Senator posts cryptocurrency bill on GitHub, chaos ensues | Hacker News Reader

Senator posts cryptocurrency bill on GitHub, chaos ensues

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51 pointsjonah8 comments

As the novelty of trolling these bills with PRs dies down, I can see this being really useful.

Imagine more bills getting collaboration from the public this way. Rather than calling/writing your local rep, you submit a PR/issue and get feedback quickly!

IMO this is a brilliant move.

Yes! This should be the future of government

> Rather than calling/writing your local rep, you submit a PR/issue and get feedback quickly!

Learning git well enough to be effective is likely to present some challenges for a lot of the population. It's hard enough for IT people that don't have version control experience in their background. ;)

I'd definitely love something like this to take off in terms of async collaborative editing that can involve the public directly, but I don't see how Github is the place for that. It should be a government-run server and require some form of authentication that you're really a citizen of the jurisdiction the law would apply to.

Even then, you'd get trolls, but at least they'd be American trolls and you're not handing over ownership of critical legal infrastructure to Microsoft.

The troll PR's are hysterical, especially the one trying to add the Linux Kernel. But I really see this as a novel way for legislation to be drafted, put out a piece of legislation and then accept modifications from constituents. Obviously there are many kinks that would have to get worked out, ensuring you are only accepting contributions from actual constituents and providing a way for non-technical users to contribute.

EDIT:

Even without the ability to PR, having full text of legislation that can be parsed by computers can be a gamechanger. Imagine having a bot that distills the contents on an Omnibus Bill (usually a few thousand pages) into several paragraphs of summary on all the important points, broken down by pork barrels, stuff from previous bills, etc.

>having full text of legislation that can be parsed by computers can be a gamechanger.

https://www.congress.gov/

for example:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/435...

Honestly, pretty disappointed by the mass derogatory comments and trolling. We should be very happy about the transparency and RFC on a crypto bill, even if the first draft is not good.

Kinda afraid they just won't bother next time.

Yep. If you want your federal legislation to be written by industry in the dark, then troll away. If you want a voice and to have your Congressperson hear your voice, then take these things seriously.

Expect every group with lobbyists to hope and aid your trolling no matter the party. If Congressional staffers get real feedback it lessens the orgs power to manipulate the truth.

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