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Comment by randomname2 | Hacker News Reader

How this happened [1]:

In a late-night session of Congress, House Speaker Paul Ryan announced a new version of the “omnibus” bill, a massive piece of legislation that deals with much of the federal government’s funding. It now includes a version of CISA as well. Lumping CISA in with the omnibus bill further reduces any chance for debate over its surveillance-friendly provisions, or a White House veto. And the latest version actually chips away even further at the remaining personal information protections that privacy advocates had fought for in the version of the bill that passed the Senate.

Snowden's comment on this:

Shameful: @Facebook secretly backing Senate's zombie #CISA surveillance bill while publicly pretending to oppose it. https://t.co/du7RK7V1WJ — Edward Snowden (@Snowden) October 25, 2015

[1] http://www.wired.com/2015/12/congress-slips-cisa-into-omnibu...

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It's useful to note that Paul Ryan gained his position by saying shady backroom deals like this, plus giving Congress almost no time to read and think about the bill themselves, were the exact things he promised to stop.

So his very first act as speaker is to break every single promise he made to become speaker.

He did? I thought he got the job (after much cajoling) because he was the only candidate the moderate and right wings of the GOP could agree on.

Yes. He had to be courted; the House Freedom Caucus had to make concessions for him to accept the job. The modal HN user has either a DailyKos or RedState (mostly Kos) understanding of US politics.

Drudge and the conservative media has been all over him for this. They're calling him a liar and a failure. Rush Limbaugh is calling for the disbanding of the Republican party over this. So I'm not sure how Kos figures in to this (FYI, I don't read Kos).

What concessions did they make? It was the other way round, he made a list of demands and they said no and then proceeded to not-endorse him.

The Freedom Caucus killed Kevin McCarthy's bid, even after it had been seen as a fait accompli, and made a list of demands for candidates for the speakership. Paul Ryan publicly rejected those demands, and was elected speaker without any of the process change demands that Freedom had said were requirements.

The idea that Ryan got the speakership through backroom deals is false. The House majority was in disarray following the sudden departure of Boehner and the failure of McCarthy's bid; the political media at the time was discussing how long the House could run without a speaker and what kind of rift the debacle would create in the GOP. Ryan was more or less drafted into the position.

The Freedom Caucus killed Kevin McCarthy's bid

McCarthy killed his bid with one interview on Hannity where he implied that he had helped orchestrate the Benghazi committee as a means to take down Hillary. That was the slip-up that gave the Freedom Caucus the necessary leverage they needed.

Other than that, I agree with your understanding of how Ryan became Speaker.

They didn't endorse him, did they? He also made a list of demands in order to run, and when his demands were rejected, he ran anyway. Saying they made concessions is a strange way of putting it.

I don't think I meant to imply that Freedom "endorsed" him.

I am Jack's complete lack of surprise

Indeed.

I feel like I'm living in a twilight zone episode. I don't think we're ever going to see an end to this and I think its going to get worse and worse and no one is going to notice until there really is no way out. I'm sick of seeing comments about voting bad / good lawmakers out / in. Clearly that doesn't work because most citizens don't give a shit because they're too stupid to understand what is happening. Even when you educate them they're so shell shocked by the news that they're willing to let the powers that be shepherd them into servitude. We're all megafucked. Just wait until trump worms his way into office and uses this to round up whomever he hates at the moment. Imagine if bush had this level of power when he made the comments about atheists not being real citizens... i'm genuinely worried about the future.

A simplified way of looking at things is that politicans cannot simultaneously be "for the people" and above them. Perhaps way lower down on the totem pole but not in the big leagues.

As for not seeing the end of it, it's the same as TOS and software updates we receive on iOS, et al. Not many people look at the details, rather they just press OK. Attrition as an agent of change is much more effective than a full-frontal assault. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_strategy

> Even when you educate them they're so shell shocked by the news that they're willing to let the powers that be shepherd them into servitude. We're all megafucked.

The shell shocked attitude that's followed by complacency is exactly, "We're all megafucked," possibly in other words.

It's exactly that attitude that we need to steer away from, no matter how grim the landscape looks. That's step 1 to change.

if correcting one's attitude is step one, what is step two? voting? what real victories have been won on this front recently? and i'm not advocating for extremism nor am i advocating for complacency, the game just seems stacked with zero possibility of change.

I have recently gotten involved in local government and local community-supporting non-profits. The US as a world power and example of virtuousness seems to be on its way to the dustbin, so I am focusing on protecting/making healthy my community.

If our local community can become strong enough, we may have a chance to survive to see what the next attempt at national/federal(/world?) government might look like.

It's one of the few ways I can think of to do something positive and legal. And non-violent.

I'd love more reasons to hate Facebook, but is there any real sourcing for that? @Snowden seems to be linking to BoingBoing, who then links to Fight for the Future[1], which just claims secret sources. OK, but are they known to historically have had accurate secret info?

Their landing page has this quote "If CISA passes, all your photos, posts, relationships, and likes will have a path to government databases." Which, from what very little I understand, is not quite true. At a minimum, "government databases" already have such a path via subpoenas, NSLs and such right?

I want to believe FB is worse, yes. I'd just like a more convincing source to give people.

1: https://www.youbetrayedus.org/facebook/

FB made it seem as if their CEO was donating his wealth to charity, even though his wealth was going to a private LLC. Most people believe Zuckerburg is a saint and just know the story propogated by the PR firms.

People are not going to distrust a [free] service they use daily, they'll give FB benefit of the doubt, time and time again. It doesn't matter how good the source, today's users are addicts.

If the USA Freedom Act was 1 step forward for privacy (also debatable if even that), this is 5 steps back.

The US really needs to break away from its 2-party system, and the only way to do that is to kill the FPTP voting system. Otherwise, Americans will never have real choices for stuff that really matters.

I'm not convinced that even a flat popular vote wouldn't have supported CISA.

Maybe this is just the generation of internet users who are willing to trade other people's freedom for their own security, given the chance?

Can someone explain why/how the CISA portion of the bill can or can't be removed later?

The law is not append-only. Bills can add and remove anything to/from the current body of law previously passed by the legislature (as distinct from the Constitution—there's a more complex procedure for ammending that—and as distinct from executive branch regulations—which can be effectively neutralized [requiring an executive rewrite] by legislation banning programs or actions or by denying funding, but Congress cannot directly rewrite exec regs). Congress rarely removes anything because there's rarely a benefit to the representatives to remove existing law. Special interests prefer exceptions carved out rather than striking out broad provisions that are currently active.

What are you asking exactly? In order to be attached to the bill, the amendment must be approved by a majority of the chamber. So that means it's already garnered support from congress, and congress is unlikely to take it off again before voting on the bill as a whole. Once it passes congress, the only way for it to be defeated would be for the president to veto the enormous budget bill based only on the amendment, which he is very unlikely to do (even if he did disapprove of CISA, which I don't think he does).

He has in fact publicly campaigned in favor of CISA.

I think he means, while they approved the bill, warts and all, that doesn't mean everybody likes all the warts. (Although it is congress, so we have to assume they DO like warts... but let's put that aside). He's asking if they can come back and remove some of the warts, essentially, in a separate action at a later time.

But a majority of congress did like the wart. That's why the amendment adding the CISA text to the omnibus bill passed, and that's while it's very unlikely to be repealed later.

(Of course it's possible to repeal it later, as is true for all laws; they didn't pass a constitutional amendment.)

The public-choice situation as I understand it is that CISA was a bill that concentrated interests (large tech companies) liked but which the public as a whole did not like (insofar as they bothered to know about it). The key to passing such a bill is to minimize publicity and bundle it with a distraction.

Both CISA and PCNA passed with large amounts of publicity and long review periods.

OK, I don't necessarily disagree, but why tack CISA onto the omnibus budget bill if not to avoid publicity? There was no compromise justification (i.e. no argument that CISA + budget bill would pass even though neither would pass alone), correct?

It's the end of the year and they're trying to get shit wrapped up. CISA and PCNA weren't controversial except on message boards. They passed with overwhelming support, positive media coverage, and the overt support of the President.

Although I'm happy to admit that there was no major public pushback against CISA because no one in the public cared, I'm not convinced that it had public support or positive media coverage. I typed "CISA" into Google news, and these were first articles and opinion pieces that came up on the mainstream (not tech-related) news sites. (I couldn't find any positive publicity at all.)

Washington Times: "ISA cyber bill squeezed into omnibus spending plan | Lawmakers have contentious cybersecurity legislation into an omnibus spending plan..."

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/dec/16/cisa-cyber-b...

Huffington Post: "Congress Ties Controversial Cybersecurity Bill To Key Spending Package | And critics are not happy about it."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/cisa-omnibus-spending-bi...

The Guardian: "Congress just revived the surveillance state in the name of 'cybersecurity'"

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/16/congres...

CNN: "Congress, don't be fooled by cybersurveillance bill"

http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/18/opinions/polis-cybersecurity-l...

International Business Times: "Controversial Cybersecurity Bill CISA Passes House, Takes One Step Closer To Becoming Law"

http://www.ibtimes.com/controversial-cybersecurity-bill-cisa...

Washington Times: "Lawmakers line up to complain about last-minute inclusion of cyber bill CISA in omnibus"

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/dec/17/lawmakers-li...

All of these stories are just press hits for people like Amash and Wyden, whose PR strategies involve courting Internet privacy supporters.

There's nothing at all wrong with that.

Certainly, even when I disagree with them, I'd rather read Wyden and Amash talking points than hearing about why we should kill the families of ISIS members. And I mostly agree with Wyden!

But it's just worth remembering that no matter what had happened with CISA and PCNA, there were always going to be these stories. You take press hits when you can get them, and these were lay-up press hits.

The House and Senate bills passed with overwhelming support and significant media coverage, and Obama backed the bill. Nobody is hiding.

Replying to tptacek: OK, but I think everything you said is consistent with no one in public having any idea or caring. This was "out in the open" in the same way that essentially all regulations that benefit a concentrated interest with diffuse costs do (like most pork). It's just ignored by the public.

Anyways, sorry to drag this out. I don't have anything more productive to add. I appreciate your insight here.

Not by any likely means.

The bill was online for two days before voting. I looked at sections of it. Any Congressman could have read in advance. It was very long and had lots of number amounts. Only an expert could tell if these were increases or decreases.

Increases. There have been very few true "cuts" at the Federal level in the last few generations.

The secret is Baseline Budgeting[1].

If your agency got $100 this year, you ask for $110 next year and that becomes the "baseline." Now when the actual budget negotiations happen, you may only get $105. Most people would call this a 5% increase but instead they consider it a (roughly) 5% cut from the baseline.

This is how the government can claim they're "cutting the budget" while still spending more than last year.

For a bonus, imagine the above agency is sympathetic - like the food stamp program - and requests $200 next year. When some Congressperson says "No wait, you only need $110," they're accused of "cutting food stamps in half" and "wanting people to starve!" It's effective for tearing apart the other person, not effective for actually getting things done.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseline_(budgeting)

you make it sound like the numbers are out of thin air.. but your link says:

Baseline budgeting uses current spending levels as the "baseline" for establishing future funding requirements and assumes future budgets will equal the current budget times the inflation rate times the population growth rate.

Sounds reasonable to me.

That's the idealized definition, yes. But in practice, that's not how it works.

There are one-time projects, ongoing programs, an ever-changing list of agency priorities, and - like any negotiation - groups start higher than they need so they have wiggle room. And yes, many of those things are out of thin air or completely arbitrary.

just so we're clear, you're claiming that the Congressional Budget Office -- which creates baseline budgets twice per year -- is operating outside of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 (which requires it to create baseline budgets), and is instead creating budgets that are completely arbitrary.

That's quite a claim.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, you're clearing confusing budget requests with baseline budgets. Everything you've said applies to budget requests.. none of it applies to baseline budgeting.

I've specified "agencies" since my first comment, not the CBO. In the US, those are separate branches - executive vs legislative respectively - and use different approaches to build their "baselines."

CBO assumes the government continues current operations and applies the effects of new laws to create their baseline.

Agencies include discretionary spending to create their baseline.

All of this is noted on the Wikipedia page.

yes, I read the entire wikipedia article. Did you read it? Because it does not support what you're saying. You've made up a definition of baseline budgets that does not exist... it sounds like your version combines baseline budgets -- which are created by the CBO; and budget requests -- which are submitted by the various departments of the executive.

Baseline is defined by law. There's no made up definition or arbitrary budget.

Budget requests are not baseline budgets. These are two completely different things.

Other than the words he's using he's basically correct.

Agencies request more than they need so they can say their budget is being cut. That's like negotiations 101.

> Other than the words he's using he's basically correct.

Other than your words, you're basically correct.

All I can find from that Snowden tweet is https://www.youbetrayedus.org/facebook/ . Are there any news articles explaining what the source of this claim is? That's a big deal if true.

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