Slashdot Mirror
Senate Cybersecurity Bill Stalled By Ridiculous Amendments
wiredmikey writes "Despite a recent push by legislators, it remains unclear whether the Senate will manage to vote on the proposed comprehensive cybersecurity legislation (Cybersecurity Act of 2012) before Congress adjourns at the end of the week for its summer recess. Once all the amendments (over 70) have been dealt with, the Senate could decide to vote on the bill immediately, or wait till after the summer recess. As usual, the Democrats and Republicans have been unable to agree on which amendments will be considered, effectively stalling the bill. And most interesting, is that in typical U.S. political fashion, some of the amendments have nothing to with the topic on hand (cybersecurity): ... Sen. Frank Lautenberg has filed a measure to ban high-capacity ammunition clips as part of a gun-reform proposal. And Sen. Mike Lee filed a bill that would ban abortion in Washington, D.C. after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Sen. Michael Bennet and Tom Coburn filed an amendment to expand the Office for Personnel Management's federal government's data center consolidation initiative. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell suggested an amendment to repeal the Affordable Care Act."
I know this is the way our government works, tacking on all sorts of stupid shit but it still seems absurd.
There's no reason the amendments should be any less ridiculous than the bill itself.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
??? the bill failed a vote on the senate floor minutes ago
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-cybersecurity-act-fails-to-pass-in-the-senate-20120802,0,1649471.story
At this point Congress is in a holding pattern until the election. You'd be lucky to get through a resolution expressing condolences to the Colorado shooting victims.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
It's probably a good thing in this case, like so many others.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
"Cybersecurity" 101, don't have critical infrastructure facing the internet. Use strong encryption for sensitive files. Deploy security patches promptly. Use the right tool for the job, sometimes that means using a commercial OS, sometimes it means developing a new OS, sometimes it means taking an existing OS (*Nix) and tweaking it.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Well, here's the summary links to the bill itself.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:S.2105:
I'm a little out of my depth but "comprehensive legislation" these days makes me nervous that there aren't sneaky things in there.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
i've said it before and i'll say it again, democracy simply doesn't work.
---
Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
What would we need to do to make this kind of shit illegal? A law? A constitutional amendment? I don't think it would be too hard to get 2/3 of Americans to agree that any amendment or rider to a bill should be relevant to that bill's stated purpose.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
p.s. the link won't work with a final : symbol on the end, Slashdot doesn't like the link.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
This is one of the fundamental reasons why we have the issues we have. Including amendments or clauses that have absolutely nothing to do with the main content of the bill itself should not be allowed. It has historically and currently used to sneak in laws that are not openly discussed with the public in order to pass those laws without public knowledge. This is because they know it is harder to eliminate a law after it has passed than it is to block a law before it passes.
While arguments could be made that legitimate laws that should be passed would take too long to get passed, this ability is abuses far more frequently than being used for legitimate laws. And for that reason, things like this need to stop.
And who decides if the amendment is related to the bill or not? The majority party? Luckily our congress would never act in a petty & partisan manner by randomly punishing their political opponents just because they can.
It was voted down, largely due to business objections to more regulations, but I'm sure the usual petty bickering was involved as well.
The actual bill had no teeth anyway. The proposed standards were voluntary. It will take a technological 9/11 - like event to goad the government into concrete action, and given our legislative track record, the response to an IT Pearl Harbor will probably be both over-reaching and misdirected.
It is pretty pathetic when we can trust neither the government nor business to do something reasonable and effective. One is incompetent, the other is greedy. We're hopelessly screwed.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
Either Senators are all assholes (probable, either way) and they just strap on whatever they can to fast-track legislation (should be illegal, tbh) or they really don't want this bill to go through but don't want to vote "no". Really? Addition to repeal the Affordable Healthcare Act? That's not gonna pass and has absolutely nothing to do with cybersecurity...
-SaNo
An amendment making the proposal of amendments to a bill - which are not directly related to said bill's specific subject - matter a crime punishable by being forced to watch at least 72 continuous hours of Barney the Friendly Dinosaur.
For a second offense, maybe. First offense? 48 hours of The Brady Bunch. Course, they'd probably throw it out as cruel and unusual punishment, but hey, if it's not cruel and unusual, how can it be punishment?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Shouldn't they be concerning themselves with restricting WoW magic swords and stuff like that?
I mean, come on folks. Put the stuff about real weapons in a physical security bill.
Have gnu, will travel.
They've been in a holding pattern for 3 years now from what I can tell...
...wait no, he's not talking about high capacity clips in online video games? Then maybe that amendment should GTFO of that bill! I should run for senate, introduce a law that requires amendments to be directly related to bills, then leave lol.
Has anyone ever actually made a high capacity clip?
I am well aware of high capacity magazine, but I have never seen stripper clips more than 5 rounds, and moon clips are for revolvers.
The rules allow them to introduce any kind of irrelevant crap into any bill. There's no filtering process because there's no binary way to assess relevance and politicians apparently can't deal with ambiguity well enough to set up even simple heuristics, approved by vote.
There's little evidence of intelligence in congress, even on the intelligence committee. After all, Michelle Bachmann is on it.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
This is a great reminder to contact your Representative and ask them to support the latest iteration of the H.R. 3806 One Subject at a Time Act in the House and Sen. Paul's version S. 3359 One Subject at a Time Act in the Senate. Both bills are endorsed by DownsizeDC, which is one of the originators of the idea, according to their site.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
A much more versatile and generalizable title would be "[% legislative_chamber %] [% legislation_name %] Stalled By Ridiculous Amendments." Used as an HTML template, it would be almost universally applicable around the world.
What would we need to do to make this kind of shit illegal? A law?
Great idea! We can append it to the Senate cybersecurity bill.
Noone will propose that amendment, as it won't be directly related to that bill subject, so will be condemned to see the Barney marathon. Anyway, should exist a bill against such kind of inhumane punishments, but didnt got approved because the cybersecurity addendum to it.
And that would be pretty close to a paradoxical bill, not that having logic or any pretention of making sense matter for most already approved ones anyway.
You act like Congress can only act on one issue at a time. That's simply not true.
Looks like you're right. The bill was reintroduced as S.3414 which was voted on and rejected a few hours ago.
Join me in celebrating the defeat of this additional intrusion of police-state power. Let's hope it's blocked FOREVER!
This is not about any "Security" I know of - unless you mean the kind of "Security" that the DMCA offers toward corporations.
The bill focuses on restriction of tools and activities used to manage, diagnose and secure network connectivity. Users of Wireshark or even ping can be treated like DMCA circumventors, under the provisions of this proposed act.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/05/frequently-asked-questions-about-lieberman-collins-cyber-security-act
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I'm a little out of my depth but "comprehensive legislation" these days makes me nervous that there aren't sneaky things in there.
Unfortunately it happens far too often.
Take the Hughes Amendment for example, If you pay attention, you'll notice the amendment that Mr. Hughes brings to the table fails to pass, but is instead inserted into the bill as passed by the gavel of Mr. Rangel.
The same people that interpret all the rest of the vague, subjective, conflicting law that comes out of congress - the courts. Sen Paul's bill states that any provisions in a bill which are not related to the subject of the bill will be void. Thus if the government attempts to enforce any sections of law introduced by such bills, it will be appealed and potentially struck down by the courts.
Any self-restraint by the congress is highly desirable, but they are not the final authority.
Just an armchair expert (on the other side of the world no less) but...
maybe try pass an amendment stating that no amendments can be considered if not directly related to the bill (or infrastructure etc needed for it's enforcement). Seems it would fix an awful lot of problems. Allow the public to decry individual evils without harming the occassional good bill.
Our Whores for the highest bidder system of government is predictable in that no matter what they do it will be detrimental to the American people.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Well now that they've got the budget balanced our representatives in Washington deserve some well-earned time off. As I recall, this gives them time to go back to their constituents (us) and explain what a bang-up job they've been doing. Yeah, I'm holding my breath too.
Wow - I sure do wish I got a "Summer Recess" from my job. That'd be awesome. It'd be even more awesome if any work I didn't get done before my "recess" was quietly ignored and allowed to either vanish or get set aside till I got back. Oh - and lifetime healthcare and pension would be neat too!
I hate every single one of these idiots.
this is why we can't have nice things
-Lod
When you A) have the best healthcare in the world B) have the healthcare companies/insurance sleazebags in your pocket and C) are able to trick people into voting against their own self interests why would you give a shit about the struggling masses without adequate Healthcare? Hence Mitch Fuckface McDickhead McConnell's amendment to a cybersecurity bill.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Obamacare is an example of this- the original bill (HR 3590) dealt with the homebuyer tax credit for veterans until the Obamacare stuff was tacked on as an amendment.
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
Yay Slashdot really works! We Slashdotted that bill! Slashtivism in action!
"But this one goes to 11!"
Thank you. Now I'm taking my mod points back. That'll do.
\r
I feel that every bill should have a one page, 12 point text summary. If it isn't in the summary it can't be in the bill. That would really cut down on all the various and sundry things that they tack onto these both because of space limitations and seeing it right there.
Even better, that summary must be made public (on the internet just so it won't be one of those "Beware of the leopard" things) for 30 days before they can vote.
The last thing these guys want is for it to be blindingly obvious what they're doing. And when they try the traditional response of "It's too complicated for the voters to understand" then they're admitting that they don't understand it either.
I'm such a dreamer.
With 3D printers being able to print gun magazines now as well as firearm components, I strongly suspect that the silly little law on high capacity magazines will be irrelevant within a year or so.
They have a lot of interest in acting on their re-election campaigns...
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
That way we could see what our representatives are really voting for or against. Voting for one thing at a time would allow real debate on the issues and slow down the legislative process, not merely gridlock it for no coherent reason.
This "bundle everything into large bills and engage in horsetrading" is just a mechanism for politicians to obfuscate their voting records.
It's just a giant obfuscation technique. The politicians love the power and circumstance of their position, but they hate taking responsibility for leadership. However, leadership means taking responsibility. Political office should not be a lifetime career.
Most politicians simply have a lust for power completely detached from any social vision or principles.
"Access to power must be confined to those who are not in love with it." -- Plato.