FEC Permits Anonymous SMS Spam

crm114 writes "The Washington Post is running a story about the Federal Election Commission's decision today to waive the requirement that SMS broadcast messages indicate their origin..." And it'll only cost you ten cents to read each one. For what it's worth, you can read the agenda item which describes the issue before the FEC. It's rather interesting because it includes drafts of two possible responses by the FEC, depending on which way the commissioners actually voted at today's meeting. Although the company seeking the opinion suggested alternatives like providing a toll-free phone number in the message (preserving the spirit of the campaign finance disclosure rules), the FEC doesn't appear to have taken them up on it.

Comments

Re:Become your own politcal party.

[jefu]

How about getting the FSF and GNU organizations involved. If they could get addresses (numbers, whatever) for the Lord Great Poo Bahs at Unnamed-Evil-Megalithic-Corporation, their stockholders and users, such organizations could
SMS them over and over and over with nice short messages (examples generated at random) :

MS Word is Better than Vi !
Oracle makes SQL Server look like S--T!
Solaris Rules!
Linux Beats Windows!

In a similar vein (but Seriously Illegal - only done by experienced stock manipulators on closed courses - do NOT try this at home) one could SMS anonymous messages to users in the financial districts such as :

"Doo Doo Corporation Joins Enron in SEC Investigation, Billions Rumoured Stolen."

And finally with anonymity comes the fun of :

"Joe Doe, Your Candidate for Senator, likes Sheep! Visit http://xxx.yyy.zzz for video!'