Source Control For Bills In Congress?

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?"

Comments

alternatively...

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:alternatively...

[Baricom]

Absolutely. I was just discussing this with someone today - if the "readings" in Congress were mandatory and could not be bypassed by consent, we'd have a much better legal system for a variety of reasons - Congressional representatives couldn't claim ignorance, there would be an incentive to keep bills shorter, and an unexpected change would be noticed more readily.

Re:alternatively...

[newt0311]

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.

I don't think you understand

[Rude Turnip]

They want it to be this way by design.

Re:I don't think you understand

[Kobayashi Maru]

You know, this is a damed good idea. So simple that I just HAVE to look for pitfalls.

First, I read about something called the Federal Register the other day. As I understand, it is a daily publication of the GPO, responsible for creating a record of public government communication.

Where does this fit into the equation? Wikipedia says it has been operating since the 1930s. That to me suggests existing infrastructure. Could this program be adopted to handle pending Congressional legislation? Does something similar exist already? Are these even valid questions? I'm trying to get a sense of the public accounting context that exists today.

Now, once we set up a legislative mechanism to get the information in place, there are practical considerations. I happen to agree with the parent's cynicism. Open government is less corrupt government, and there will surely be resistance to a program like this. What is the likelihood that something like this would be ignored? The aforementioned Wikipedia states that the Register is for public notices not "classified." Do government agencies really bother? Would Congress bother? Would it matter, practically speaking?

Then there's the question of volume. I understand the current Register is thousands upon thousands of pages. What would be the best way to handle all this data? Pressure our Congressmen to form a committee to look into the possibility of proposing vaguely worded, easily subverted legislation that would create a billion dollar, privacy infringing, twenty-year behemoth of a program? Or dictate simply that the data should be available in a specified format (something akin to a patch) in a timely manner.

I think the latter would be better, because it would force We the People to take a little responsibility for the program. I mean really, who doesn't think that an enterprising group of dedicated people, working for free in their spare time would work more efficiently than a monstrous bureaucracy? Sound like a familiar Slashdot battle?

Either someone will rise to the challenge and write a utility to "visualize" the data in an interesting way, or not. If not, I think we have bigger problems than Congressmen not reading their bills.

Make the data (near) freely available, then leave it up to The People to figure out how to use it. That's my take.

Fat chance

[El Cubano]

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?

Re:Fat chance

[nick_davison]

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.

Read the Bills Act

[remahl]

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.

Read The Bills Act

[Anonymous Coward]

There is another way to look at controlling legislation, IMHO much more important than mere source control:

A group called DownSizeDC.org is promoting a bill that would force every legislator who votes for a bill to sign a declaration that have either read the entire text of the bill, or had it read to them. The "Read the Bills Act" would also require that every piece of legislation be posted on the Net in its final form for a full 7 days before any vote could occur, giving the rest of us time to read and react...

There used to be requirements in US House and Senate for reading of the bills, but they both routinely waive that requirement. If it were required, the number and complexitiy of bills actually presented would go down dramatically.

Throw in a garbage collector as well.

[NotQuiteReal]

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.

Re:Throw in a garbage collector as well.

[istartedi]

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.

alternatively...RTF(_)

[Anonymous Coward]

The irony of slashdot telling people to RTFB is black hole massive.

Been there... Done that

[zerrubabul]

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"...

Re: Very Simple To Do

[DumbSwede]

Has I understand it, it should be simple enough to just have somebody just slip this new Mandatory Read law in.

Anyone here at Slashdot know someone on the inside?

I think I can see it now...

[Kadin2048]

The legal system on an index card, volume 1:

1) Don't be a twit.

Sincerely,
        Congress

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