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"Sense of Congress resolutions don't create law. They're literally just statements of opinion. So the idea that this amendment would have "outlawed SSH" is dire
by chernevik 14y ago
"Sense of Congress resolutions don't create law. They're literally just statements of opinion. So the idea that this amendment would have "outlawed SSH" is directly mistaken."
This is not correct, or if correct, is so in a manner meaningless for any layman. "Sense of the Senate" language is often important in judicial and / or executive interpretation. It may not be "law" but can often matter a great deal in the implementation, enforcement and interpretation of law.
In a discussion among legal experts "resolutions don't create law" might be one thing. In a discussion of non-lawyers of Congressional efforts to make policy it is simply, and at best, wrong.
- tptacek 14y agoYou don't have to read tea leaves to figure out what Biden actually believed. His name is on CALEA, which passed less than a year later. CALEA explicitly does not criminalize encryption.
- chernevik 14y agoSo my comment is right, and a crucial statement of your argument is wrong, but we can ignore all that because if look at some other piece of legislation we'll see the real Joe Biden. I spent 8 years in Washington trying to make public policy that actually made sense. I discovered that this was not possible, in part because the idiocy of policy that does _not_ make sense is masked by rhetorical tricks and argumentation such as we're seeing here. I've seen it called "squid ink", the idea is to defuse a true statement by making assessment of that truth so complicated that most readers won't bother. 90% of this board can distinguish technical ability in about five minutes. Sadly they haven't this same facility with policy discussion. And with that, I'm done.
- tptacek 14y agoWhat part of your comment is right? That sense of the Senate resolutions make law? No, they don't. That sense of the Senate resolutions can matter in later court cases? Maybe, but I'm guessing a failed resolution on a failed bill matters a lot less in court than the successfully passed bill by the same author that became public law less than a year later that says the opposite. Beyond that, it's hard to even imagine what you think I'm trying to create a smokescreen for. Cryptography was never banned. Every restriction on cryptography that existed in 1993 has been substantially relaxed. As a professional software security person, my career would be hamstrung by the ban you seem to perceive me as advocating for. Maybe you just think I really, really like Joe Biden?
- chernevik 14y agoI know very little about you. I've been talking about the signature shape of your arguments. And I don't know anything of your motivations. Have you read Orwell's "Politics and the English Language"? If so you'll understand that it is possible, indeed sometimes common, for people to take rhetorical stances without actually understanding the position they are taking, out of a reflexive support for their party / faction / coalition of preference. And that those preferences can shape arguments simply to political purposes without actually considering the substance of the question at hand. Indeed people can find themselves in this position without even really realizing it. Which is why Orwell thought clear language and proper argument so important that he dedicated his life to demonstrating their necessity. Bad arguments an important signal of the possibility of a person so committed to some political purpose in a manner indifferent to the means of achieving that purpose. You could be a political zombie without ever knowing it. My comment was _right_. "Sense of the Senate" language can, for a layman's usage, constitute law. Your insistence on a point that is wrong, while at the same time eliding that error to some other argument, signals an interest in winning an apparent point rather than in helping people actually understand. This is rhetoric, and at its worst it is very dangerous thing. I know nothing of your purposes or motives. You may very well be in a state deserving pity more than anything else. But the way you argue is dangerous -- to your country, your community, and to your soul.
- tptacek 14y agoOh for fuck's sake. Never mind.
- yummyfajitas 14y agoI'm curious - is it your belief that Biden would never, under any circumstances, push a law which gets him some (but not all) of what he wants? Also, if "sense of congress" is an opinion, and Biden sponsored the bill, is it unreasonable to assume that that is Biden's opinion?
- tptacek 14y agoNo. I'd ask in response: what is the partial goal, and the total long-term goal towards which it moves, that Biden achieved in CALEA? To your latter point, I'd say only that if Biden's opinion was anti-crypto in 1993, it became pro-crypto very shortly thereafter.
- chernevik 14y agoI'll add to my various rantings: This is has been an unexpectedly crummy day for me. I hope that, if given a better mood and better form, I could more clear and less snarky.