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Comment by tathougies | Hacker News Reader

The article neglects to mention that the bill already passed the democratic house without much debate.

The President of the United States wants the Senate bill to remove powers given to the executive branch, because he's convinced they were used against him. Yes, that's right, the president of the United States wants the Senate to amend the bill to reduce the power of the executive branch.

In other words, by characterizing this bill as something Senate republicans are trying to do to increase the power of the federal government, the article neglects to mention that (a) the bill has already passed the Democrat-led house (sponsored by Adam Schiff, BTW) and (b) that the head of the Republican party, the POTUS, wants more restrictions on the powers they're giving to him. That would certainly change the headline, but wouldn't satisfy people's republican bashing appetite.

https://www.usnews.com/news/technology/articles/2020-03-16/u...

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I think you're reading far too much bias into this. The only individual being attacked here is McConnell and the primary target of criticism here is "the government". The article specifically mentions there are opponents on both sides of the aisle in both the House and Senate, and their dissent has been ignored while it's continuing to be pushed through. It also passed 278-136 [1] in the House with a nearly even allocation of D & R for both yays and nays.

Protecting (or eroding) privacy has always been a bipartisan issue.

[1] http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2020/roll098.xml

Indeed. What's more shocking is that the president of the united states (the one to whom the powers are being given) wants there to be more regulation of this power to prevent abuses, but that the law does not include them.

But this presidency also believes in the unitary executive theory of executive power. From that perspective, this bill wouldn't limit the powers of the president to direct domestic surveillance however he sees fit, it would only limit the types of surveillance activities that as a practical matter are directed in the first instance by the DoJ as part of their delegated powers for general law enforcement activities and restrained by the FISA court process.

In other words, all it would do is prevent the type of activities that Trump finds personally threatening, without restraining him at all.

Of course, all of this assumes that Trump actually thinks strategically and analytically. But all the evidence is to the contrary. Even conservative, pro-Trump supporters describe him euphemistically as a "transactional" president.

> In other words, all it would do is prevent the type of activities that Trump finds personally threatening, without restraining him at all.

In other words, the president wants a check on the amount of power the executive branch can exercise. That is all I said. The sorts of activities it would prevent is irrelevant. If the set of activities allowed in the president's desired bill is a subset of those allowed previously, my statement would be true.

In your heart of hearts, do you think Donald Trump has ever uttered the words "executive branch"? Honest question.

"The Act passed the House late last week, but with significant bipartisan opposition from civil-liberties champions in Congress and from leading privacy, racial-justice and constitutional-rights groups, including my group Free Press Action."

This is the second paragraph of the article.

Correct, but it still passed a chamber of the legislature headed by the opposition party. Hell, it was sponsored by a legislator that is so convinced the current head of state is a criminal that he led an impeachment investigation against him. It indicates a severe lack of integrity when one sponsors a bill meant to give rather extreme authoritarian powers to someone you have decided is a criminal.

> It indicates a severe lack of integrity when one sponsors a bill meant to give rather extreme authoritarian powers to someone you have decided is a criminal.

Not especially. Their primary goal is government power, only then followed by fighting over who gets to wield it.

So that negates the very clear spin of the headline, sub-headline, and first paragraph? They're burying the lede intentionally to push their own warped narrative of what's actually happening.

>In the House, a bipartisan group of representatives called for meaningful reforms to federal spying powers, including Section 215. Democrats and Republicans who voted against the bill—and even some who voted for it—joined together to say that this legislation didn’t do enough to protect everyone’s privacy rights

>Yet in the Senate, Majority Leader McConnell has prevented Sens. Steve Daines (R-MT), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Mike Lee (R-UT), Ron Wyden (D-OR) and others...

And "The act passed the house..." is the second sentence of the article.

Or how about last week's headline

>152 House Democrats Join GOP to Reauthorize 'Abusive Government Surveillance Powers

What are your expectations exactly?

Appeals to reading comprehension are pointless on HN, why are you wasting your time? Nobody expects an intelligent dialogue about journalism from a site that historically leans towards the tech crowd. What's your next trick, pointing out that every professional journalist knows >90% of readers stop after the headline and strategically leverage that to lie?

> sponsored by Adam Schiff

I'd be against any surveillance bill sponsored by Mr. "Russia is out to get us" Schiff, before even reading it.

It's interesting how Congress has in many ways come full circle since the 1950s.

This highlights the crazy, partisan nature of the news these days. You have to really read carefully (and probably from several sources) to really understand which way is up.

I shared your first thought-- why is this article all about the wicked Republican Senate, with no mention of the previous hurdle of the Democrat House? Shameful.

More indication that the Democrats and Republicans are just a face/heel arrangement.

The two party system in the US behaves an awful lot like good-cop/bad-cop to me.

There's a good cop?

I think so, on the surface, the democratic party seems to fit pretty well with the good cop as described by [0].

But the whole thing is a farce, neither is actually acting genuinely in the interests of the subject. That's the point.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_cop/bad_cop

Depends which side you're on. If you're a Democrat, Dems are the 'adults in the room.' Reps are psychomaniacs tearing it all down.

If you are a Republican, Reps are the party of the real Americans, not the elitists trying to prevent you from succeeding. Democrats are a bunch of stuck up snobs that are too book smart to know how to effectively run a government.

Pick a side.

There are more US citizens who are neither of the two than any one of them, if memory serves me right.

As for me - I'd say that Dems are the elitists trying to prevent the masses from getting what they need, and the GOP are their maniac friends tearing things down.

I am pretty sure the American political party system could be consider to be Bad-Cop / Nietzschean-Cop.

It would be funny, if that was not true. Still, for once his very singular approach to issues may be a net benefit to the population at large ( somewhat watered down bill instead full blown one ).

I will admit that I forgot all about it myself. This week is bananas. The distraction is real.

>The article neglects to mention that the bill already passed the democratic house without much debate.

Some important context here, 126 Republicans voted for that bill, and 75 Democrats voted against the bill.

Still, Nancy Pelosi, the head of the democratic party, could have not called a vote on the bill. Totally her discretion.

Spot on.

thanks for sharing that insight, I hate articles that only report their biased point of view and hide other relevant information.

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