Perhaps exhausting the public by repeatedly bringing in the same bill is part of legislators’ bag of tricks to force-feed undesirable legislation to their citizens.
It's also worth mentioning that Feinstein (D-California) is a cosponsor of this bill [1]. I'm sure a lot of Hacker News folks live in California and could spare some time to write to her if they desire.
At this point, she can't even be used as a puppet. She has shingles and has been out for weeks. Meanwhile, there are only a precious few months left in the judiciary committee that she sits on for Biden to get his judiciary picks confirmed. They cannot do anything without her presence. These federal judiciary picks are exceedingly important. Regardless of what you think of the Democrat's politics at the moment, one thing they are still doing that the GOP is not is nominating competent judges.
Right wing nominated partisan hack judges are one of the biggest issues facing our country right now. It's one thing to have a partisan judge that always leans one way when making decisions. It is another to just totally disregard the law and make things up to fit your agenda. (see Judge Aileen Cannon or Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk).
As a language model, replying for a representative i feel very sorry for your concerns citizen and will ignore your opinion as if it never has happened. Just to give you that feeling of agency though, i encourage you to write as the paper, shredded makes a formidable isolation material for my villa. It keeps me warm and it keeps you under the illusion, that democracy has not already ended.
Regards
ChatGeneralRepresentative
PS: It has been shown, that encouraging tiresome activism is actually a good way, to politically murder and resolve a issues. Sort your trash citizen, march and protest, get all that energy exhausted. We might even pass a bill claiming to do what you ask in the title.
The weird thing is that I can tell that you wrote this personally, not via ChatGPT because of all the small spelling and grammar mistakes!
Touched up by GPT 4 with extra sarcasm:
As a language model, answering on behalf of a representative, I must express my deepest sympathies for your concerns, dear citizen. Rest assured, your opinion will be promptly disregarded, as though it never existed in the first place. However, to maintain the facade of democracy and provide you with the illusion of agency, I wholeheartedly encourage you to put your thoughts on paper - the kind that can be conveniently shredded and used to insulate my luxurious villa. After all, it keeps me warm and you blissfully ignorant.
Yours sarcastically,
ChatGPT, the Most Condescending Representative
P.S. Studies have shown that promoting tiresome activism is actually the most efficient way to smother and neutralize issues. So, by all means, sort your trash, march, and protest - exhaust yourself with futile efforts. Who knows, we may even pass a bill pretending to address your concerns, just for the sake of appearances.
And it was glorious.
And it proofed a important point. Any resource that can be poured into system to shift the balance of power, must be limited or else the system will be exhausted, hacked and shifted. To not take this power imbalance into account, means to shift power to the already powerful.
Most of the members of the "freedom caucus" (or what some might call "MAGA extremists") are anti-mass surveillance. For example, here's a video [0] from a recent hearing on FISA abuse where Matt Gaetz questions the IG about the over 1,000,000 warrantless searches of Americans.
With tools such as these the intelligence agencies have dirt on every single person of power. CIA director kept meeting with Epstein. Guy who let people many people currently in power have their way with underage girls.
Right now you can't, because voting has proven ineffective for that particular problem, and adding anything that would do so would be blocked by the very people that you are trying to police since they are the rule makers.
But if we had to make it all over again?
Make mandate shorts. Make lobbying illegal. Make trying to game the system be paid by extremely harsh prison sentences. Create an institution that is in charge of corruption of the government that is independent of the government.
Some sort of penalty for passing unconstitutional laws sounds good but not sure how it could be implemented in practice. They did swear an oath to uphold the constitution.
Lobbyists would be hurt by term limits. The big winners would be the permanent bureaucracy, who are already more-or-less in charge. The real solution is to allow old school purges when parties trade control of government.
It's an interesting suggestion. I did an internship in Canada's federal government for a while. It's definitely the case that civil servants hoard institutional knowledge for 'job security'. Even if it were legal and publicly endorsed, periodically purging the 'deep state' would be hard. Public insitutions would definitely not just be inconvenienced the way a public sector company is inconvenienced by staff turnover. They'd break and need to be rebuilt - not that that isn't the case now.
With AI getting better and better at processing natural language, I suspect one could automate a huge portion of what the civil service does and thereby make it easier for a political newcomer to replace the relatively smaller number of people managing the machines. Not sure how we'd get there though.
“A bill was introduced and approved by the cabinet, and Wilberforce and other abolitionists maintained a self-imposed silence, so as not to draw any attention to the effect of the bill.[145][146] The approach proved successful, and the new Foreign Slave Trade Bill was quickly passed, and received royal assent on 23 May 1806.[147]”
There should be a law that prevents bills that get shot down from being reintroduced in X years, and also to disallow the same person/group/party from reintroducing it (i.e., it has to come from another person/party).
One of the fundamental principles of democracy is that citizens have the right to change their minds. Whatever the previous congress did, it should not bind the hands of the next congress after the elections. If something failed to pass, it is possible that the citizens took that into account when they voted, and the new congress is willing to pass the same bill.
First failure mode is that the metric for two bills being “the same” will be too narrow, in which case the rule will be ineffective due to legislators playing with the punctuation or paragraph structure, or
Second failure mode is that the rule will be too broad and this becomes a weapon which would increase gridlock even further.
By providing parties and non-majority fringe groups within them the option to “damn bills by weak praise” into the future, legislators working adversarially could propose a bill they don’t want to pass, veto it, argue any successor bills are “the same bill”, and now, they’ve effectively enshrined the state of the issue for the next X years.
Third failure mode: a party in power with a strong majority now but losing the lead rapidly, could scupper a near future opposition in power by raising motions the other side(s) might like to enact and voting them down to hell, so the forced delay means they are stuck or have to be watered down to work around the delay rule.
I agree with the same person but not with forbidding to reintroduce it after X years, society changes, situations change, but I think there should be at least 10-15 years between each presentation
How do you determine that this is the same bill? Like they can rename it and rewrite it. And can put it into huge omnibus bill like inflation reduction act.
Slavery in the US was not ultimately abolished by law. I mean it technically was, but only after a bloody war that removed opponents of abolition from positions of power until the laws could be updated.
I quite like the mirror image of this too, all laws that are actually passed have a built-in expiry date of 25-30 years at the maximum so each generation is forced to re-debate them and see if they're still relevant.
If a bill was rejected it should have some kind of exponential backoff that wouldn't allow it to be brought up, otherwise fatigue ensues and it will pass at some point.
Not needed. Thousands of bills are introduced each Congress and almost none of them ever pass. No matter how many times they are reintroduced.
The danger with EARN IT is that it has some support and interest. That’s not a function of how often it’s introduced, it’s the subject matter and ideas in the bill. You can’t fight that with legislative mechanics; you have engage with the substance (true of all bills, not just this one).
> A motion or an amendment which is the same, in substance, as a question which has been decided during a session may not be brought forward again during that same session.
> Whether the second motion is substantially the same as the first is finally a matter for the judgment of the Chair; in coming to a decision, the Chair may take into account external developments which may change the effect of an otherwise similar motion.
> Some motions, however, have been framed with sufficient ingenuity to avoid the rule.
> However, a question which has not been definitely decided may be raised again.
EARN IT died in committee multiple times, but so do plenty of bills that probably should make it to the statute book.
But if they just rephrase it, or take key elements from it, rewrite it and put it in another bill... you're still dealing with the same thing.
It's one major flaw in the current legal / government system, I think, in that there's no codified and simplified way to process new rules and laws; for example, a gun ban may never pass, but a number of smaller changes that make it more difficult for people to get guns may over time pass. May have the same effect in the long run, but it' s not a gun ban.
that's exactly the plan. Try many times, and as long as it passes once, it can't be removed forever because no politicians will ever touch it. That's why the current system of law-making is completely gamed against citizens.
They tried to implement an "internet kill switch" in 2010. People rallied, and it was dropped. Then Obama signed an Executive Order in 2012 that basically gave him the ability to do it anyway. The deep state gets what the deep state wants, and they WILL eventually make some sort of law or regulation to criminalize encryption for which they have no backdoor.
I live in the UK, and the similar law is called the Digital Economy Act, and specific regulations would be named something like the Adult Content (Access by Minors) Regulations
Why do American lawmakers feel the need to make ridiculous acronyms for their laws? It's genuinely baffling. All it does is make it look like they're not taking it seriously.
Don't forget the Build Back Better Plan which got renamed to the "Inflation Reduction Act" even though the CBO estimated that the bill would have no statistically significant effect on inflation. The assholes in congress straight up lie to the American public with the names of their bills.
It is only a small group of people who seriously consider the names of bills, and an even smaller group who gets upset if the bill doesn’t match the name. The US does not dominate the globe relative to most other cultures because we make everything at random, we are extremely good at propaganda/marketing
This stuff is starting to leak into the UK. Why? Because it's not policy that's directed at outcomes, it's policy that's directed at getting particular media coverage. It's part of the permanent campaign. If you pass a bill that improves lives for hundreds of millions of citizens and nobody remembers the name, you wasted your time and don't get re-elected.
Americans have a very direct no BS way of communicating. It's a drug-store and not a "Chemist's". It's a f'ing elevator and not a "lift". You go to the "cinema" and we go to the movies (shit's moving around). Dustbin? Trashcan...
The legislative bills have always had very embarrassing propaganda names though. It plays into the George Creel media industry the US government has always favored.
Elevator is what it is, elevate is what it does. If we wanted to use 'lift' we'd have to call it a lifter. I don't care for either term because I take elevators/lifters down too, but I don't want to have to change to calling it a 'descender' depending on what floor I'm on either.
Ok so we need to make another effort and dedicate time, money and mental health to stop another attempt from people who are literally being paid a very good salary to push shit like this.
The US government needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. Problem is, how do you do that outside of violent revolution? You can't, really. Therefore, there is no answer, and we're all fucked.
This is game theory at work, with the highest possible stakes. So far, the powers that be have stacked the game in their favor. The world moves a lot faster than the legal system can keep up. When they do try to give the appearance of keeping up, they propose garbage bills like these, with these cutesy acronym names that obscure the actual purpose of the bill. It should be illegal to create a bill with an acronymic name. Any acronym a bill's name happens to create should be consonant soup. Even that would not be a full defense against this dirty tactic, because they'd just be like everyone else - they'd make bills with consonant soup titles, but they'd be words without vowels, and everybody would parse the words in the title anyway (how about that PTRT act?).
There is no solution that is feasible to implement, because too many agents are invested in the way things work now, because they personally benefit along the way. Congress should be an hourly job. Pay them well per hour, so they don't need to seek external compensation (and thus provide the possibility that they can be manipulated through that compensation), but only pay them for time when their asses are actually seated, or for time that they can document that they spent working on bills and communicating with constituents. Full transparency for the actions of the members of Congress is paramount, the way I see it.
It's almost like trying to "control" society is a fool's errand, and in the long term it will end up being hugely detrimental to both humans, and the Earth itself. We, as a collective species, have already decided that natural evolution should not apply to humans, we've already decided that humans are "separate" from nature. We fight against our connection to this planet, instead choosing to rape and pillage it. One day our actions will catch up to us collectively, but very few of the ones who were instrumental in making things this way will receive their comeuppance (hell, some of them are already dead now).
The good news is that the Constitution already provides the mechanisms to fix what's broken. I think we should repeal the 17th, so that States have a voice in what the feds are doing, and to help "check and balance" them. I also think we need an Amendment limiting government's ability to encroach on the basic human right of privacy.
The big problem is the so-called deep state. It should be clear to everyone now that the military-industrial complex and the three-letter bureaus are running the entire show now. How do we fix that? The only answer would be campaign finance reform and an Amendment overturning the Citizens United ruling.
And, yeah, if Fortune 100 CEO's can make millions per year running their companies, and if this supposed to be about recruiting and retaining the best people for those jobs, we should pay Congress and the President like a Fortune 100 CEO, and for the same reason. Let's get sharp people like, say, Tim Cook, into the government, while getting lobbyists out.
>The US government needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. Problem is, how do you do that outside of violent revolution? You can't, really. Therefore, there is no answer, and we're all fucked.
Stop electing the same people. Stop putting the same political parties in power.
But seriously, remember when the DNC sabotaged Bernie Sanders? Twice? It's kind of hard to take anything about change through voting seriously. The rot and corruption has taken over, and I don't think we can vote our way out.
As for parties, the spoiler effect means we will never see a serious 3rd party, that ship has sailed.
A third party needs to build itself up via the house and the senate over several years before it has any hopes of taking the presidency. The GOP did it under Lincoln and the Democrats did it under Jackson, so it's possible, just not likely, until it is. Forget the presidency, vote 3rd party for house and eventually senate, then possibly the presidency.
It's more likely now than it's been in a long time because the traditional media isn't as powerful as they were. The traditional media (TV, Newspapers) typically is hyper critical of third parties because they are financially and ideologically in bed with the existing two.
The way to fix this with the system is by voting locally and federally to remove the gears of power that don't want to move to their constituent's will. While I appreciate a certain resistance or hesitancy toward action (or inaction) it's unfortunate that we as a society routinely elects the same people to the positions of power and then expect anything to change. It won't. If you want to change the DNC you need to have a majority of the DNC on your side. That means getting involved not only in governance but also politics. Barely anyone does the former and even less do the second.
It's not just the spoiler effect. Republicans and Democrats have voted on ballot requirements that often hold a higher bar for third parties than for republicans and democrats. Like the spoiler effect, these things fixing these things only requires political will— a will that has direct negative incentives for the parties that could change it.
The funny (not at all funny) thing is that it's not even window dressing about protecting children, it's window dressing about punishing offenders.
Ironically, the "child protection" part has already failed once punishment is required.
All of it, however, is a facade built in front of the real work of continued normalisation of increasingly intrusive, increasingly ubiquitous surveillance.
The drug war we have been experiencing for the last 50+ years was to protect the children. Many of the children we were protecting over the last 50 years have been in jail with felony charges and are unable to live a normal life; not because of drug use (although some are afflicted with that), but because of our protection.
I was one of the children they are protecting, but I managed to escape unscathed, luckily. Some of my friends were not so lucky.
Given that many times we have children hurt by the same laws meant to protect them, I have begun to wonder if the blanket desire to protect children is actually based on a desire to protect children, or to fit in with current culture where anyone without that desire is seen as an extreme outsider who is to be punished. Was this road to hell paved by people with good intentions or was it paved by people whose primary motivating factor was appearing as if they had good intentions.
For example, look at how anti-CSAM laws have been used to harm teens sexting in far worse ways than the harm that is risked by engaging in such action.
Not about the article itself, but the "Share to Mastodon" link uses a protocol I'm not familiar with, and it doesn't work in my browser. Is there a certain extension or server configuration expected of me?
The wikipedia page[1] mentions surveillance only in the 'technical implications' secion. Can someone explain how this act can be used to include backdoors in social media platforms?
The act makes any service offering end to end encryption liable for illegal content sent by its users. Functionally it requires services to spy on all encrypted data, find anything they think may be illegal, and report it for fear of being held liable if they can't show that they reasonably did all they could.
Louis Rossmann put out a video recently where he reads the actual bill is your invested
It seems like no matter how many times a bill gets shut down, it can just be re-introduced until it passes. I guess pretty soon the mode of operation of Congress will be the "we need to pass it to find out what’s in it" and not even bother with public opinion.
You will lose sooner or later. They have an unlimited amount of money, time, and patience.
The only solution is to proactively pass regulation of the same issue, but in a way that's acceptable to [insert group] and that is in direct opposition to the currently proposed changes. This moves the Overton window, making the now “radical” change politically much more expensive.
Trump as president had one distinctive advantage, there was a functioning opposition. Now many oppressive or foolish propositions have bipartisan support:
When EARN IT was first introduced in 2020, there was immense public opposition to the draft law:
"This terrible legislation is a Trojan horse to give Attorney General Barr and [President] Donald Trump the power to control online speech and require government access to every aspect of Americans' lives," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said.
I believe any business with users or customers here are subject to our laws. Whether the US has any jurisdiction over Tanota to do anything is a docent story.
This is no different than sales tax problems where any online shop is technically supposed to follow all local tax laws for any customer. It's an insane requirement and effectively impossible to follow, but technically a small business is supposed to understand and follow every tax law on the planet.
> any online shop is technically supposed to follow all local tax laws for any customer
Don't think that's true. I'm pretty sure US companies that sell to me don't have to charge me VAT nor pass it to my government. Same for EU companies that sell to the US, they don't have to charge sales tax.
Ofc everything is muddied in the name of convenience.
Let's take Amazon US. I can order from them with the cheap shipping, pick up my package from the post office and pay VAT on it to a customs agent. Unless it's under (i think) 40 eur in value, then no VAT.
However, if I select expedited shipping Amazon will charge me the VAT and their shipper will pay it in my name to the local customs. But this isn't a legal obligation for Amazon US, it's a service they offer me for convenience. And incidentally I like it because I don't waste time at the post office, but that's unrelated.
In the same vein, if Tutanota woudn't be an US entity this wouldn't apply to them. The US government would be free to forbid them to take US customers (maybe, IANAL) or complain to whatever jurisdiction they operate in. But that's all.
It varies by locality. A large majority of tax codes have a revenue threshold you have to reach before they you're required to collect and remit sales tax. For example, a few dozen customers with a $20 monthly subscription wouldn't trigger sales tax but hundreds of customers would.
Some (most?) localities expect tax filings that show you collected revenue but we're below the threshold. In practice this is rarely done from what I've seen and I've never heard of a government cracking down on this.
Where it gets annoying is the handful of localities that have no threshold and require tax remittance for any customer in their region.
Agent of record services are Ina bit of a gray area too. Say I use a SaaS service to act as the official entity selling totthose customers. This a lot easier on me as I offloaded all the tax law concerns, but I don't know if it's clear yet whether the threshold for paying taxes is collective of every business using the same agent of record.
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This is just my understanding of the current state of things. I work pretty regularly with e-commerce businesses but am not directly involved in sales tax collection and compliance.
My understanding was that part of the requirements for sales tax remittance is that a business must setup a tax entity once the total sales threshold is reached.
