4 ms·

This is the specific proposed rule to reference: https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-seeks-comment-enhanced-know-your-customer-requirements https://www.fcc.gov/doc

by mcmcmc 4mo ago

This is the specific proposed rule to reference: https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-seeks-comment-enhanced-know-your-customer-requirements https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-seeks-comment-enhanced-know...

Ajedi32 4mo ago
What I find most concerning is that this isn't a bill or law. Unelected government officials at the FCC can apparently just decide to do this.
- IAmBroom 4mo ago
  Yes, that is the way federal agencies work. Details of complex systems are decided by (hopefully apolitical, public-good-oriented) specialists in the field of interest. One alternative is that Trump can do it at will. Or, to add a few more steps, Trump can fire the FCC head at will, replace him with a lackey, and then do it at will.
  - Ajedi32 4mo ago
    > [Laws] are decided by (hopefully apolitical, public-good-oriented) specialists in the field of interest This doesn't sound to me at all like how a democratic country is supposed to function. It feels like you're describing China rather than the US. > Trump can do it at will. Which is also not how our constitution is supposed to work. The executive branch (which includes both the president and his appointees) is not supposed to be able to make laws, only execute on existing law. Yes, I know this is how the system works these days. I'm just lamenting how it went so wrong...
    - mothballed 4mo ago
      The intellectual-academic class are having an existential crisis that they've lost the reigns of the unelected bureaucratic apparatus and it is now being wielded against them. They are still confused at how to respond to this as they're certain they couldn't have been wrong about deferring (uh, 'delegate regulatory authority') the power vested in congress and elected representation to themselves. Surprise pikachu when it turns out the "apolitical, public goal oriented specialists' were useful idiots in the process of handing power from congress to the executive. If you thought the political apparatus was willingly going to leave the reigns to "apolitical specialists" rather than ruthlessly consolidating it toward the hands of the most power hungry self-dealing monsters that can command the executive branch then obviously you have not been living in in reality. Of course by the time the blindfold has been removed, the power is already largely consolidated.
      - deleted 4mo ago
        [deleted]
      - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
        > unelected bureaucratic apparatus Unelected—often unappointed—bureaucrats have never had more power in the U.S. government than they have today.
    - Terr_ 4mo ago
      Hold up: Parent-poster is obviously talking about federal regulations, not federal laws, and there are important differences between them... so why have you altered the quote to say [Laws]? That's false. You've put your own words into their mouth to create a "sounds like China" strawman.
      - Ajedi32 4mo ago
        Ah yes I forgot, they're not "laws" just "rules" that the government will come after you if you break. Silly me.
        JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
        > they're not "laws" just "rules" that the government will come after you if you break If you break a rule you get fined. If you break a law you can go to jail. (Congress can delegate regulation around crimes to an agency, but the crime generally has to be substantially described by statute.)
        mothballed 4mo ago
        I'd like to see someone explain why a .50 BMG bolt action upper receiver (AR-15 type) is a firearm but a .556 bolt action upper receiver (AR-15 type) is not. It's literally the same damn thing but with a different sized cartridge. Nothing in the statute would allow this, yet executive 'delegation' mumbo-jumbo and magically one is basically unregulated and the other is felonies out the ass if you start commercially selling them without a host of licensing and checks. The truth is the rulemaking and delegation stuff has strayed so far from the legal fiction as to be almost completely unrecognizable from the thin veil authorizing it.
        JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
        > I'd like to see someone explain why a .50 BMG bolt action upper receiver (AR-15 type) is a firearm but a .556 bolt action upper receiver (AR-15 type) is not Have you petitioned to have the rule revisited? I’d imagine this is the right political climate in which to do it. We have an overreaching regulatory state. I agree with you on that. But trying to ram everything through the Congress just means we get a President who is a king, because the complexity of administering a large, modern economy is simply not one that can be centrally deliberated in the way legislative bodies work.
    - mcmcmc 4mo ago
      Administrative law is the (suboptimal) answer to congressional gridlock, which is the real problem. If Congress is incapable of making new laws, we still need them somehow. Regardless the overturning of Chevron deference makes administrative rules like this more susceptible to challenge. Assuming the telcos have the backbone to do so of course.
      - Ajedi32 4mo ago
        Congress passes plenty of laws. 95 so far just since the last election: https://www.congress.gov/public-laws/119th-congress https://www.congress.gov/public-laws/119th-congress Last congress passed 274. It's really only the controversial stuff that gets gridlocked. The problem is that our government is now so large and complicated that it's simply no longer possible for Congress to effectively set policy for all of it. (This would be true even if they weren't so polarized.) So instead they just keep delegating more and more power to the executive branch. The Administrative Procedures Act, Congressional Review Act, and the recent overturning of Chevron are all good checks on executive/agency power here, but I don't think any of them solves the fundamental issue that the executive branch was simply never designed to wield this kind of power. I'm not really sure what the right solution is.
        sdellis 4mo ago
        Two-party politics promotes gridlock. Multi-party systems, as long as they don't have veto players, don't have as much stagnation and do a better job of citizen representation.
        deaux 4mo ago
        Do they? 79% of Australians and 73% of Germans have an unfavorable view of Israel, in Germany's case 49% of all being "very" unfavorable [0]. Don't see much representation of that in their politics. Both very much multi-party systems. Australia's system in particular has aspects that are often held up as one of the best in the world. Even on important other topics, it doesn't seem to reflect things much. Another example, if you survey basically any multi-party European state such as Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and so on purely on economic policies, you'll overwhelmingly find people supporting much more progressive taxation and in general more socialist economic policies. I'm talking large majorities. Including nationalization of many institutions and so on. Yet their governments have done the direct opposite for decades. Not very representative. The better representation you're talking about is very surface level, for everything that matters the outcome is that favored by big capital. [0] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/06/04/most-people-across-36-countries-have-negative-views-of-israel-and-little-confidence-in-netanyahu/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/06/04/most-peop...
    - jerf 4mo ago
      "This doesn't sound to me at all like how a democratic country is supposed to function." There is a family of interesting theories, or perhaps if you prefer, simply a way of looking at history in which you don't consider the "United States" as a single governance structure that has existed back to 1776, but as a series of related, but distinct entities with distinct "social contracts" (a term laden with some philosophical baggage, here I just use it in a very general sense of what people expect from each other in various roles), and distinct theories of governance. While the later entities wrap themselves in the 1776 flag the current ruling structure is quite different from that era. From this point of view you can even go back and include the Continental Congress as the starting point of the "United States" and gain some insight into the way governance can fail as well. I mention this because it may help free your mind up to consider how the systems really work today beyond the at-times jingoistic "Democracy!". There's a lot of flexibility in how you approach this because it's all opinion anyhow, but there is a strong case to be made that this is the "technocrat" era, in which the executive branch has been given a lot more power both by design and by the stresses of history to give more power to "experts" to deal with the radical changes the world has undergone. I think I can say something generally politically agreeable by pointing out that Congress doesn't seem to be particularly good at handling the world right now; how much worse off would it be if we still "representatives per person" numbers from 1776 and had a Congress of many thousands? The de facto rules haven't really matched the de jure of the 1776 governance in a long time. I am trying to keep this as neutral as possible. I have as many opinions as anyone else, but I'm just bringing up the general idea. I think it's probably good to initially just ponder based on one's own understanding of history and match it against your own ideas before you find other people handing you a theory on a platter. There's time enough for that.
      - AnthonyMouse 4mo ago
        > how much worse off would it be if we still "representatives per person" numbers from 1776 and had a Congress of many thousands? Isn't that actually a major cause of the trouble? You expect Congress to deal with more and more complexities but limit the number of people (i.e. experts) who are members of it, causing them all to be generalists and moreover to have to spend more of their time campaigning rather than debating because the value of each seat is higher and correspondingly so is the effort someone will put in to take it from you and the proportion of your time you have to spend merely defending it. Meanwhile people feel that their vote doesn't matter because a member of Congress now represents almost a million people and then ordinary people can neither affect the campaign nor get the ear of their own representative. Suppose it actually had ten thousand members. Then they would be ordinary people. The members who are doctors would understand both medicine and medical bureaucracy. The members who are engineers would understand technology. Instead of them being lawyers whose first job is campaigning.
    - laughing_man 4mo ago
      There is a level of detail that isn't practical to include in law. It's pretty normal for Congress to sketch the general outline of regulation and require the relevant bureaucracy to fill in the details. Though in this particular case, unless this is based on a change to the law it seems like an overreach by the FCC.
      - AnthonyMouse 4mo ago
        > There is a level of detail that isn't practical to include in law. Isn't this the argument against unelected rulemaking? Suppose administrative agencies worked like this: They draft rules and then periodically submit them to Congress who decides whether to enact them. For uncontroversial changes this is essentially a rubber stamp, Congress defers to the experts' recommendations and passes the proposed rules. But now if the administrative agency tries to make a major policy change, it can't go through without Congressional approval, and Congress is fully within their authority to reject or amend the proposal. What advantage is there in giving the unelected bureaucrats the authority to change the rules without approval, except to Congress in dodging accountability for what happens?
        cyberax 4mo ago
        Congresspeople (or local legislators) do not have the expertise to evaluate the rules. Or even bandwidth. For example, the NEC is around 800 pages and is extremely technical. That's why these minutiae are delegated to agencies. But Congress can step in at _any_ point and override the decisions of individual agencies. The rulemaking process is also _extremely_ slow on purpose, giving Congress plenty of time to act.
        fqwelfkj 4mo ago
        Congress can establish advisory bodies within the legislative branch [1] to grow and maintain technical expertise on a variety of matters. Splitting the current regulatory agencies into enforcement agencies under the executive and advisory bodies under Congress, together with expanding the number of seats in the House [2], would do a lot to improve the balance of power among the branches. [1] The Congressional Budget Office is an example. (https://www.cbo.gov/ https://www.cbo.gov/) [2] Laws have to go through a committee process before going to the floor; with more bodies, the committees could handle more work. Expanding the House would also make each seat less of a prize, reducing (but not eliminating) the impulse to gerrymander. Such an expansion would probably need to be accompanied by a serious conversation with the Capitol architect.
  - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
    > Details of complex systems are decided by (hopefully apolitical, public-good-oriented) specialists in the field of interest And according to the Administrative Procedures Act, which provides substantial guardrails and checks on agency authority.
- ChoGGi 4mo ago
  You want to have to vote for every single decision maker in the government?
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  - skinfaxi 4mo ago
    Being able to is different from being obligated.
    - TJSomething 4mo ago
      I mean I feel obligated. I'd feel bad if I skipped voting in an election where I found out after the fact that one of the candidates kicked puppies.
      - fsckboy 4mo ago
        ... and won by 1 vote
  - redsocksfan45 4mo ago
    [dead]
  - bsimpson 4mo ago
    There's a whole big conversation to have about the bureaucratic state. One of the things that appeals to voters is the argument that too many decisions are made by unaccountable bureaucrats. Trump has been as effective at fixing this as with "drain the damp," and our elected officials clearly haven't been great about writing policy either. But one of the grievances that gets people to vote is "look at all this shit that some guy in Washington just decided."
- forshaper 4mo ago
  It's been this way at least since the Administrative Procedure Act. Solidified later with Chevron. Chevron is struck down, but in effect not too much has changed.
  - tantalor 4mo ago
    [Loper Bright intensifies]
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
- rdiddly 4mo ago
  They badly need to be checked and/or balanced.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4mo ago
  The ATF does this all the time, too.
- unethical_ban 4mo ago
  I have some skepticism of the administrative branch but it makes sense to have a nimble government. When they make bad decisions it is Congress prerogative to write law to guide these bureaucracies. The problem is the US Congress is broken.
troyvit 4mo ago
Use the docket-id from that link.
hjsbshekejebeb 4mo ago
[flagged]

by mcmcmc 4mo ago

Ajedi32 4mo ago

What I find most concerning is that this isn't a bill or law. Unelected government officials at the FCC can apparently just decide to do this.

IAmBroom 4mo ago
Yes, that is the way federal agencies work. Details of complex systems are decided by (hopefully apolitical, public-good-oriented) specialists in the field of interest. One alternative is that Trump can do it at will. Or, to add a few more steps, Trump can fire the FCC head at will, replace him with a lackey, and then do it at will.
- Ajedi32 4mo ago
  > [Laws] are decided by (hopefully apolitical, public-good-oriented) specialists in the field of interest This doesn't sound to me at all like how a democratic country is supposed to function. It feels like you're describing China rather than the US. > Trump can do it at will. Which is also not how our constitution is supposed to work. The executive branch (which includes both the president and his appointees) is not supposed to be able to make laws, only execute on existing law. Yes, I know this is how the system works these days. I'm just lamenting how it went so wrong...
  - mothballed 4mo ago
    The intellectual-academic class are having an existential crisis that they've lost the reigns of the unelected bureaucratic apparatus and it is now being wielded against them. They are still confused at how to respond to this as they're certain they couldn't have been wrong about deferring (uh, 'delegate regulatory authority') the power vested in congress and elected representation to themselves. Surprise pikachu when it turns out the "apolitical, public goal oriented specialists' were useful idiots in the process of handing power from congress to the executive. If you thought the political apparatus was willingly going to leave the reigns to "apolitical specialists" rather than ruthlessly consolidating it toward the hands of the most power hungry self-dealing monsters that can command the executive branch then obviously you have not been living in in reality. Of course by the time the blindfold has been removed, the power is already largely consolidated.
    - deleted 4mo ago
      [deleted]
    - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
      > unelected bureaucratic apparatus Unelected—often unappointed—bureaucrats have never had more power in the U.S. government than they have today.
  - Terr_ 4mo ago
    Hold up: Parent-poster is obviously talking about federal regulations, not federal laws, and there are important differences between them... so why have you altered the quote to say [Laws]? That's false. You've put your own words into their mouth to create a "sounds like China" strawman.
    - Ajedi32 4mo ago
      Ah yes I forgot, they're not "laws" just "rules" that the government will come after you if you break. Silly me.
      - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
        > they're not "laws" just "rules" that the government will come after you if you break If you break a rule you get fined. If you break a law you can go to jail. (Congress can delegate regulation around crimes to an agency, but the crime generally has to be substantially described by statute.)
        mothballed 4mo ago
        I'd like to see someone explain why a .50 BMG bolt action upper receiver (AR-15 type) is a firearm but a .556 bolt action upper receiver (AR-15 type) is not. It's literally the same damn thing but with a different sized cartridge. Nothing in the statute would allow this, yet executive 'delegation' mumbo-jumbo and magically one is basically unregulated and the other is felonies out the ass if you start commercially selling them without a host of licensing and checks. The truth is the rulemaking and delegation stuff has strayed so far from the legal fiction as to be almost completely unrecognizable from the thin veil authorizing it.
        JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
        > I'd like to see someone explain why a .50 BMG bolt action upper receiver (AR-15 type) is a firearm but a .556 bolt action upper receiver (AR-15 type) is not Have you petitioned to have the rule revisited? I’d imagine this is the right political climate in which to do it. We have an overreaching regulatory state. I agree with you on that. But trying to ram everything through the Congress just means we get a President who is a king, because the complexity of administering a large, modern economy is simply not one that can be centrally deliberated in the way legislative bodies work.
  - mcmcmc 4mo ago
    Administrative law is the (suboptimal) answer to congressional gridlock, which is the real problem. If Congress is incapable of making new laws, we still need them somehow. Regardless the overturning of Chevron deference makes administrative rules like this more susceptible to challenge. Assuming the telcos have the backbone to do so of course.
    - Ajedi32 4mo ago
      Congress passes plenty of laws. 95 so far just since the last election: https://www.congress.gov/public-laws/119th-congress https://www.congress.gov/public-laws/119th-congress Last congress passed 274. It's really only the controversial stuff that gets gridlocked. The problem is that our government is now so large and complicated that it's simply no longer possible for Congress to effectively set policy for all of it. (This would be true even if they weren't so polarized.) So instead they just keep delegating more and more power to the executive branch. The Administrative Procedures Act, Congressional Review Act, and the recent overturning of Chevron are all good checks on executive/agency power here, but I don't think any of them solves the fundamental issue that the executive branch was simply never designed to wield this kind of power. I'm not really sure what the right solution is.
      - sdellis 4mo ago
        Two-party politics promotes gridlock. Multi-party systems, as long as they don't have veto players, don't have as much stagnation and do a better job of citizen representation.
        deaux 4mo ago
        Do they? 79% of Australians and 73% of Germans have an unfavorable view of Israel, in Germany's case 49% of all being "very" unfavorable [0]. Don't see much representation of that in their politics. Both very much multi-party systems. Australia's system in particular has aspects that are often held up as one of the best in the world. Even on important other topics, it doesn't seem to reflect things much. Another example, if you survey basically any multi-party European state such as Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and so on purely on economic policies, you'll overwhelmingly find people supporting much more progressive taxation and in general more socialist economic policies. I'm talking large majorities. Including nationalization of many institutions and so on. Yet their governments have done the direct opposite for decades. Not very representative. The better representation you're talking about is very surface level, for everything that matters the outcome is that favored by big capital. [0] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/06/04/most-people-across-36-countries-have-negative-views-of-israel-and-little-confidence-in-netanyahu/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/06/04/most-peop...
  - jerf 4mo ago
    "This doesn't sound to me at all like how a democratic country is supposed to function." There is a family of interesting theories, or perhaps if you prefer, simply a way of looking at history in which you don't consider the "United States" as a single governance structure that has existed back to 1776, but as a series of related, but distinct entities with distinct "social contracts" (a term laden with some philosophical baggage, here I just use it in a very general sense of what people expect from each other in various roles), and distinct theories of governance. While the later entities wrap themselves in the 1776 flag the current ruling structure is quite different from that era. From this point of view you can even go back and include the Continental Congress as the starting point of the "United States" and gain some insight into the way governance can fail as well. I mention this because it may help free your mind up to consider how the systems really work today beyond the at-times jingoistic "Democracy!". There's a lot of flexibility in how you approach this because it's all opinion anyhow, but there is a strong case to be made that this is the "technocrat" era, in which the executive branch has been given a lot more power both by design and by the stresses of history to give more power to "experts" to deal with the radical changes the world has undergone. I think I can say something generally politically agreeable by pointing out that Congress doesn't seem to be particularly good at handling the world right now; how much worse off would it be if we still "representatives per person" numbers from 1776 and had a Congress of many thousands? The de facto rules haven't really matched the de jure of the 1776 governance in a long time. I am trying to keep this as neutral as possible. I have as many opinions as anyone else, but I'm just bringing up the general idea. I think it's probably good to initially just ponder based on one's own understanding of history and match it against your own ideas before you find other people handing you a theory on a platter. There's time enough for that.
    - AnthonyMouse 4mo ago
      > how much worse off would it be if we still "representatives per person" numbers from 1776 and had a Congress of many thousands? Isn't that actually a major cause of the trouble? You expect Congress to deal with more and more complexities but limit the number of people (i.e. experts) who are members of it, causing them all to be generalists and moreover to have to spend more of their time campaigning rather than debating because the value of each seat is higher and correspondingly so is the effort someone will put in to take it from you and the proportion of your time you have to spend merely defending it. Meanwhile people feel that their vote doesn't matter because a member of Congress now represents almost a million people and then ordinary people can neither affect the campaign nor get the ear of their own representative. Suppose it actually had ten thousand members. Then they would be ordinary people. The members who are doctors would understand both medicine and medical bureaucracy. The members who are engineers would understand technology. Instead of them being lawyers whose first job is campaigning.
  - laughing_man 4mo ago
    There is a level of detail that isn't practical to include in law. It's pretty normal for Congress to sketch the general outline of regulation and require the relevant bureaucracy to fill in the details. Though in this particular case, unless this is based on a change to the law it seems like an overreach by the FCC.
    - AnthonyMouse 4mo ago
      > There is a level of detail that isn't practical to include in law. Isn't this the argument against unelected rulemaking? Suppose administrative agencies worked like this: They draft rules and then periodically submit them to Congress who decides whether to enact them. For uncontroversial changes this is essentially a rubber stamp, Congress defers to the experts' recommendations and passes the proposed rules. But now if the administrative agency tries to make a major policy change, it can't go through without Congressional approval, and Congress is fully within their authority to reject or amend the proposal. What advantage is there in giving the unelected bureaucrats the authority to change the rules without approval, except to Congress in dodging accountability for what happens?
      - cyberax 4mo ago
        Congresspeople (or local legislators) do not have the expertise to evaluate the rules. Or even bandwidth. For example, the NEC is around 800 pages and is extremely technical. That's why these minutiae are delegated to agencies. But Congress can step in at _any_ point and override the decisions of individual agencies. The rulemaking process is also _extremely_ slow on purpose, giving Congress plenty of time to act.
        fqwelfkj 4mo ago
        Congress can establish advisory bodies within the legislative branch [1] to grow and maintain technical expertise on a variety of matters. Splitting the current regulatory agencies into enforcement agencies under the executive and advisory bodies under Congress, together with expanding the number of seats in the House [2], would do a lot to improve the balance of power among the branches. [1] The Congressional Budget Office is an example. (https://www.cbo.gov/ https://www.cbo.gov/) [2] Laws have to go through a committee process before going to the floor; with more bodies, the committees could handle more work. Expanding the House would also make each seat less of a prize, reducing (but not eliminating) the impulse to gerrymander. Such an expansion would probably need to be accompanied by a serious conversation with the Capitol architect.
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
  > Details of complex systems are decided by (hopefully apolitical, public-good-oriented) specialists in the field of interest And according to the Administrative Procedures Act, which provides substantial guardrails and checks on agency authority.
ChoGGi 4mo ago
You want to have to vote for every single decision maker in the government?
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- skinfaxi 4mo ago
  Being able to is different from being obligated.
  - TJSomething 4mo ago
    I mean I feel obligated. I'd feel bad if I skipped voting in an election where I found out after the fact that one of the candidates kicked puppies.
    - fsckboy 4mo ago
      ... and won by 1 vote
- redsocksfan45 4mo ago
  [dead]
- bsimpson 4mo ago
  There's a whole big conversation to have about the bureaucratic state. One of the things that appeals to voters is the argument that too many decisions are made by unaccountable bureaucrats. Trump has been as effective at fixing this as with "drain the damp," and our elected officials clearly haven't been great about writing policy either. But one of the grievances that gets people to vote is "look at all this shit that some guy in Washington just decided."
forshaper 4mo ago
It's been this way at least since the Administrative Procedure Act. Solidified later with Chevron. Chevron is struck down, but in effect not too much has changed.
- tantalor 4mo ago
  [Loper Bright intensifies]
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
rdiddly 4mo ago
They badly need to be checked and/or balanced.
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4mo ago
The ATF does this all the time, too.
unethical_ban 4mo ago
I have some skepticism of the administrative branch but it makes sense to have a nimble government. When they make bad decisions it is Congress prerogative to write law to guide these bureaucracies. The problem is the US Congress is broken.

troyvit 4mo ago

Use the docket-id from that link.

hjsbshekejebeb 4mo ago

[flagged]