Slashdot Mirror
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."
Is it just me or does what they are saying really just boil down to, "Everyone elses Spam is bad but ours..."
Very similar to the old cliche that some people really believe that their shit don't stink.
yes i run a goth/punk/emo porn site.
First we'll have exceptions for candidates for public office.
Then we'll have demands for party affiliates and candidate support groups to have their own equivalent exceptions added, since they speak on behalf of the candidates (purely nonprofit, of course).
Then we'll have demands from the lobbyists to have their exceptions added, since they push the issues that the candidates deal with on a daily basis, and if a candidate is, say, pro-life, why shouldn't the pro-choice lobbyists get equal say?
And finally, since many lobbyists are on corporate payroll, the corporations can just take the gloves off and ask for their own exemptions, since they might want to support a particular candidate, and as a legal "individual" (without voting rights, of course), they are entitled to endorse a particular candidate in means outside of the normal campaign contributions.
But, of course, once they get their hands on the e-mail lists of a certain group of constituents, you can bet that it will accidentally fall into the wrong hands, along with the demographic/geographic data that accompanies it.
Marketer heaven. And, before long...Spammer heaven.
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
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.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
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.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
eWeek has a slightly interesting article here about a company putting together a bonded sender program, where people who receive unwanted mail from such a sender would be able to charge against the bond.
Interesting, though it won't work of course. As the article points out, legitimate mass emailers are less likely to have large scale complaints compared with unbonded/unwanted mass mailers, but personally I wouldn't mind being able to charge for each Viagra, HGH, mortgage, and credit repair email I've gotten just today.
eWeek has a couple of articles on spam (see the homepage), and Spam is the cover banner on the hardcopy magezine this week.
I love how he repeatedly says how the candidate saved money. Not once mentioning that it actually costs ISPs money to deliver these things. Like he thinks by pushing the send button, the magical internet fairies come and deliver each email by hand. But then again, politicians were always good at spending other peoples money.
Once political spam becomes mainstream, you'll soon see some dirty tactics.
It's an old trick for a candidate's staff to canvas for votes for the OTHER guy -- at 3AM. No better way to piss people off and get them to vote for you instead of them. Print up campaign stickers for the other guy, and paste 'em on people's car bumpers. Make sure they're the sort that don't come off without special chemicals. There are several variations on this theme that have been used before and will be used again.
So when your mailbox gets bombed with 100 spams, all asking you to vote for someone, and all infected with Klez -- don't assume they actually came from the candidate.
Hi, I'm Bob Robertson, and I'd like to tell you a little bit about my campaign for --insert your state here--'s senatorial seat in 2002.
Over the years, my competitor, Mike Jones, has fucked a lot of whores and raised taxes by an astoundingly high 0.00001%. He's also poisoned our well water, seceded our state from the United States on two seperate occasions, and invited several known child molesters to his fundraising banquets, during which he has served dead puppies as the main course. In short, he's a scumbag, and he's evil.
Don't vote for him. Vote for me. Because he sucks.
Paid for by the Friends of Bob Robertson, who absolutely fucking hate that bastard Mike Jones. Burn in Hell, Mike.
I can't wait to see, hear, and read this shit not only on my TV, on my radio, in front of people's houses, on the subway, in my mail, in front of schools, in front of public buildings, at every public event in every town in the state, AND on my computer! I just can't get enough of hearing about how the politician that has less money and can't run as many commercials is the antichrist!
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.
The comfort you demanded is now mandatory - Jello Biafra
H.R. Bill 6969 - Admendments to the National Anti-SPAM Law
...
"The Law" shall be amdeded as follows to include the following excemtions to the law:
(a) Sending of Unsolicited Mass E-Mail for the Purposes of:
(a)(1) Governmental Communications
(a)(2) Communications Originating by an Elected Official
(a)(3) Communications Originating by a person or persons seeking Elected Ofice
(a)(4) Communications regarding Laws, Governmental Regulations, Policies or activities
(a)(6) Communications by a non-governmental entity for the puroses of selling a product or service
(a)(7) Any Communication with the word "the" in it.
In reading the piece, "Internet can level the political playing field" by Mike McCurry and Larry Purpuro, I felt the overwhelming need to stress a single point that seems to have been completely missed by the writers. They utterly failed to realize that e-mail costs the recipient of the e-mail message time and money. Be it the 3 seconds wasted downloading the message from their mail server, or the cost of the phone call for the internet access, or the usage of total monthly bandwidth that some ISP's allot to users, e-mail costs the receiving party money. This is the very heart of the problem with ANY unsolicited e-mail. Television, radio, and print ads all do not cost the recipient of the advertisement money. If it wasn't an ad for a politician, it would be an ad for some product or service; in any case, the recipient would still receive an ad. But e-mail is a very cheap way to mass sent advertisements to others while making them pay for the "privilege" of receiving the message. This is the very reason why people are not allowed to fax unsolicited ads to other fax machines. The cost is a lot more dramatic in the case of a fax machine, but the cost is still there even in e-mail. It should not matter whether it cost you $.10 because of paper and ink in the case of the fax machine or the $.01 it can cost for the bandwidth, memory needs, and time it can cost for an e-mail.
Here is a simple question that I would like answered. Should we, as consumers, have to pay every time someone sends an advertisement for their product to us? If we did we would all be broke very quickly. The people promoting and advertising products, services, or political campaigns are the ones who should foot the bill of spreading their information.
Unsolicited e-mail is like sending something cash on delivery without a way of refusing to receive the item. Any person or group of persons should be held accountable for any and all monetary charges they force upon others. Unsolicited e-mail in any form should be dealt with in the harshest manor available to the recipient. There is no such thing as unharmful unsolicited e-mail, if it costs anyone other then the sender money, then it is causing harm.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
See, if this happens, then we'll start to see massive political donations by viagra vendors, multi-level marketers, Nigerian political refugees, and animal porn sites.
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).
Vote for Bob Smith, not only is he a great leader that will carry this country into a bright future, but your penis will also increase by *THREE* inches!
Make the right choice.
http://www.xpurple.com
Just wait until these bozos start getting tons of "political" e-mail from nut cases like McElwaine. I suspect that then they'll start saying "Oh, political spam is only OK if it comes from a legitimate candidate."
There's no hope, though. The junk-fax laws and the anti-telemarketing laws already exempt political appeals. Never mind that a ban would be perfectly constitutional (under the time, manner, and place doctrine). There's no way the politicians are going to write a law that makes it harder for them to "communicate with their constituents".
Fortunately for me, DCC is apolitical. It doesn't give a hoot what the content is, as long is it's unsolicited and bulk.
This is a little OT and some might not agree. In any case, I think elections in the U.S. would be much better if TV campaign ads were banned altogether. I could live without donation limits or overall campaign spending limits if only TV ads were banned. I don't think it's a free speech issue. Nothing guarantees my right to go on TV and spout off about my piss-me-off-du-jour complaints. The politicos and their henchmen argue that I could do that - if I had the money to do it. Let's face it, a big chunk of campaign money goes to TV and cable operators.
Get their self-serving, bashing, slime-hurling, pseudo-factual (and sometimes outright dishonest) ads off the air at election time altogether. Let the voter who wishes to be informed to READ about the candidates and issues rather than having (dis)information spoon-fed to them through the boob tube. The cost of campaigns would decline dramatically.
Ah, what the fuck. The problem of spamming politicians pales in comparison to the damage being done via political ads on TV. This country is doomed because the vast majority of the people in it are fucking stupid. Who was it that said "Nobody ever went broke under-estimating the intelligence of the American public"? At one time in this country reasonable people had a good shot at educating/informing/persuading the masses as to what was "the right thing". TV, and to a lesser extent other forms of media, have turned Americans' brains to mush.
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.
Free speech cuts both ways - it protects crypto code publication and it also protects political SPAM. That's the point about the 1st ammendment it's there to protect unpopular speech because the popular variety doesn't need protection!
That said I've been involved in a couple of campaigns and we only used email to keep in touch with our people and to see what the other side was saying to theirs (on the internet nobody knows you're a Democrat :-)
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck load of tapes
Specific problems I see in their article:
(1)My definition: bulk email from a stranger. This definition catches damaging email, although not all annoying email. I think definitions that include content (i.e. "commercial" alone is bad), non-bulk email, or email from a pre-existing business relationship aren't good because laws based on them won't be upheld.
Oh come on. Spam is going to level the political playing field about as much as the Internet leveled the business playing field. Do people buy more books from amazon.com or from Wobberly's ? If an underdog mounts an email campaign, an overdog mounts a bigger email campaign. Duh!
People still cling to the quaint vision of democracy in America rising from the ashes because of some magic ring that can only be worn by the good guys. There's no such thing!
America is governed by lobbyists and PACs who have successfully cracked the system. The only way I can think of to win is not to play the game. Instead of competing make money irrelevant, for example by making Congress sort of like a priesthood, wherein elected officials relinquish all material goods for the rest of their lives and live on a modest stipend. Something like that might work. Yeah, like it would ever happen.
Its interesting that the article doesn't address the cost picked up by the reciever and the ISP. Its also interesting that they note:
Just think. He spent 2 cents a message to get a torrent of negative press. This is supposed to be a good example? Heck. Hire me. I can top that campaign easily.
Hold a press conference... it'll be free (minus the cost of coffee or whatever one traditionally spends on keeping the press happy to be there). Once assembled, make the following statements:
There. Done. Your words will be repeated amoung an untold number of general and specific interest news sources, far outpacing the number of people reached by any SPAM campaign. And you'll have done far more damage to your campaign for much less money than any SPAM campaign and "email marketing" company could ever do.
Now, if your intent is not to damage your campaign, you probably don't want to follow this strategy. But then... you probably shouldn't use SPAM either.
Spam: Bulk email from a stranger. Solved mostly with technology and a little bit by laws. By emphasizing method (bulk), not content, we can use technology to block spam and courts are likely to uphold our rights to do so. Blocks or bans on content (1), non-bulk email (2), or email from a pre-existing business relationship (3) are likely to fail and could make the problem much worse.
Non-bulk email, or email from entities who aren't strangers: not spam, however annoying. Generally solved with boycotts, public ridicule, and questions about ethics "Would you accept 'technically I didn't lie' from an employee? Then why should we the public accept it?" (As for 'friendly' email, replies of "By forwarding this email to me you give me permission to think you're an idiot. There is no virus. Timmy hates postcards. You can't send angelic blessings as an attachment, and if I wanted that joke I'd go to rec.humor.funny-the-1st-time-20-repetitions-ago." might work.)
Laws: Even on spam not a good idea- ineffective at best. Dishonest spam & spammers (forged headers, etc.) don't care about existing US laws- they break laws on contracts ('no spamming' ISP contracts), theft (stolen credit cards to pay for accounts), identity fraud, spam (California requires "ADV," in the subject line...), and more already. And domestic laws can't stop a fundamentally international problem. Even worse, if US laws only ban dishonest spam then honest (think DMA) spam is legitimized. And banning commercial speech alone won't make it because of the Constitution. It protects commercial speech much more than some people might think. Thus, it is bad to focus on...
(1) Content: Political or religious messages can still be spam, and any speech, commercial or not, has to be really, really bad before the Supreme Court will even start to think about unprotecting it. You'd have to prove Spam-speech is equivalent to "'fire!' in a crowded theater" or "riot right now" speech. Unlikely. Instead, focus on...
(2) "Bulk" because bulk is what causes damage. One bounced email: no problem. 100,000: big problem. Courts are likely to find that individually written emails, however annoying, aren't going to cause the damages of bulk - people just can't write that many in a day. Courts won't like punishing a person who wrote one letter ("Hi, I saw an article about you, you might be interested in my software..." is an unsolicited commercial email. Laws that ban it won't last very long.). "Bulk" makes a better brightline. If a spammer is caught breaking an ISP's contract, and claims the emails weren't bulk, easy perjury... Judge: "4 emails with boilerplate text after the first sentence. This isn't bulk?" Exceptionally stupid Spammer: "No."
(3) "From a stranger" for two reasons. One- its easier to prove that bulk email from strangers is inherently a burden. Email from all 200 businesses and 10 candidates you do know: irritating but not impossible to deal with, maybe not worth curbing speech. Email from all 29.9998 million businesses and ten thousand candidates you don't know (opt-outable or not): impossible. Two- if you voluntarily gave your email address out, courts might rule that caveat emptor trumps "punish them because their email annoys me."
In the USA, the odds are about even that any political spam you get was at least partially funded by an RIAA/MPAA member.
It gives you a reason to vote for the opponent of whoever's sending it.
For a politician with a clue (yes, there are a very few), it's also useful. If a political consultant proposes it, he knows to fire the imbecile and hopefully, the consultant will go to work for the opponent. . . sinking the guy's campaign.
So political spam indeed serves a useful purpose. It tells you that the politician it promotes is an idiot without having to do the ordinary work required to get the candidate's position on the issues that matter to you.
A spammer politician is not going to be proposing or voting for a repeal of the DMCA.
Tech Public Policy stuff
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 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:
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.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
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.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.