robberies in Ohio and Michigan. Now behind bars, he is asking the justices to find this a violation of his Fourth Amendment right to be safe from warrantless searches of his private domain. What is this bullshit?! Next a guy will murder somebody in the woods and return home in a bus. And the bus driver cannot tell the police he saw the guy on that route at such time? Have people gone insane over "privacy"?
- betterunix2 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusionary_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusionary_rule
  - dingo_bat 9y ago
    Doesn't apply because this doesn't violate any rights.
    - betterunix2 9y ago
      That is the question before the courts...
- ISL 9y ago
  The alternative is to allow the government to be able to search anyone's entire location history for the past decade at its own whim, without requesting a warrant. Amendment Four: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
  - dingo_bat 9y ago
    > The alternative is to allow the government to be able to search anyone's entire location history for the past decade at its own whim, without requesting a warrant. The ISP/cellphone company can choose not to give the history. > Amendment Four Nowhere does it say that third parties cannot provide information about you. Location data using cell tower usage is not the user's "person, house, paper or effect". It belongs to the operator.
40acres 9y ago
Congress is becoming a non factor. The amount of pettiness and partisianship over the past few years had made Congress into the de factor weakest branch of government. Most of Obama's legacy was executed via executive order and guidance given to executive departments, a year into the Trump administration and we are seeing the same thing. The other big decisions (gay marriage, citizens United, etc.) are being made by the courts, and despite the fact that Congress has to confirm judges (which is less daunting now that the judicial fillibuster is removed) Congress has become so partisan that you can get anyone confirmed with 50 Senators (+1 VP for a tiebreaker). We have so many pressing challenges ahead and we need new laws for this country to adapt, it's disheartening to see that Congress is not up for the task.
- ISL 9y ago
  We get the Congress for which we vote.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    The problem isn’t Congress—most people are happy with their own representatives. The problem is us. If we took 10 random people from New York City and ten from rural Alabama, they wouldn’t be able to get anything done either. Why are we surprised that the people those people elect can’t work together?
    - wallace_f 9y ago
      I personally think we need a civil libertarian movement. The abuses of the federal government are beyond ridiculous at this point. We are fighting over political differences while everyone's liberties/rights are legitimately being eroded. Congress is subservient to the Military, the Federal Reserve, and even relatively small-time players like Healthcare/Big Pharma. How many congressman are actually crying foul that Afghanistan, etc., are unconstitutional wars that are not approved by congress--a constitutional right of congress. Congress also has the right to issue and regulate currency, but even that we leave up to a private bank that has Wall St's best interests in mind--not the taxpayers. These kinds of constitutional injustices could go on and on. But most people are bombarded with the injustices of the latest Trump tweet, or the inhumanity of mansplaining.
allan_golds 9y ago
How unusual. A link to a paywall on hacker news.
jswizzy 9y ago
Good. To quote Lao Tzu, "The more restrictions and prohibitions there are, the poorer the people will be."
- dominostars 9y ago
  Were they talking about net neutrality or digital privacy at the time?
- flatline 9y ago
  Partisan gridlock is a long way from wu-wei. They may bear a superficial similarity but the situation we currently face is not really a choice between more rules and regulations and fewer. It is the difference between running a well-ordered state justly and efficiently, and leaving the most clever and ruthless individuals to carve out their own stakes unchecked.
j05huaNathaniel 9y ago
Wait, wait, wait. Let me get this straight. You guys think the GOVERNMENT is going to give you digital PRIVACY? lmao
makecheck 9y ago
Even if Congress were paying any attention to what constituents want (and they rarely seem to), it’s laughable that such a small number of people are expected to faithfully understand the wishes of so many people. Right now it’s on the order of one million regular people per representative! Moreover, with such a small number of people, buying them becomes “easy”; it just doesn’t take that much money to corrupt a few hundred people. If most people need to work their entire lives to reach a million dollars, does it really take much for billionaires to steer the ship? Now, if you were to vastly increase the number of representatives, you’d solve both problems. Suppose there were 5,000 members of Congress; then it would take a lot more money to corrupt enough people to change outcomes, and each of them would have to represent a much smaller fraction of the population. A huge number of representatives would’ve been impractical before the age of the Internet (as you’d need a stadium just to hold a session) but with secure remote access it’s quite feasible to have tons of people logged in at once. And heck, why not designate a Congress-stadium anyway, for rare in-person sessions? If it works for mega-churches, it can work for politicians.
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  ...or because the positions are smaller (and even less salient), it becomes easier to buy off a bunch of smaller reps. If the rep for Chattanooga is corrupt, would you know? Do you even know who they are, right now? I'm not aware of any academic research on this off the top of my head, but it must exist, that's probably a better reference than a belief that everything changes if we adjust some numbers. That's a very engineer-oriented approach, but it misses that the current crisis (can we call it that) is social. People have to decide they will not support and/or elect unethical morons who say what they want to hear. Until then, it doesn't matter, and you aren't going to be able to reform the system without getting reformers into it, anyway. If you can do that, why is a massive change needed? Don't mean to be a complete dick about this, but any supporting evidence would be appreciated. You made a logical leap (more reps = less corruption) which is not at all obvious.
  - secondbreakfast 9y ago
    It's not academic, but perhaps the founding fathers were onto something. The original constitution set the number of House Representatives to 1 for every 30,000 citizens. It was not until 1911 that the House capped the number at its present 435. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_House_of_Representatives#Number_of_Representatives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_H...
ProAm 9y ago
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” ― Upton Sinclair
bubblethink 9y ago
Maybe it would help to just assume a completely adversarial model in every facet of technology so that stuff like this becomes a non-issue in the long run. At least for privacy, I don't see much point in any legislation one way or the other. Does it even matter if a piece of paper says that some agency can or cannot intercept something ? I feel that it would be better if everyone just came to terms with the fact that loss of privacy is generally implied unless proven otherwise (i.e. rigorously). Debating over specifics of this phone case or that precedent seems so short sighted. Like if you are sending postal mail, how much expectation of privacy do you have, irrespective of what the law says ?
Algurnon 9y ago
Self driving cars will obsolete road rage just as machines can better administer lucre than avaricious humans. c.f. any or all of recorded history. Democracy is a very analog 18th century mechanism for collective resource allocation. Designed by candle light, its grossly obsolete in these times and could easily be replaced by an ERP type apparatus. It sounds like the start of a good Sci-Fi novel. As do any of the last 24 mos.

100 points by evo_9 9y ago

Anyone have thoughts on exams that require a passing grade to serve in Congress? I.e. demonstrate certain levels of knowledge in order to participate in certain conversations with new bills listing requirements at top thereby eliminating the ability to vote if that Congress person has not met the minimum? I realize this may be a bit off topic but my thought is that if more people in Congress (or other agencies/departments/commissions) understood technology they may behave differently, same goes for other areas. Thoughts?

rayiner 9y ago
Aside from being unconstitutional (http://www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/articles/1/essays/5/qualifications-for-representatives http://www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/articles/1/essays/5/...), it’d be undemocraric and tyrannical. If people wanted to be governed by people who had more book learning they’d elect them.
- thaumasiotes 9y ago
  Sure, unconstitutional and undemocratic. But I don't see that the "undemocratic and tyrannical" argument applies any more to a test requirement than it does to the existing constitutional age requirements for holding office.
make3 9y ago
they are democratically elected, this would be questionable.
ajmurmann 9y ago
Ignoring the fact that this is never going to happen, it also is a unrealistic expectation. Not everyone can be a expert on everything but has to trust their colleagues and staffers on how to vote on some issues.
- philhartmanonic 9y ago
  The problems with Congress isn't stupidity (not that they aren't stupid), it's corruption. There's no quiz for that. Beyond that, considering the history of tests as a precondition for participation in American politics...funny that it comes up as often as it does. Plus, if there was a test, isn't that something that'd quite possibly be on it?
  - zavi 9y ago
    Is there any evidence that there's corruption in US congress?
    - nthitz 9y ago
      Call if what you will. If Congress is serving corporations rather than the people that could lead to trouble. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying_in_the_United_States
ISL 9y ago
One should view with great suspicion any limit on anyone's access to government. Limits are easily bent to suit the will of whomever is in power. If Congresspeople aren't doing a good job, it is on us attempt to convince our representatives to change their minds. If that fails, it is on us to vote them out, and to convince others to vote in superior candidates.
superquest 9y ago
American democracy is designed to elect a geographically representative legislature. I wish it could also elect an ideologically representative legislature. Currently, I really appreciate how Senator Ron Johnson is fighting to give small business the same preferential tax treatment given to corporations by early drafts of the tax bill [1]. And you guessed it, he's doing it because he spent much of his career as a small businessman, unlike most congresspeople [2]. I have no idea how to achieve more of this, I don't think an exam would help at all! [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/27/us/politics/senate-tax-bills-potential-hurdle-republicans.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/27/us/politics/senate-tax-bi... [2] https://www.ronjohnson.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/biography https://www.ronjohnson.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/biography
- harryh 9y ago
  That's not what Ron Johnson is doing at all. The changes in pass through rates are, quite literally, the worst part of the bill. Large businesses (C Corps) pay corporate tax and then when shareholders profit from their shares (either via dividends or cap gains) they pay individual income taxes. Small businesses (LLCs and S corps) don't pay corporate taxes but individual shareholders pay individual income taxes like above. What this bill does (and Johnson is trying to do more of) is create a whole new system for shareholders of LLCs and S Corps so that they don't even pay regular income taxes but a new tax at an even lower rate. This isn't giving preferential tax treatment to small businesses that corporations already get. It's creating a whole new thing that shouldn't exist in the first place.
zavi 9y ago
A more practical approach would be to have an aptitude test for general voting (higher score means heavier weight for the vote). Additional requirements could be added to gate voter eligibility such as having paid more federal taxes than consumed via welfare in a given year. All of these would, however, be unconstitutional, including the original proposal in the thread.
- rtkwe 9y ago
  Wow not only wildly unconstitutional but given the wild imbalance in educational outcomes and just raw availability of educational resources anything like that is pretty much a new round of Jim Crow laws. And why spend any resources improving the education of this new second class groups because even if you slightly improve their lives their votes are worth less. Just an all around horrible idea.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

dingo_bat 9y ago

> In the case before the court, Timothy Carpenter’s cellular provider supplied investigators a record of his smartphone’s whereabouts. The pings placed Carpenter in the vicinity of several armed robberies in Ohio and Michigan. Now behind bars, he is asking the justices to find this a violation of his Fourth Amendment right to be safe from warrantless searches of his private domain. What is this bullshit?! Next a guy will murder somebody in the woods and return home in a bus. And the bus driver cannot tell the police he saw the guy on that route at such time? Have people gone insane over "privacy"?

betterunix2 9y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusionary_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusionary_rule
- dingo_bat 9y ago
  Doesn't apply because this doesn't violate any rights.
  - betterunix2 9y ago
    That is the question before the courts...
ISL 9y ago
The alternative is to allow the government to be able to search anyone's entire location history for the past decade at its own whim, without requesting a warrant. Amendment Four: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
- dingo_bat 9y ago
  > The alternative is to allow the government to be able to search anyone's entire location history for the past decade at its own whim, without requesting a warrant. The ISP/cellphone company can choose not to give the history. > Amendment Four Nowhere does it say that third parties cannot provide information about you. Location data using cell tower usage is not the user's "person, house, paper or effect". It belongs to the operator.

40acres 9y ago

Congress is becoming a non factor. The amount of pettiness and partisianship over the past few years had made Congress into the de factor weakest branch of government. Most of Obama's legacy was executed via executive order and guidance given to executive departments, a year into the Trump administration and we are seeing the same thing. The other big decisions (gay marriage, citizens United, etc.) are being made by the courts, and despite the fact that Congress has to confirm judges (which is less daunting now that the judicial fillibuster is removed) Congress has become so partisan that you can get anyone confirmed with 50 Senators (+1 VP for a tiebreaker). We have so many pressing challenges ahead and we need new laws for this country to adapt, it's disheartening to see that Congress is not up for the task.

ISL 9y ago
We get the Congress for which we vote.
- rayiner 9y ago
  The problem isn’t Congress—most people are happy with their own representatives. The problem is us. If we took 10 random people from New York City and ten from rural Alabama, they wouldn’t be able to get anything done either. Why are we surprised that the people those people elect can’t work together?
  - wallace_f 9y ago
    I personally think we need a civil libertarian movement. The abuses of the federal government are beyond ridiculous at this point. We are fighting over political differences while everyone's liberties/rights are legitimately being eroded. Congress is subservient to the Military, the Federal Reserve, and even relatively small-time players like Healthcare/Big Pharma. How many congressman are actually crying foul that Afghanistan, etc., are unconstitutional wars that are not approved by congress--a constitutional right of congress. Congress also has the right to issue and regulate currency, but even that we leave up to a private bank that has Wall St's best interests in mind--not the taxpayers. These kinds of constitutional injustices could go on and on. But most people are bombarded with the injustices of the latest Trump tweet, or the inhumanity of mansplaining.

allan_golds 9y ago

How unusual. A link to a paywall on hacker news.

jswizzy 9y ago

Good. To quote Lao Tzu, "The more restrictions and prohibitions there are, the poorer the people will be."

dominostars 9y ago
Were they talking about net neutrality or digital privacy at the time?
flatline 9y ago
Partisan gridlock is a long way from wu-wei. They may bear a superficial similarity but the situation we currently face is not really a choice between more rules and regulations and fewer. It is the difference between running a well-ordered state justly and efficiently, and leaving the most clever and ruthless individuals to carve out their own stakes unchecked.

j05huaNathaniel 9y ago

Wait, wait, wait. Let me get this straight. You guys think the GOVERNMENT is going to give you digital PRIVACY? lmao

makecheck 9y ago

Even if Congress were paying any attention to what constituents want (and they rarely seem to), it’s laughable that such a small number of people are expected to faithfully understand the wishes of so many people. Right now it’s on the order of one million regular people per representative! Moreover, with such a small number of people, buying them becomes “easy”; it just doesn’t take that much money to corrupt a few hundred people. If most people need to work their entire lives to reach a million dollars, does it really take much for billionaires to steer the ship? Now, if you were to vastly increase the number of representatives, you’d solve both problems. Suppose there were 5,000 members of Congress; then it would take a lot more money to corrupt enough people to change outcomes, and each of them would have to represent a much smaller fraction of the population. A huge number of representatives would’ve been impractical before the age of the Internet (as you’d need a stadium just to hold a session) but with secure remote access it’s quite feasible to have tons of people logged in at once. And heck, why not designate a Congress-stadium anyway, for rare in-person sessions? If it works for mega-churches, it can work for politicians.

aaron-lebo 9y ago
...or because the positions are smaller (and even less salient), it becomes easier to buy off a bunch of smaller reps. If the rep for Chattanooga is corrupt, would you know? Do you even know who they are, right now? I'm not aware of any academic research on this off the top of my head, but it must exist, that's probably a better reference than a belief that everything changes if we adjust some numbers. That's a very engineer-oriented approach, but it misses that the current crisis (can we call it that) is social. People have to decide they will not support and/or elect unethical morons who say what they want to hear. Until then, it doesn't matter, and you aren't going to be able to reform the system without getting reformers into it, anyway. If you can do that, why is a massive change needed? Don't mean to be a complete dick about this, but any supporting evidence would be appreciated. You made a logical leap (more reps = less corruption) which is not at all obvious.
- secondbreakfast 9y ago
  It's not academic, but perhaps the founding fathers were onto something. The original constitution set the number of House Representatives to 1 for every 30,000 citizens. It was not until 1911 that the House capped the number at its present 435. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_House_of_Representatives#Number_of_Representatives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_H...

ProAm 9y ago

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” ― Upton Sinclair

bubblethink 9y ago

Maybe it would help to just assume a completely adversarial model in every facet of technology so that stuff like this becomes a non-issue in the long run. At least for privacy, I don't see much point in any legislation one way or the other. Does it even matter if a piece of paper says that some agency can or cannot intercept something ? I feel that it would be better if everyone just came to terms with the fact that loss of privacy is generally implied unless proven otherwise (i.e. rigorously). Debating over specifics of this phone case or that precedent seems so short sighted. Like if you are sending postal mail, how much expectation of privacy do you have, irrespective of what the law says ?

Algurnon 9y ago

Self driving cars will obsolete road rage just as machines can better administer lucre than avaricious humans. c.f. any or all of recorded history. Democracy is a very analog 18th century mechanism for collective resource allocation. Designed by candle light, its grossly obsolete in these times and could easily be replaced by an ERP type apparatus. It sounds like the start of a good Sci-Fi novel. As do any of the last 24 mos.