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The main point of the "exercise" is to discuss the issues and a few politicians hijack a few minutes of time to make political jabs for the media. The rest of
by wybiral 8y ago
The main point of the "exercise" is to discuss the issues and a few politicians hijack a few minutes of time to make political jabs for the media.
The rest of it is still important. They're asking questions and forming their perception of the situation which they use to shape policy.
- Retric 8y agoIf they simply want fact finding they could do that over a phone call.* The circus is very much the point. * Granted, phone calls don't have the weight of purgery to keep people honest. But, that only goes so far.
- wybiral 8y agoIn this case it isn't a "circus". Watch these hearings, they aren't as sensational as you seem to think [1]. When it comes to information warfare and propaganda, you'll see them come to the same type of conclusion on multiple panels, which is that public awareness is a key component in any effective counter measure. Giving the leaders of these industries a mic to educate the public seems in all of our best interest. Not all of these committees are some kind of "circus". It's just a normal part of how these things work. [1] Recent example: https://www.c-span.org/video/?449088-1/senate-intelligence-committee-holds-hearing-social-media-foreign-influence https://www.c-span.org/video/?449088-1/senate-intelligence-c... PS: If our politicians did all of these behind closed doors and on private phones you'd be on here complaining about that too. I prefer that some of this happens in the public eye.
- joshuamorton 8y agoThere kavanaugh hearing wasn't a circus either (ignoring the protestors), but it's still just a tool to generate soundbites. A closed door hearing is for fact finding, public ones are for proselytizing.
- wybiral 8y agoOr... It's done in public to keep the public informed as to what issues they're looking at and help us follow along because transparency is a useful component in democracy? Just because a tiny amount of grandstanding happens doesn't make it all mock/show. Full disclosure, you're a Googler.
- joshuamorton 8y agoYour first paragraph would be spot on if there were only a tiny amount of grandstanding. The majority of questions at every hearing I've seen have been politically biased grandstanding, with the goal of creating a soundbite that appeals to the base, not of factually informing the public.
- wybiral 8y agoWhich Intelligence Committee hearings are you talking about? I linked to a recent one in a grandparent post that has almost no grandstanding as far as I'm concerned and for the IC that's usually how it is. I can't speak for the larger committees with more media attention.
- joshuamorton 8y agoLet me put it this way: if you want to have a real productive discussion on data privacy, you want the head lawyer who, despite Senate grandstanding, probably does make legal decisions for the company. You don't want the guy who thinks that google, probably uses version control software, but doesn't know what it is. The ic didn't want a decision maker, they wanted a heel.
- wybiral 8y agoLet me put it this way: when the entire point is to educate the public about ongoing attacks and to show that these companies are taking all of this seriously... Snubbing our Intelligence Committee because Page didn't prioritize it highly enough seems, to me, to be the least helpful thing your employer could have done.
- RIMR 8y agoWe live in a Democracy. These fact finding exercises must occur in view of the public. C-SPAN covers this stuff verbatim, with zero spin. This stuff is very important to Democracy, and sitting it out is horrible optics.
- teddyh 8y ago> purgery That’s “perjury”.