Freedom Act Passes: What We Celebrate, What We Mourn, and Where We Go from Here

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/05/usa-freedom-act-passes-what-we-celebrate-what-we-mourn-and-where-we-go-here

by snowpanda • 11 years ago

207 58 11 years ago

eff.org

getsat• 11 years ago

we have every reason to believe that President Obama will sign USA Freedom into law

His official Twitter account said he'll be signing it: https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/605841647193030657

fleitz2• 11 years ago

Isn't this a step backwards from yesterday?

kijin• 11 years ago

It is. Still, we're slightly ahead of where we were the day before yesterday.

If you're a cup-is-half-full type of person, that would be enough reason to celebrate a bit.

shard9722• 11 years ago

What if your a cup half empty person who looks as this as a failure as now all the people on the fence will have reason to ignore this issue for the next few years baring some kind of new revelations.

Seriously, who in congress is going to be supporting a bill in the next 3 years to cut more powers from the spying apparatus when they can just say "We just did that, it's time to talk about X instead".

peteretep2• 11 years ago

I think people forget that Congress are people — with their own secrets — too.

themartorana• 11 years ago

I imagined that once Congress found out the CIA was spying on them [0] they would shut the program down faster than I can think of a decent analogy.

They didn't. Which I had a hard time believing.

But you're ever so correct.

[0] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/31/cia-admits-spyi...

mbca• 11 years ago

They will find a way to opt-out instead. One set of rules for them, and another set of rules for everyone else.

Zigurd• 11 years ago

There's a reason ex-spooks work in political campaigns.

peteretep2• 11 years ago

I think there's a real difference in emotional impact between finding out your actions at work have been monitored (pretty much expected) and that your calls and emails to friends, family, and donors can be dredged up at will. I think we're starting to see a reaction to the second.

coldtea2• 11 years ago

One good step would be to prohibit laws to be named with nice words and acronyms ("Freedom", "Patriot", etc).

Those are advertising and only serve to confuse discussion of the actual content ("you are opposed to the Patriot act? Aren't you a patriot?" etc.).

tertius• 11 years ago

I've never gotten this comment from anyone. Do you actually have friends that ask these types of questions?

bmelton• 11 years ago

I can't say that I've heard those exact comments either, but in context, it's really hard to voice an opinion that criticizes something named "The Civil Rights Act" or "The Clean Air Act", because a lot of America takes their cue from the political rhetoric of their party.

Using neutral bill names, e.g., HR 625 or SB 1780 would be an upgrade from what we have now.

shard9722• 11 years ago

I do, the conversation usually goes to the idea that bills are more likely to do the opposite of what the title suggests.

coldtea2• 11 years ago

If you take a look at various discussion forums, where Democrats and Republicans play it out, you'd be surprised.

But note that the argument was not that people will explicitly say "it has Patriot in its name and therefore this law is patriotic", but that it creates a mental image and uses the positive association with the word to frame it as such.

(A similar argument against this kind of naming can of course be found in 1984, with the "Ministry of Peace" etc).

yodsanklai3• 11 years ago

Right choice of words is a common propaganda device. Read Orwell's 1984 for instance, it's enlightening. An other good one: US department of war became US department of "defense".

cpursley• 11 years ago

It's like those "home cooked" signs on restaurants...

hackuser3• 11 years ago

One good step would be to prohibit laws to be named with nice words and acronyms ("Freedom", "Patriot", etc).

Agreed. It's propaganda, and we should question the motives of the legislators. Who are they spinning this for? Shouldn't the bills speak for themselves, and their consituents make up their own minds?

At least some laws used to be named for their sponsors, e.g., the "Nunn–Lugar Act".

Turing_Machine2• 11 years ago

Laws named after victims are often pretty bad as well. I assume that anything named (e.g.) "Tarquin Fin-tim-lin-bin-whin-bim-lim-bus-stop-F'tang-F'tang-Olé-Biscuitbarrel's Law" is probably a bad law until otherwise proven, and for much the same reason. It's an appeal to emotion, not rationality, and the usual tactic is painting any opponent as being pro-terrorism or pro-(whatever genuinely terrible thing happened to Tarquin).

jacquesm• 11 years ago

That's exactly why that won't ever happen. These laws are named for a reason, the bigger part of which is simply to confuse the ignorant who have not taken the time to look beyond the name.

mcv3• 11 years ago

I think a name like that is a clear sign there's something wrong with the law. An actual good law wouldn't need dishonest PR like that.

filoeleven• 11 years ago

I love that this keeps coming up now. I posted a potential solution in another story[0] which sounds like it won't work, but during the course of the thread I found out about the Single Subject Amendment PAC[1]. Their mission is to convene a Constitutional convention in order to limit bills in Congress to a single subject (eliminating riders, which is IMO more important than bill names) and, at least judging by the example they cite from Florida's state constitution[2] ensure that deceptive or meaningless rah-rah names cannot be used for bills.

As of January 2015, Florida was the first and only state so far to call for this amendment. Given that 41 state constitutions already have similar provisions in place and it takes only 37 to force a convention, it seems like the biggest stumbling block for national support may simply be a lack of public awareness that the solution's already got some momentum. Hence, this reply.

[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9649439

[1]http://singlesubjectamendment.com

[2]"Art. III, Section 6 – Every law shall embrace but one subject and matter properly connected therewith, and the subject shall be briefly expressed in the title."

kweinber• 11 years ago

Hat tip to the eff... Don't forget to support them, they've got your back on stuff like this....

oceanstone2• 11 years ago

I'm celebrating the only two Senators who voted against the "Freedom" Act [1] and supported net neutrality [2]. Both also voted against the "Patriot" Act in 2001, while they served in the House [3]:

Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) & Bernie Sanders (I-VT).

[1] http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_c...

[2] http://www.baldwin.senate.gov/press-releases/us-senator-tamm... & http://www.markey.senate.gov/news/press-releases/to-protect-...

[3] http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2001/roll398.xml

ahi• 11 years ago

Sanders won't win, but it will be nice to be able to vote for someone I don't hate for once. In an ideal world it would be Rand Paul/Bernie Sanders race. Two people who actually believe what they are saying.

notthemessiah• 11 years ago

Keep on dreaming. Libertarians are notoriously hostile towards former Democrats, when Mike Gravel (famous for reading the Pentagon Papers on the Senate floor) tried to switch from Democratic party to Libertarian for the presidential race in 2008, he was ridiculed for being "too socialist", but when Gary Johnson (former NM governor) ran for president on the Libertarian ticket 4 years later on the exact same platform, he got the full support of the party.

dragonwriter• 11 years ago

While they may coincide on a few issues, I don't see enough policy overlap between a right-libertarian who is at least as solidly the former as the latter, like Rand, and a democratic socialist, like Sanders. Maybe they both believe what they are saying, but they believe radically different things when it comes to the role and ideal policies of government.

rand334• 11 years ago

You forgot Rand Paul, R-KY.

dagw• 11 years ago

Rand Paul did not support net neutrality.

MCRed• 11 years ago

We've been fighting this fight for 20 years. The lack of progress is unacceptable. The NSA and the government in general have only gotten more and more out of control, more and more aggressive in violating rights.

That the result of Snowden is this pathetic attempt would convince me that government was useless in this current form and that it has totally failed- if I weren't already convinced of that seeing the past 20 years of legislation. (I've been watching more than 20 years, but the gloves really began to come off during the Clinton administration when he banned gay marriage for no good reason (he could have simply pocket vetoed the bill.) )

My how our standards are low, and that makes this country increasingly a joke- a parody of itself, commonly summed up with the phrase "MERICA". It's not funny, it's tragedy.

hackuser3• 11 years ago

I follow this issue and read a lot about it, and I'm still not sure what powers the NSA has, other federal and state agencies have, under what laws, and which have been restricted.

It would be a valuable public service -- more than all the newspaper articles and press releases -- if someone who knows all that could make a simple table: Agency | Power | Limits | Legal authority

hackuser3• 11 years ago

I found the following, which is good but I suspect it's incomplete:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/usa-freedom-...

yodsanklai3• 11 years ago

We’ve gone from just killing bad bills to passing bills that protect people’s rights.

By people, do they mean "american people"? I may be wrong but my understanding from Snowden revelations is that the NSA is listening and recording without restriction all conversations from non-US citizen (whereas it was restricted to meta-data for US citizens). I don't know if the freedom act is an improvement for the rest of the world, but I doubt so. It would be nice for our american friends to understand that we value our privacy too.

saiya-jin2• 11 years ago

yeah, it would be nice, but then they can close their surveillance agencies for good. a bit of hyperbole but let me try here - most american don't give a damn about rest of the world, do they (now this assumption is begging to be proven wrong)

happyscrappy• 11 years ago

It would be nice for our american friends to understand that we value our privacy too.

I love how everyone pretends that only the US has spies. Or they say "oh but my country sucks at it so it doesn't matter". The entire West shares intel and double checks each other by espionage. Of course you don't want to condemn the entire West, that would be stupid.

zamalek• 11 years ago

Exactly. America simply got caught.

yodsanklai3• 11 years ago

I love how everyone pretends that only the US has spies.

We're not talking about spies here but about mass surveillance. And if that can reassure you, I wouldn't be any less upset knowing that Norway or Japan openly record all my conversations and stores them until the end of times.

But the thing I find insulting and scary here is that there are no consideration at all in this debate for non-US citizens. Basically, the message there is "sorry guys, what we did was wrong... except when it's about everybody else in the world".

And in the end, everybody suffers from that. What Snowden said in Citizenfour is that the NSA uses the British surveillance system because it has less restriction than their own concerning americans.

mattwad• 11 years ago

It's more important that a government can't spy on its own people. Without equal transparency between people and state, there's no way that the people can change the government. Mass surveillance invokes fear in the people to have and share ideas the government doesn't like. I think anything that protects freedom of speech for the American people is still a win for international folk as well. Disclaimer: I am American and don't believe we will ever have an Internet where we aren't vulnerable to being watched by 'someone.'

Freedom Act Passes: What We Celebrate, What We Mourn, and Where We Go from Here

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