

The New USA Freedom Act: A Step in the Right Direction, but More Must Be Done - sinak
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/new-usa-freedom-act-step-right-direction-more-must-be-done

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rmxt
There's a lot to digest in this, but it all strikes me as a bit dystopian that
these bills and laws are framed using "positive" language and terms. Seems
like a healthy dose of wishful thinking to title this bill with the word
"freedom," when its entire purpose wouldn't exist were the values of free
expression upheld in the first place.

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caryhartline
Bills are always named like this. It's just something short to put on a sign.

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Balgair
Names have no meaning? I'm pretty sure that's dystopian.

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vinceguidry
It's a hard problem. When coding, I have to come up with sufficiently
descriptive names for all methods, all internal variables, all classes, all
modules to fit those classes in. Sometimes I feel the urge to cheat, to give
less than fully descriptive names for things.

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.

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tetrep
>Congress has very different constraints when naming bills, but the end result
is the same...

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?"

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dragonwriter
> The PATRIOT Act [...] is purposefully misnomed in an attempt to hide what
> the bills does and to dissuade voting against it

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".

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bookface
Wow, that is, appropriately, a tortured backronym.

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rayiner
It's a bad backronym, but it's not misleading.

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Retra
I would argue that it is.

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Balgair
[https://supporters.eff.org/donate](https://supporters.eff.org/donate)

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Garthex
Effective!

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DigitalSea
To quote Team America: Freedom isn't free.

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.

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timtas
You know the problem runs deep when they keep writing bills that basically
say, "Remember that whole Constitution thing; yeah, they actually meant it."

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nota_bene
"More Must Be Done" -> If you need a tool to coordinate some kind of action,
this may be of help: [https://www.iWouldDo.it](https://www.iWouldDo.it)

