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Comment by swohns | Hacker News Reader

Scary wasn't disclosed until today, it was scheduled for a vote this week.

Sadly this is the way non-partisan issues are legislated in the US system. But the system worked -- the vote was scheduled, the relevant interest groups noticed, the media reported it, the people contacted their representatives and the bill was pulled. We win. Note also that "the vote" was a committee vote. There were plenty of other chances to stop this.

This isn't the best system, obviously, but it does work. So don't despair, just be vigilant.

This isn't the best system, obviously, but it does work. So don't despair, just be vigilant.

It's just that most of us can't afford to outsource our vigilance, and the system works better for those who can.

Exactly. And given the relative difficulty of undoing bad legislation versus stopping it from passing (and even stopping it often takes a huge effort), whoever can afford the most persistence wins, by just waiting for the other side to slip up once.

But you can afford to outsource your representation?

There the cost structure is reversed: most of us can't afford to insource our representation -- that costs millions of dollars in campaign funds.

> This isn't the best system, obviously, but it does work

There is no question the system works - it's the biggest most powerful such in the world, possibly in all of known history.

The question is for whom [1] it works - the answer may depress you.

[1] hint: someone in the know once said: "corporations are people, my friend"

Even more scary was that it was a bill originally advertised as improving email security and then was quietly rewritten to damaging email security (but then wasn't advertised that it did a 180).

Hurray for the internet. Hard to screw people over by this shady business these days.

It's a better story when there's a looming deadline. A story about something that doesn't seem urgent isn't going to get many eyeballs.

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