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

high and mighty

[spookysuicide]

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.

Slippery slope

[Cutriss]

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.

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.

Re:Good thing about political spam

[steve_l]

I can see political spam changing if things take off. At the very least, spammers could hide their stuff as politics if political spam were legal.

"I was a lowly senator, unable to service my hot young interns (see them now at hot-young-interns-in-the-senate.com), until I bought this herbal extract which works like Viagra for less. Buy it here...for every $10 spent, $1 goes to my releection campaign".

Or

"dear sirs,
I am writing to you in utmost confidence, as a former republican congressman of Texas, now in exile in Sierra Leone. An aide of mine, on loan from Enron, has the information needed to get at $17 million of Enron investment information from an offshore account in Nigeria. I need your help to get this money, with which I will take a small percentage to pay for TV advertisements" ...

etc.

Re:Good thing about political spam

[Matthias Wiesmann]

Well, I depends on your point of view. I already get a lot of spam on how to evade US tax laws - or how to get certains US permits, etc. Guess what, I don't live in the US. Getting messages from US politicians would certainly be spam in my book.

At least, viagra works - the same cannot be said from politicians. :-)

The core problem is always the same "it's not spam if it is sent to the right people". The problem is, spammers are not very good at selecting the right people.

If you add up all the people that cannot vote in the US, don't care, don't want to get political stuff at their work address or hate the guy anyway - it makes quite a lot of people that will get unsollicited e-mail, eg will be spammed.

Political messages can be handled in the same way that legitimate communications from organisations: by using an opt-in mechanism.

At least he saves money...

[Music To Eat]

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.

Just you wait

[TheSHAD0W]

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

[DarkZero]

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 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:An alternative suggestion

[greenrd]

I can't believe this attitude.

The cost needed to run a successful campaign in the US is already ridiculous. And this weeds out people who cannot obtain truckloads of corporate money - surely not a good thing.

How high does it have to go before you would start having doubts?

In a Future Session of Congress -- H.R. Bill 6969

[deathinc]

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.

My Letter to the Editor of Mercury News

[Fallen Kell]

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.

Re:My Letter to the Editor of Mercury News

[guttentag]

You may want to re-address your letter to letters@latimes.com. Or mail it to:

Letter to the Editor
Los Angeles Times
202 W. 1st St.
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Letters to the Editor must also include your full name, city and daytime phone number (your number will not be published). Please keep your Letter under 250 words.

The "article" is actually an opinion piece written for and published in The Los Angeles Times on August 15 (free registration req., etc.). Since The San Jose Mercury News lacks the "prestige" of The LA Times, it had to settle for reprinting the piece five days later.

In case there's any confusion on the backgrounds of the authors, McCurry was President Clinton's press secretary Purpuro was deputy chief of staff of the Republican National Committee (in other words, they're both veterans of the political misinformation game) .

Table turning

[one-egg]

Anybody else remember Robert McElwaine?

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.

Just because its a donkey not a cow on the commons

[geekotourist]

...doesn't mean it won't hurt the field. Standard our "tragedy of the commons (TOTC)" reference. Spammers already overgraze the email commons, but somehow these guys think that because political spam is a different beast, it will all work out. No! Political spam uses the same resources and clogs the same inboxes as the (currently) more common commercial email. This is one reason why I believe method, not content, should define spam(1).

Specific problems I see in their article:

• False analogy to radio, TV, and newspapers: with them I receive the benefit (content) along with some cost to me (time or page space devoted to ads), but *all costs are accounted for by someone- they are internalized* The paper/station charges what they need to run their business. With spam the spammers creates costs that they don't have to pay.
• in other words Radio/TV/newspaper ads are *solicited.* They have large sales departments seeking advertisers.
• Tying / making equivalent "internet" to "email" in leveling the playing field: anyone can have a web site, and you don't need too much money to have a nice one. This doesn't mean you should spam people to get them to go to your website. If I can't afford a billboard it doesn't mean I get to spray paint my message in grafitti just to "level the field."
• They want the results you only get from opt-in lists without requiring opt-in lists: if you don't use opt-in lists you don't know your email is going to the right groups, or even to the right state (or country). Without opt-in, how will you keep email from the thousands of elections happening each year from clogging inboxes?
• a "recipient can choose to...unsubscribe": Again, they're forgetting that the email field is already muddy from plain ol' cow spam. We the people already know you cannot trust unsubscribe links within email. "We're different, trust us" doesn't work- within a few weeks regular scammer spammers will fake the exact same disclaimers.
• Thinking that antispammers were overreacting: again, TOTC- we've already seen spam ruin usenet and half-ruin our email boxes. We have to start early to keep the first political spams from becoming a giant herd.

(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.

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.

Re:More Evidence that Slashdot is a Rag

[Steve B]

Since I wrote it, I'll be glad to substantiate it using quotes from the article:

1: "all the usual Mom-Flag-&-Apple-Pie cliches"

NOT many months from now, people across the country will experience one ofthe great recurring features of American democracy. At shopping malls, onfactory floors, at church socials and even on our front stoops, we will beapproached by individuals who want to represent us in public office. While chancesare high that we won't know them personally, they will walk up to us, offer ahandshake and a flier and ask for our votes....

In an era of cynicism toward money in politics -- money typically spent on other unsolicited communication mediums -- Jones tried to level the playing field....

When a candidate lacks a large campaign war chest, he or she can use the Internet to provide constituents with information to better prepare them to perform their civic duty of casting educated votes....

Mom-Flag-&-Apple-Pie cliches -- Check.

2. "cynical"

Larry Purpuro, the former Republican National Committee deputy chief of staff, is founder and president of a political e-marketing firm.

cynical -- Check.

3. "condescendingly"

That choice should belong to the voter -- not to anti-spam advocates whose efforts are better focused on commercial e-mail.

condescendingly -- Check.