Senator Nelson Pursues Spammers Via RICO Act

JCMay writes "Democrat Bill Nelson of Florida has introduced legislation to the United States Senate that would expand the RICO act to include spammers that forge email addresses and do not provide mechanisms by which recipients can opt-out of future mailings."

Comments

Not more of this...

[Otter]

As much as I loath spammers, expanding the already shaky legality of RICO, which has been extended to even shakier lengths to cover anti-abortion protesters, streetwalkers and small-time dug dealers, is a cure worse than the disease.

Almost no spammers fit the definition of "racketeering". What is the point of jamming them under RICO? Criminalize the forging of headers and leave it at that.

Re:Not more of this...

[stanwirth]

What is the point of jamming them under RICO? Criminalize the forging of headers and leave it at that.

Agreed -- the thing I would be concerned about, in the use of RICO, is that how many innocent people who are unwittingly running open relays could get unfairly stung?

Granted, they should be more careful, but how far can this go? It's simple enough to filter at the SMTP level, and just reject mail that doesn't come from a legitimate domain, or is coming from an IP number that doesn't match the domain name in the header. But what if the individual packets -- at the IP layer -- are being routed through your network? What if you're, say, running a router for a multihomed LAN for a rural community--say a wireless or satellite link and a T1 line -- and do not know that some (but not all) of the packets associated with a piece of SPAM (or a lot of it) are going into your network and out again -- dynamically routed?

Will "being careful" be precisely defined to say what packets, and at which network layer, we are responsible for filtering, and which packets and at which network layer we cannot, and should not, be held accountable? What if the address they're forging is one of mine ? Will they seize my property first, ask questions later?

And what about sending your mail through a series of mail servers and proxies, i.e. an SMTP server behind your firewall where your mail is actually handled vs. the firewall that simply proxies the traffic (and possibly checks for spam!). Will this be misconstrued by an over-eager law enforcement person who does not know the difference between this careful practice and "forging mail headers." After all, the machine the mail came from originally is not the same as the one transmitting to the rest of the world.

And good heavens, what about those of us running or using mixmaster for legitimate purposes? ZKS? anonymizer? or even SSH for that matter? If the feds can't actually see what's going on through a wiretap or packet sniff, will they simply assume this to be evidence of "spamming" from some remote host? Will they start outlawing the practice of logging into your home sever over ssh and checking your mail in a text-based mail reader?

And what about UUCP mail, mutt, DECnet and BITNET mail? In theory, your bog standard sendmail.cf can still handle these headers. Granted, you don't see things like ucbvax!hplabs!hao!joeuser%decvax@mit-lcs.arpa anymore, but (shudder) what if spammers started exploiting some of these more bizarre and ancient addressing techniques from the old store-and-foreward networks, that may still appear to be valid addresses according to most sendmail.cf files?

--When marriage is outlawed, only outlaws will have in-laws.

Slashdotted Already

[Euphonious Coward]

Or is it really a DDOS disguised as a Slashdot news item, designed to punish him for introducing the legislation?

At least it wasn't the Interstate Commerce clause.

[Syncdata]

But Otter, it's so much easier to just tack something on to an already existing law/bill. After all, think of all the writing one has to do to introduce a new bill for a vote which is uncertain? Just tack it onto something politically friendly, like, say, RICO, brainchild of the kennedies. Who's going to vote against expanding a racketeering law? That would make you pro-organized crime when you run for re-election, regardless of the merit of your vote.

A modest proposal

[lightspawn]

When a spammer forges a _name_ in the "from" line, their name should be legally changed to that name. After a few people's names are changed to "free porn" and "toner discounts" I doubt we'll see very much of that. At the very least, it will give us something to laugh about.

Re:A modest proposal

[JCMay]

That's the best idea I've heard all day.

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