Spam Marshals?

The fearless Federal Trade Commission is ready to respond to all the various longings for the feds to police spam. Not surprisingly, the tools the FTC says it needs include secret demands for subscriber info from Net service providers and access to the FBI's criminal databanks.

Evidently anticipating it will run into many foreign-based spammers beyond the reach of U.S. law, the FTC wants to be able to work closely -- and, yes, secretly -- with overseas police agencies. Conversely, be sure to close your Hotmail and Yahoo! accounts before the Turkish secret service hauls you away after some Kurd or Greek spoofs your address.

Ah, order.

Comments

[quaker120]

no one is harmed by it (despite the claims)

You obviously don't work in the IT industry. Do you realize how much time and money your network admin or ISP wastes fighting spam? Trust me, it's a lot. That wasted productivity harms us all.

Even so, making spam "illegal" is not the answer. As many enlightened people on this board have been saying all week, this is a TECHNICAL problem, and can be solved by TECHNICAL means.

[David2]

I agree with quaker on this. In fact, I proposed one such technical idea on my own show over at TalkLiberty.com just a couple of weeks ago.

There is an effective tech solution, folks, and it doesn't require new laws. It just requires programing, and getting the FTC to use CURRENT laws to do their jobs.

[Ron C]

Have you ever tried to have Yahoo! delete your account? I have, it is impossible. They simply won't do it.

And, on topic, the FTC's proposals seem rather ham-fisted, especially the part about foreign police getting access to subscriber records.

[Anonymous]

I do work in the IT industry and I can assure you the claims of wasted time and money are greatly exaggerated. Exaggerate a problem, get a budget increase!

Spam does add overhead for IT staffs, no doubt, but the overall problem is miniscule compared to virus eradication. The explosion in spam in the last few months is directly related to viruses and worms; most of the spam I get is because some idiot customer has my email address in their address book and some worm snatched my address out of it. Over half of the spam I get contains in the subject line the username of 2 or 3 customers I have to deal with. Now my address is confused with another user and I'll never get it off that list.

In less than 3 years, I'm sure we'll have the spam problem technically solved, and we'll all have new email addresses, too.

[Anonymous]

"In less than 3 years, I'm sure we'll have the spam problem technically solved, and we'll all have new email addresses, too."

Let's just hope we can beat the command-and-control bureaucrats to the punch.

[Warren]

anon@ 4:23,
I don't believe it. Virus protection is a done deal, you have to continually update and scan but the pipes are already laid. SPAM on the other hand is proving more resistant. The cost of SPAM is very real and in need of a viable solution.
I too am terrified at the prospect of the pols. sticking their big fat fingers in this pie. The marketplace is the best - make that, the only - hope.

[dude]

Arg. Is the War on Spam going to become the latest boondoggle that will manage to:

1) spend billions of dollars

2) infringe on privacy and take another bite out of the Bill of Rights and

3) fail?

Sort of a rhetorical question.

[Anonymous]

Spam is leagl now, no one is harmed by it (despite the claims) though they may be inconvenienced. Soon it will become illegal and we'll have a whole new set of people who, by not changing their actions at all, become newly-minted criminals.

Someday the U.S. will get over its addiction to creating criminals, but I doubt I'll be alive to see it.

[Plutarck]

Que Gomer Pile voice:

SUUU-U-U-RP-RISE, SUUU-U-U-RP-RISE, SUUU-U-U-RP-RISE!

[Sandy]

I, three, work in the IT industry, and it's a big part of our mailserver's overhead and our bandwidth cost. We pass this on to our customers. So you, dear head-in-the-sand, are paying for it whether you think you are or not.

That being said, I think current laws need updating to reflect the concepts of theft of service on the online world. Too many stupid judges have the comprehension to understand that trespass on chattels is trespass on chattels whether it's an open relay, my inbox, or bandwidth, not just my land.

Predictably, it's an excuse for the advancement of the police state and ignoring the problem.

There will be a technical fix for it when we remove the anonymity of e-mail and require authentication of senders. However, that requires an overhaul of the technology underlying e-mail transport, and that's not happening in just 3 years. Look how long it's taking to get IP v6 out.

[Andrew Lynch]

I KNEW as soon as I'd read this news on another site that if I came here, I'd hear some of the same arguments, rooted in an apparently inflexible platform, about letting the marketplace take care of this one. Great, vivre the platform.

In the meantime, who is doing something about the ungodly amount of spam I get, which I find offensive and intrusive? You IT guys? Interesting that, being a non-technical consumer type (i.e., the guy with the money), I have to hear about budding "technical" solutions on a Reason board, while the FTC gets all the ink.

Looks to me, in the wild and wooly marketplace of public relations, like FTC 1, IT 0.

[Anonymous]

"FTC 1, IT 0" -- my foot!

FTC ain't solving any problems, except perhaps by pointing a (hidden) gun to someone head, by writing more laws. How are LAWS going to stop a technical problem?

We've got laws against murder, laws against theft, laws against speeding, laws against every conceivable human frailty. Did they solve the problem? No.

We still have murderers, thieves, speeders and the like. But we also have bullet-proof vests (a private invention), locks, gates, safes (private inventions), highway radar (a private invention)

So it's more like "IT 124, Control Freaks 0,"

[Smith Gavin]

EMAIL: [e-mail]
IP: 62.213.67.122
URL: http://linux-shell-account.1st-host.org
DATE: 01/20/2004 09:17:09
Communism has nothing to do with love. Communism is an excellent hammer which we use to destroy our enemy.