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Source Control For Bills In Congress?

Posted by kdawson on from the real-subversion dept.

grepya writes "An article in Slate talks about the sneaky way a major change in the Patriot Act reauthorization bill was made by (possibly) a Congressional staffer without even his boss knowing about it. (The change increased the power of the Executive at the expense of the other two branches of government.) Now, I write software for a large and complex system containing millions of lines of code and I know that nobody could slip a single line of code into my project without my knowledge. This is because everything that goes into the build goes into a source control system, and email notification is generated to interested parties. This is for a body of work that affects perhaps a few hundred thousand people at most (our company and the combined population of all our customer organizations). Shouldn't the same process be applied to bills being debated in national legislatures that affect potentially hundreds of millions of people?"

9 of 300 comments (clear)

  1. alternatively... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... maybe the US Congress should read the bill before they pass it into law.

    1. Re:alternatively... by newt0311 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Actually a wasteful system seems like a very good idea. Historically, there is a direct correlation between how oppressive and how efficient a government is. It seems like all governments have an inherent urge to oppress their constituents and that greater inefficiency slows it down. Then again, we all hae to pay for that in terms of taxes so it sucks either way.

  2. I don't think you understand by Rude+Turnip · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They want it to be this way by design.

    --
    Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
  3. Fat chance by El+Cubano · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Shouldn't the same process be applied to bills being debated in national legislatures that affect potentially hundreds of millions of people?

    You mentioned getting email notifications about changes to the repository. You work with the code every day (or nearly every day). You see, these representatives in congress often times vote on bills which they have not even themselves read. They get the executive summary.

    That is like the difference between you reading the code for a newly modified parser class and getting one of your underlings to brief you about the changes. You might spend an hour or more reading source code for a whole new class, and only two minutes getting briefed on it. You have to get them actually read the bills first.

    Maybe we should require that all bills be read aloud in their entirety in an open session of congress?

    1. Re:Fat chance by nick_davison · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If people are determined to obfuscate, they'll find a way to.

      You add version control... The first thing they'll do is hire aides to add literally thousands of minute ammendments to every bill for the simple reason that it now becomes impossible to read every minor change log. They may well not sneak anything nefarious in to this bill, the next one or the next ten. Then, one day, fifty bills later, after people have long since given up reading change logs, one of the thousand minor edits will do just what they're currently doing.

      With source control for code, you can monitor what goes in because people are rarely actively trying to sneak anything in. If you do have someone who wants that chance and so starts spamming change logs, you can identify their malicious intent, go to your boss and get them fired. In congress, sadly, they've long since turned a blind eye to such pork barrel behavior and, if they turn a blind eye to it in this form, there's no reason not to expect them to turn a blind eye to it in a future form.

      The original poster's mistake is thinking that congress somehow wants to not be corrupt. Yes, we can force a fix on one form... not that they actually want that fix... but, as the old saying goes, "Where there's a will, there's a way." and a lot of politicians have a very strong will for sneaking in self serving measures.

  4. Read the Bills Act by remahl · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Make Congress Read the Bills. If they have to sit through a reading, maybe they'll cut down on the length and complexity of the laws. Here, apparently nobody knew what they were passing into law.

  5. Throw in a garbage collector as well. by NotQuiteReal · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If we could pass laws/amendments to "sunset" EVERY existing law, then our esteemed representatives could spend their time deciding what laws are important enough to renew, rather than making up new malarkey.

    --
    This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
    1. Re:Throw in a garbage collector as well. by istartedi · · Score: 5, Insightful

      OK, as long as there's somebody to implement an OnSunset() function that notifies the legislature. Otherwise, you could end up with situations where, for example, the meat industry suddenly no longer has to control rodents, and nobody realizes it until they walk into their local KFC and find that all the chicken has been replaced by.... oh... nevermind.

      --
      For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
  6. Been there... Done that by zerrubabul · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Such things already exist. I know someone who works for a company that makes version control software for documents. Their biggest customers are law firms. Nobody in a fortune 500 company wants some new hire paralegal modifying a clause in a billion dollar contract that it took months to negotiate. Congress people know the system could be made more fool proof but that would remove one more venue of plausible deniability they can use with their constituents. In Washinton crap just doesn't naturally roll down hill, it's designed to do so. Just as "Scooter"...