If you read the Wikipedia link above the law was written by the lobbyists. It's up to the elected officials to take the time to write their own bill or they may simply work from the lobbyists draft.
No, 100% is not written, but yes some bills are written by lobbyists.
A good story my professor told me is when he took a trip to Congress, met his Congressperson, suggested a law that would help entrepreneurs, then sat down with him and they both drafted it in about 2 hours, then he took it to Congress to table it for a vote. It didn't pass, but that's how laws get written.
But then again, is lobbying bad? I mean, it's not stacks of money passed under a table, it's literally arguing your case. I mean isn't that what Congresspeople are there for? To hear their constituents concerns and desires?
Would anyone on HN argue that EFF shouldn't be allowed to spend donations they receive to do work that helps them lobby congress for say, privacy laws?
> Politicians are the ones that introduce these laws
Technically yes. But politicians (the actual rep's themselves) do not really write the laws - they just agree on the spirit of the law of which they're pursuing and then basically sell it to other members.
It's the equivalent of engaging a Partner at a big 4 consultancy. They show up for the sales call, but are nowhere to be found when the solution they sold actually gets implemented.
> I suspect the way it works is that the legislators tell their staffs what they want the bills to do
Many bills today (perhaps most) are not written by legislators and their staff, but rather by lobbyists. That might have been the case since forever (if the movie "The Aviator" is not too dramatized, this has been true in the 1930's as well)
The law was written in the 1970s to apply to some entities in some ways, to other entities in other ways, and not at all to yet other entities. This was intentional on the part of those who wrote it. No theories are required to observe such a basic fact.
Unless maybe your point is that there weren't any lobbyists in the 1970s, that there were but they weren't corrupt like now, or that any political era you didn't hear about from CNN was some golden age? That's cute.
A lot (most?) legislation is written by industry (or other) lobby groups. This has been the case for a while. I guess an executive order is a little different. But it's the same principle really...
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