Comment by techsupporter | Hacker News Reader

Comment by techsupporter | Hacker News Reader

"In early July, Grayson had staffers distribute to House members several slides published by the Guardian about NSA programs as part of Grayson's efforts to trigger debate in Congress. But, according to one staff member, Grayson's office was quickly told by the House Intelligence Committee that those slides were still classified, despite having been published and discussed in the media, and directed Grayson to cease distribution or discussion of those materials in the House, warning that he could face sanctions if he continued."

Well, since we're having a merry old time stomping all over the Constitution, I suppose asking what ramifications could possibly befall this Representative, considering the "Speech and Debate" immunity provided under Article 1, Section 6 of our allegedly-cherished Constitution, is a moot point. This is why it's probably best that I'm not in Congress, since I'd like to think that my response would have been "so?", followed by my continuing to press the issue. Sens. Wyden and Udall didn't take such a course, so I assume the consequences would have been dramatic.

Where is the StackOverflow for upcoming bills? There should be a simple site (which I may have to make myself) where people can vote on bills they think are important and draw attention to them.

For the uninvolved citizen, they could visit the site and see that [something like] SOAP 2.0 is voted most important to watch. They could then cast their own disproving vote for the bill, which the site would track so that come election time a notice such as "Senator John votes in accordance with your votes 20% of the time."

The user could easily express their opinions, the site would remember their opinions, and would tell the user when their representatives did not represent them.

Personally, I don't know what bills are important, and even if I did I wouldn't remember how my Senator voted 5 years from now when he's up for reelection.

opencongress.org exists. but that doesn't mean that Congress looks at it.

Congress doesn't have to look at it, enough voters have to look at it.

This is what political parties and eeeevil special interest groups that are powerful through the votes they influence do. In the case I'm most familiar with, the NRA's political lobbying arm (and eeeevil 501(c)(4)) grades politicians, and will send out alerts for the more important elections (as well as actions on bills). Many former politicians who were send back home to spend more time with their families in part due to NRA and general gun owner action can attest to the effectiveness of this.

The same could happen in this area, the first vote on it was extremely encouraging.

That would be Popvox: https://www.popvox.com/

Here's their entry on the Amash amendment: https://www.popvox.com/bills/us/113/hamdt101

I found it through their June 25th "Top 20" list, which shows no particular bias as far as I can tell: http://www.popvox.com/blog/2013/roundup-8-1-2013/

Their curated "Issue Spotlight: Firearms and Gun Control" looks honest to me: http://www.popvox.com/blog/2013/issue-spotlight-firearms-113...

Thanks for bringing that site to my attention.

Although, I was picturing something more "dumbed down" like StackOverflow. I didn't see any important issues mentioned on the front page. It took me a few tries before I could find a link to important issues. I ended up clicking the "Get Started" button which I expected to take me to a registration page asking for my personal information. The "Get Started" link did take me to important issues though. Upon closer inspection, I do like the site.

Yeah, it isn't so easy to get to the important issues ... seems like their expectations is that users already know what bill they want to comment on when they get there. So, okay, not Stack Overflow yet. But more positively they've done a good job looking at it from the congressional staffers' perspective as well.

>For the uninvolved citizen, they could visit the site and see that [something like] SOAP 2.0 is voted most important to watch. They could then cast their own disproving vote for the bill, which the site would track so that come election time a notice such as "Senator John votes in accordance with your votes 20% of the time."

Can I just point something out here? This doesn't want to be a website. It wants to be a piece of software. You don't want to create a website that records everybody's preferences and creates a big database for the NSA to suck up over the wire and discover everyone who doesn't like them.

So do it the other way. Have a piece of software that downloads the public information (what the bills are and how your reps voted) but keep all the data about the user's preferences on the local machine. If you want to do statistics and publish them, look into homomorphic encryption and do it P2P. You can get aggregate numbers that way without revealing any individual's preferences.

The Speech and Debate clause: "and for any speech or debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other place."

The House Intelligence Committee is part of the house, so they are allowed to penalize Congressmen for speech.

You're right, though I wasn't thinking of penalties outside of Congress. Congress can only go so far as to expel a member, right, or can they put a sitting Representative up for impeachment? Assuming they can, I suspect the fallout from that would be...impressive.

More likely is that the party leadership would not let them on any of the important committees. Or they may via backchannels fund a primary challenger.

An obstacle for Wyden and Udall to use their immunity to leak info is that they would be evicted from the Intelligence Committee as punishment.

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