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Comment by meritt | Hacker News Reader

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

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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.

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