Rep. Bill Jones Thinks Spam is "Innovative"

GMontag writes "Wired is running this story:Candidate: Spam in Every Pot about candidate-for-governor Bill Jones' spam campaigning. The most telling quote: "Jones spokesman Darrel Ng said the e-mail wasn't spam, commonly defined as unsolicited commercial e-mail. Ng instead classified Jones' non-commercial mass-mailing as an "innovative way to use the Internet.'" Another interesting item: "An examination of the e-mail sent out by the Jones campaign revealed forged headers. The e-mail, purportedly sent from an MSN.com address, was actually routed through the server of an elementary school in Chonnam, Korea.""

Comments

Don't think this will be the only one...

[No-op]

I hate to say it, but I think we're going to see much more of this kind of mentality coming from our elected officials (and candidates). You have to realize they farm this sort of thing out, and to them it's all a broad spectrum of marketing/contact/fundraising/etc.

I doubt the candidate in mind was even aware of what was going on, but when confronted he responded as you would expect any politico to respond. doublespeak and warm fuzzies, with a handful of buzzwords.

Hopefully there will be a day when there is a representative we can stand behind- the only way we can get there is for all of us to make our voices heard, and to use the system to fight the system. as many have said before, make phone calls or write actual letters spelling out WHY you feel something is bad, and rational reasons as to why they as your elected representative should be against something.

my 2 cents. have a good weekend!

Re:Don't think this will be the only one...

[Siobhan Hansas]

I think it's inevitable that they will try it and experiment with it a little. A democracy requires communication to be effective and as the population moves over to email and the web politicians will need to as well.

However, unlike most commercial bodies, political folk (be they politicians or other political activists) have a vested interest in not antagonizing great swathes of people.

I work in the non-profit sector where mission based messages is our bread and butter. Putting out messages that people are likely to latch on to is important. But few mature organizations risk upsetting too many people even if they are unlikely to ever be a true supporter of your cause.

Businesses are only really interested in their customers. Some big firms have a general public image to care about but that sex site that spams every address it can get its hands on really doesn't care if 100,000 women (or anyone else) are upset about receiving a pornographic email.

But politics is built on consensus and give and take. If you produce too many enemies or tarnish your general public image you weaken yourself. It's rarely worth it.

Sure, there will be mistakes like this one but as politicians see how upset people get they'll change their habits to ones that are more acceptable (so if you got one of these emails, make sure to let them know that it's turned you against him).

Helped make my decision

[slugfro]

It will be interesting to see if the effects of this SPAM will have negative result on the number of voters voting for Bill Jones. I would say that if you are against SPAM then this is a very good reason to vote for someone other than Bill Jones

ANY publicity is good

[Geeyzus]

Unfortunately for us, this may turn out to be a good thing for the candidate.

Anyone in the public eye gets their name out to the public, and it sticks in some peoples' heads. Bad publicity or good, this happens. Unfortunately for us, this can translate into mindless votes on election day. Knowing a name often translates into thinking that person is the best candidate, and voting for them.

I hope I am wrong about this...

Mark

If he gets elected, we are all dead.

[Russ Nelson]

If this moron gets elected, then we can expect every political candidate everywhere, in every country, state, and district, to spam each and every one of us. Obviously, then, He Must Not Win. Who is he running against, so that I may I donate money to them?
-russ

Re:And the surprise is?

[VP]

It's not innovative - I was spammed by the Republican National Committee in 2000 to vote for Bush... Given that I am not a US citizen, there is no way that they could have found my e-mail address in any legitimate way...

Before everyone goes off half-cocked here...

[isaac]

Before everyone goes off half-cocked here about how political spam should be illegal, I'd like to gently remind people to think of the potential consequences to our society of banning any form of political speech, regardless of how tacky it might be.

I think the "market" (i.e. voters) will take care of political spam just fine by reacting negatively to its use. Remember that spam works for scammers and hucksters because a tiny portion of those targeted will send money to the sender; ergo there's no disincentive to pissing off all the other recipients. Political elections, however, don't quite work that way...

-Isaac

Re:Before everyone goes off half-cocked here...

[Tackhead]

> Before everyone goes off half-cocked here about how political spam should be illegal, I'd like to gently remind people to think of the potential consequences to our society of banning any form of political speech, regardless of how tacky it might be.

If Bill Jones had spammed from Bill Jones' machine, and paid Bill Jones' ISP to deliver the outbound spew, you might have a point.

But according to the article, Bill Jones didn't do that. According to the article, Bill Jones raped an open relay in Korea. That is, he sent an SMTP transaction to a server (a server on which he had no authorized access), and commanded that server's MTA to deliver multiple copies of his spew to recipients in California and Canada.

Ignoring the theft-of-service issue that applies to all spam delivered through open relays, the server was on foreign soil -- that is, he appropriated the resources of a foreign government to influence the results of a domestic political event. That sounds like it could be in violation of numerous election finance laws (at a minimum), and a potential diplomatic incident to boot.

I happen to believe that all spam is theft (by conversion) of my mailbox. That is, Bill Jones has the right to speak, but he doesn't have the right to appropriate my resources to deliver his speech.

But even if you choose accept that sort of theft as OK in certain cases, how can you deny that (if the article is true) what he did is anything other than unauthorized access to, and theft of service from (if not a denial-of-service attack on) the Korean high school's server?

Re:Time to redefine 'spam'?

[SSpade]

Mr. Ng claims that spam is 'unsolicited commercial e-mail.' Unfortunately it seems this definition is held by all, but shouldn't we really say that spam is 'any unsolicited mass e-mail for personal gain?' That way, we cover political sharks, over-eager charities, AND commercial enterprises.

The clued use the definition "Unsolicited Bulk Email", not "Unsolicited Commercial Email". This was UBE, hence spam.

so it's okay....

[maxpublic]

Jones says that the mail is fine because it isn't commercial. Does that mean that if I send him 50,000 copies of a piece of mail expressing my ire - and perhaps including an entire dictionary in each one, so he can look up the word 'spam' - that this too is okay because it isn't commercial?

It used to be, before the web, that hosing an offending ISP that refused to chastise a spammer was considered to be a perfectly acceptable response. I say - given the obvious effectiveness of legislation against spam - that we return to those days once again.

Max

Re:And the surprise is?

[phyxeld]

I, for one, am only surprised that email spam has not been used for campaigning earlier.

I'm very surprised anyone would want to use spam for political purposes. It's just stupid. Your average spammer doesn't care about his reputation, so it doesn't matter that 95% of the people who see their message will angrily throw it away. Politians, however, live off of their reputation. They can't afford to piss off that many people at once.

I'm sure this guy is regreting it. I mean, his website is blackholed right now, a few days before the primary! And this guy was supposedly "net savy"....

It's not spam when politicians do it!!!!

[yintercept]

Implicit in spam is the idea that the spammer wants to sell you something. Politicians don't sell you anything, they simply take.

On a serious side. Think of all the crap that politicians receive in the mail. The stuff our representatives and senators get make your 80 pieces of spam a day look like a cake walk. For that matter, Tom Daschel gets Anthrax. I would rather get ten thousand offers for a fake university degree than a single bomb.

Newspeak. It is spam, damnit.

[praedor]

The really telling thing is the forged headers. Even if you could argue the points of political mailings being spam/not being spam, as far as I'm concerned, using a fake email/forged headers makes it spam. Forged email/headers trumps all other arguments. It is spam.

Sorry, that's crap.

[Maigus]

No flame, simply strong dissagreement.

The problem is that spam isn't free for the recipient. The primary argument against spam is not simply that it's annoying or that it clogs an otherwise useful communication medium with noise but that it's a collect call that the receiver can't refuse.

If you're on the end of a pay per X pipe, like many wireless net plans, then spam actually costs the receiver money. Some internet mail hosts charge users per X of storage, once again spam costs money. There are more and better examples which other people can cite who understand the situation much better than I.

Using spam in this way shows just how out of touch the candidate is. He's ran past the "I'll buy your vote" argument all the way to "You'll pay for my sales pitch".

Re:OK to steal if you're a politician?

[statusbar]

Hey, doesn't his actions now mean that he is a 'HACKER' and now qualifies for a potential maximum life sentence in jail???

--jeff

Spot ad

[squiggleslash]

At this election, you're probably worried about how your government is going to spend your money, whether your child is going to get a decent education, whether your candidates actually cares about the issues, or will do anything to get elected. What would you say if one candidate decided to use a primary school's facilities to send out thousands of publicity messages to electors worldwide, many of whom couldn't even vote in that election? What if that candidate didn't pay that school a penny, despite disrupting that school's ability to use its computers while the candidate exploited them? What if this kind of behaviour wasn't just immoral, but probably illegal too in this country, and so the candidate had evaded American law by using a school in a third world country to send out his publicity? And what if that school had never given him permission, but he'd hacked into the school's computer systems anyway, like a common criminal? Representative Bill Jones did exactly that. And what's more, he called his abuse of third world primary children "innovative". At this election, you might want to innovate in your own way, and elect XXX XXXXXX for YYYYYYY, telling Bill Jones that you want someone you can trust. Not a penny pinching computer hacker.

If they are using my resources

[FreeUser]

2. They have a policy that all their clients should have fully qualified (opted in) lists, any client found to be breaking this rule becomes an ex-client. As they are in Australia this would be in breach of the privacy act, and they have no wish to be associated with criminal activity no matter how petty.

This is the critical point. If one "opts in" for mailings, then by definition it isn't SPAM as it is not "unsolicited." If I check "send me notices of good deals" on some web site I'm buying something at, then I've opted-in, ie solicited, the bulk emailings.

SPAM is unsolicited bulk email (mostly, but not always, commercial, but again, the emphesis is on unsolicited bulk email).

If someone uses my servers, and my hard disk space, to store their unsolicited advertisments then as far as I (and several states, but alas, not Illinois) am concerned they are guilty of tresspass and should be treated accordingly: with stiff fines and some jail time. If, on the other hand, they are sending a mass, but soliticed, mailing (for example, I get mass mailings from AOPA all the time, which I have explicitly asked for), then there is absolutely no abuse and all is kosher.

You claim to not be in the habit of sending unsolicted bulk emails. Excellent. In this case you run a legitimate, inoffensive business and I wish you the best. If, on the other hand, this claim should turn out to be untrue, then I would be the first to cheer for the legions of system crackers tapping at your electronic Windows and smashing your servers.

Re:CALL THE PEOPLE

[Archfeld]

you are correct, but they DO NOT have the right to forge headers. That act in itself says to me they knew it was wrong and were ashamed to be connected.

If you have to say ...

[cascadingstylesheet]

... "This isn't spam!" then it is. Pure and simple.

It is SPAM by definition! Noone complains about receiving email that they requested, knowingly. Think about it! If you have to trick them into "requesting" it, then it is spam.

As for "remove me" links ... I'm sure somewhere there's a hooker who gives it away for free, has no disease, and is a virgin. But guess what? She looks like all the others. You'll never know. Same with "remove me" links.