Politicians Seek Spam Loophole

Steve B writes "An article in the Mercury News by Mike McCurry and Larry Purpuro (respectively heading an "advocacy management and communications software company" and a "political e-marketing firm") wraps the case for political spam in all the usual Mom-Flag-&-Apple-Pie cliches. They conclude with a cynical appeal for a special exemption, while condescendingly instructing anti-spammers that their efforts are "better focused on commercial e-mail" and painting spammer Bill Jones as a victim who made a few trifling mistakes."

Comments

Good thing about political spam

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

The good thing about political spam is that it is really easy to trace - at least so far. All the political spam I've received has been straight-up about who sent it (usually their campaign office). That makes it real easy to let them know what idiots they are and how much damage they've done to their campaign. They'll read the email you send and may even respond so that *you* know you got a live one. If you are in a pissy mood it sure helps to go off on a campaign-office numbnut.

Now, as soon as the politicians discover that they can send attack-ads as anonymous spam then it won't be so easy to exact vengence, but until then they sure make it easy to beat them up for spamming.

Compared to commercial spam...

[Sheetrock]

political spam would be a drop in the bucket. It's not like politicians will be able to get away with things like abusing open relays or refusing to honor opt-outs -- at least, not without affecting their campaign.

If this is the bone we need to throw to Congress to finally get some laws passed banning commercial spam without opt-out lists being honored, so be it. Besides, if spam is as irritating as we think it is, it's going to backfire as a PR tool even if it isn't illegal to use.

An alternative suggestion

[tarka69]

Self-serving though the article is, it does make one good point: that the internet can lower the costs for candidates, potentially opening the doors to some who would not run. However, spamming is not the answer.

An alternative would be for the government should create opt-in mailing lists (or web forums) in the spirit of equal-time laws, that allow posting by all registered candidates, that anybody may subscribe to. This would enhance public debate on issues (as candidates would be able to counter their opponents claims in the same forum), without forcing those debates upon those who have no interest.

Re:How does one tell the difference?

[demaria]

Commercial email is with a company you have had prior business or relationship with. For example, buying something from amazon.com or filling out a survey at zd.net. Unsolicited is where you have had no prior relationship with the company. Most of the evil spam is unsolicited, but commercial email is sometimes useful (such as 10% off promos). Partner companies is where this could get blurry, but that could possibly be solved if the partner discloses who the parent was and remained at one level deep (so that partners of partners wouldn't get commercial email privilages).

Where do they get the addresses?

[Alan]

So my question is where do the polititians get the addresses to spam? Since it's opt-out (but not the bad kind of opt-out of course) they don't ask people for their emails, so they must get them from a list from somewhere. Is there some sort of listing of email addresses and their geographic areas? I assume that sending email to say, canada to ask for votes for the sacramento east riding isn't going to do much good... Do they just purchase a list from a spamhaus and go to it or what?

I almost wish I didn't have spamassassin running so I could see if I get any, and offer my opinions :)

BTW, there is a good presentation on Mail::Audit and Mail::Spamassassin linked over at http://igor.penguinsinthenight.com/spamtalk/ with a PPT at this site.

Re:Where do they get the addresses?

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess is that they're getting the addresses from the state, local, and federal governments. Probably also from political parties. Did you email your senator to ask him to buttfuck an Enron executive? Did you email your city councilman to complain about the radioactive rat epidemic? Are you on the Communi^H^H^H^H^H^H^HDemocratic party's e-propaganda list? Does your state ask for an email address on its tax forms, and did you give one? Did you email the President a goatse.cx link? If you can answer "yes" to any of these questions, then you're as good as spammed -- even if government agencies and political parties aren't spamming or selling your email address yet, you can be goddamned sure that they'll be doing both after news of this new information dissemination opportunity spreads.

I think it's amazing how spam has changed the way that people think about email. When I first got online, I had one email address, and I used it to talk with friends, order from online retailers, et cetera -- and I never got any spam at all. Then, slowly, the spam started to trickle in, and I started being more wary about who I gave my address to. It continued to get worse, and then came the turning point when spam became something that I expected, loathingly. Then came another turning point, when I ditched my old spam-ridden email address for a free webmail account, in hopes of getting away from it all. Ha!

Today, I have about ten webmail accounts, and all of them -- even Yahoo! Mail, the best -- gets spam. The worse -- Hotmail -- is completely unusable, even with filtering on.

I have a mail server of my own that I use for my websites, but I'm terrified to actually use any of the accounts on it in fear that a spammer will start dictionary-fucking my domains. So I never use any of these accounts -- I don't even give the addresses to my friends. I tell everyone to use the webmail accounts, in hopes that one day, in the future, spam will somehow been defeated, and I can then use and even publish email addresses associated with my websites. But I may be forced to soon, as Yahoo! Mail will probably be completely fucked within a year, and I'll have to either find a new webmail provider or bite the bullet, open my mail server, and RTBL the fuck out of everything.

Spam also changes the way that you read email. I use HTML mail, which makes it even worse -- did you know that some spammers use CGI image generation (with a unique ID encoded in the URL) so that even viewing an HTML mail spam will confirm your email address? So when I look at my mail, I first scan the subjects carefully, deleting the obvious spam. This gets rid of 95% of the spam. The other 5% I open very quickly, ready to close my browser if I'm at work and some sort of porn ad pops up.

Those "bulk email folders" that Yahoo! and Hotmail use are nice, but you still have to review all of the senders and subjects of email directed there, in case a valid email was falsely identified as spam.

God, I hate it, I HATE IT. I'm not a violent person, but if I could push a button and kill all spammers everywhere in an instant, I'd fucking do it without hesitation. I'm not sure why it pisses us off so much while junk mail and telemarketing don't piss us off so much. It's more than the waste of disk space and bandwidth. Maybe it's because we grew up with junk mail and telemarketing, but email has only become popular in the nineties, and it was so nice at first that we came to expect email to always be a high signal/noise ratio method of communication.

I don't know.

I DON'T LIKE SPAM.

Don't trust the government.

The_Messenger

Make them pay...

[X-rated Ouroboros]

..to archive and serve every reply they recieve in a handy dandy internet database as a matter of public record and require URLs to the archive be included in the spam.

*Every* reply. Candidate A sends you spam? Reply detailing why Candidate B is better. Candidate J tells you how he's tough on crime? Reply talking about how J's daughter was repeatedly given a slap on the wrist after crimes for which other people are sent to federal prison. An RIAA shell candidate sends you spam? Reply with an MP3 as an attachment. Attach goatse! Attach the plans to the secret death ray! Attach your vacation photos and free up some of your own webspace! Reply grinding your own personal political axes.

Read through the archive and reply pointing out how 90% of the responses offered are merely a form letter.
Read through the archive and reply pointing out how the other 10% of actual responses with content make contradictory arguments.

And the spamming candidate has to pay to host all of this.
It would still be cheaper than TV/Cable advertising, though.

Steve Biener, Candidate for US Congress

[weave]

I recently had some Steve Biener guy spam me with his election pitch. I wrote back to him telling him what a horrible idea it was and he'd just get himself lumped in with scammers and pornographers. He wrote back saying that if I didn't like it, I could unsubscribe.

Later, I started getting compaints from several at the college I work at. He was spamming all employees. I sent him another e-mail asking him to voluntarily stop sending the messages to everyone in the college. I told him if he continued, I'd be forced to esclate the issue to my superiors for action and that would make this a real political mess.

So he writes back to me and the college's attorney and threatens us with legal action. I never threatened to block his e-mails, yet he felt a need to send the following:

"I must say, I am concerned about the threat contained in your e-mail. I am not sure what type of action you are threatening, but you should be aware that, under Title 42, Section 1983 of the United States Code, any person in a position such as yours who deprives a citizen of the United States of any right secured by the United States Constitution is subject to liability in legal actions. Before you take any action that interferes with my First Amendment rights, please consult with counsel for the college."

I was basically told to back off by our legal council, and I did, despite my personal feelings about the issue. Some other techs that report to me got his spam and tried to educate him how to use the Internet as an effective communication vehicle for his campaign, one which wouldn't piss off everyone. He refused to listen to them. So right away, before he's even near being elected, he refuses to listen to his potential constituency and rejects expert advice. Just what we need, another narrow-minded lawyer in the U.S. Congress. His e-mail also stated:

"Mr. Weaverling, I know you disagree with my approach. I encourage you to exercise your First Amendment rights in speaking out against my e-mails. Write letters to your newspaper, send an e-mail to your colleagues, but do not try to act as a censor for the entire college community. It is violative of my First Amendment rights. It is also a disservice to those in the college community who do not object to receiving my e-mails and who want to participate in the marketplace of ideas."

Thank you so much for the valuable advice. Every chance I get, I'm doing just that. Now I get to post to slashdot about it -- and even remain on topic!

So, if you live in Delaware and are a Democrat, I encourage you to go to the state primaries on September 7. I'm going to cast my vote to hopefully help ensure that he doesn't get past the primary. If you'd like to hear his side of the story, his website address is bienerforcongress.com and his e-mail address is stevebiener@aol.com.

My Letter to Steve Biener

[swillden]

Mr. Biener,

One of your constituents, a Mr. Weaverling, recently posted a message on Slashdot (http://www.slashdot.org), a technology news and discussion forum, in which he described your use of unsolicited e-mail communication to disseminate your political views, and his unsuccessful attempts to explain why your actions are unwise.

I'm writing you to support Mr. Weaverling's position and arguments, and to offer some suggestions on ways to minimize the offensiveness of your spam, if you insist on sending it. I also want to describe the action I intend to take to support your opponents.

I have been a heavy user of e-mail for over a decade, and I'm very concerned by the recent surge in unsolicited commercial e-mail, and the even more recent appearance of unsolicited political e-mail. Like many people who've had a stable e-mail address for a period of time, I now receive dozens of unwanted messages every day, and have had to resort to all sorts of automated and manual filtering processes to avoid being buried in unwanted and irrelevant e-mail.

What makes spam attractive for both commerce and politics is that it appears to have very low cost. In fact, it does have very low cost -- for the non-selective sender. This is because the recipient bears most of the burden, a situation which almost begs for a Tragedy of the Commons effect. The nature of the spam (political or commercial) does not change this fact.

I looked at your web site and while your message is somewhat interesting, if the cost of lowering political dependence on campaign contributions is yet another massive influx of unsolicited e-mail, then I'd prefer to make campaign contributions. You may see this as an unreasonable position, particularly since you yourself probably don't send out huge numbers of messages, but keep in mind that you are not alone. If this becomes a popular method of spreading a political message, every city councilman, sheriff, assessor, congressman and senator will being burying us in messages we don't care about.

I would prefer that political spam not be eschewed completely, if you insist on sending it I would recommend that you follow these guidelines:

1. Please mark your spam as such in the subject line. I recommend something like "UNSOLICITED E-MAIL: ". This makes filtering much easier.
2. Please ensure accurate targeting. This places a much larger burden on you, but spam which has some relevance to the recipient is less offensive.
3. Make it very, very easy for someone to opt out of your mailing list.

One final note: I am going to find out who your primary opponents are and send a small donation to each of their campaigns. Further, I have also posted a message on Slashdot (read by some 300,000 people daily) and recommended that they do the same. Those of us who will suffer most from spam must do what we can to discourage it.

Thank you,

Shawn Willden.

Re:Just you wait

[pmz]

It's an old trick for a candidate's staff to canvas for votes for the OTHER guy -- at 3AM.

This is exactly what Governor Hodges is doing in South Carolina against his opponent Mark Sanford. He runs a tasteless campaign of TV commercials with Sanford's website URL in big bold letters on the screen. I have yet to see Hodges actually run a pro-Hodges ad. He must be really confident to be able to do this, but it has actually made me suspicious of his character.