The New USA Freedom Act: A Step in the Right Direction, but More Must Be Done
eff.org
eff.org
Inevitably, this comes back to bite me when I go back to revise the code and find I can't immediately understand what the code is doing, and the first thing I find myself doing is renaming poorly-named constructs.
Congress has very different constraints when naming bills, but the end result is the same, adding the burden of a hard-to-do-right, yet high-visibility responsibility to already-overworked staffers. I'm not surprised at all that the names for most bills are sappy and nondescript.
You speak as if they're making an honest attempt to give the bills meaningful and accurate names. They want the former, not the latter. The PATRIOT Act, like the USA FREEDOM Act and many other bills, is purposefully misnomed in an attempt to hide what the bills does and to dissuade voting against it. "You wouldn't vote against patriots or freedom, would you?"
When discussing the manipulative nature of the naming of the act in question, its perhaps useful to get the name right: it's not just the PATRIOT Act, its the USA PATRIOT Act, and USA PATRIOT isn't the full name, its an acronym for "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism".
Maria Hill: What does S.H.I.E.L.D. stand for, Agent Ward?
Grant Ward: Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.
Maria Hill: And what does that mean to you?
Grant Ward: It means someone really wanted our initials to spell out "shield."
Even if they did make an honest attempt, it wouldn't solve the problem. It would just increase their workload and open themselves up to political attacks for no real gain.
You don't get the bill you want, you get the bill you can gain support for. Getting any bill onto the floor takes Herculean effort. Honest naming would just hurt these bill's chances.
Not at all, a remotely descriptive name would be far easier to fabricate than a hideously contrived backronym. Naming something is nontrivial, as a developer I understand and appreciate that, but that's no excuse for creating misnomers with the express intent of manipulating other people.
> ... and open themselves up to political attacks for no real gain.
That logic would seem to work for any other unethical and/or unpleasant activity, "Everybody else is doing it and I would be disadvantaged if I didn't as well!"
> Honest naming would just hurt these bill's chances.
I highly doubt it, I'm fairly certain bill names are only to mislead the public as there's a pretty clean dichotomy between the two parties in the U.S. and their votes are usually a pretty standard party split.
The purpose of bill names, particularly ones on controversial issues, is not to be descriptive, it is to be sales tools. Its better to think of them as brand names than anything else.
But do you name your method that erases the whole system super_fun_happy_data_protection_enforcement_method()?
For instance, I am upset with the provision that gives immunity to any corporation that aids in government spying. I am also upset that this bill does not provide any new oversight apparatuses to the NSA, and does not remove any of the linguistic vagueness that created the loopholes they exploit in order to spy presently.
Yet, at the same time, I do not think 'the EFF is down with totalitarianism.' Perhaps it is your dichotomous perspective on support for this bill which is puerile.
Is that a "grown up" enough response to you?
The retroactive immunity clause and lack of oversight make this bill a step in the wrong direction, regardless of the EFF's involvement.
The average American? Who knows?
But in any case, even the most political informed of my friends wouldn't know what H.R.3162 is without a Google search, nor would they remember the number even if news articles referred to it constantly that way. Section 215 is mentioned all the time and I still need to think every time whether it is the "keep a record of everyone you call" section, the "spy on your web browsing" section or the "force companies to secretly spy for the government" section. Short of being a lawyer I don't see how I would remember H.R.3162 better than "PATRIOT Act".
While it might be a step in the right direction, bills designed to justify and extend surveillance programs (especially of its own citizens) under the pretense of terrorism and the new favorite cyber-security, nothing ever really changes.