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FTC Wants Secret Spam Investigation Powers
PingXao writes "Amidst the various anti-spam efforts underway in Washington, the FTC surprised lawmakers by saying they need to be able to secretly investigate the worst-offending spammers, according to a Washington Post article. I'm generally against government secrecy, but quietly investigating spammers isn't as bad as secret courts and arrests. Is this acceptable, or another mis-step down the slippery slope?"
what is there even to ask? why should secret goverment agencies at once become good, just because they go against something the most of you dont like?
As near as i can tell, theres very little being done to stop spam from a legal/criminal point. Wht, its not exciting enough unless they can play at being a spy?
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
This might just be trolling, but...
How can we get all riled up about the one government organization spying on us, and be completely neutral towards (or should that read in favor of?) another government agency spying on someone else, just because that someone does something we don't like?
I hate spam as much as the next guy, but if we want a chance of keeping our privacy private, it has to be unconditional.
most of it is public by default and by definition. I may have left my tin-foil hat on by mistake, but asking for the right to hack into the boxes of suspected spammers when all the evidence is sitting in public mail routing logs strikes me as a serious breach of privacy for the general public. Now I have to worry about being a suspected terrorist AND a suspected spammer?
Seriously, most spammers are not organized criminals. I doubt that they have concealed themselves and their activities so well that a few well placed subpoenas can't get at them.
lysergically yours
I don't think this kind of thing NEEDS to be secret. While spam is annoying, it certianly doens't fall under a heavy enough category in my book (rape, murder, mass murder, etc) to require ANYTHING near secret investigative power...
If we all have the right to face our accuser - NOTHING should get in the way. Nothing short of the threat of further murder, at least in my book.
Freedom is the right to voice your opinion.
"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act" -- George Orwell
How is this that different from a cop going under cover to bust a drugs operation or a fraudster?
If they use every dirty trick in the book and think nothing of emailing paedophilic pictures to anybody and everybody, don't spammers deserve the same level of attention as other criminals? Why should they be any different from other people who openly break the law for personal profit?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Apparently the reporters at The Washington Post didn't feel the need to even ask why these investigations should be secret.
Woodward and Bernstein would presumably be rolling over in their graves if they were dead.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
I would guess this request by the FTC is because they are responsible for interstate commerce. Spam would be an obvious case of interstate, or even international commerce, and we all know how misleading and fraudulent spam can be.
I don't see this as being very different from quietly investigating people who use the U.S. Postal service or telephone system to try and commit fraud or execute other illegal activities like ponzi or pyramid schemes. I don't think they intend this to be a way to investigate people based on the number of emails they send. Unless they also think that the abuse of the infrastructure and cost to the economy (i.e. businesses) is also something they should be responsible for.
Why should we let them place wiretaps on spammers, who, mind you, at present commit no crime? Why not just make spam a crime and let them get a warrent like any other enforcement agency? It seems, at the least, they should have to go before a judge. To give a commerce regulatory agency spying powers is absurd and smacks of a police state. Let them regulate commerce, but leave spying to law enforcement and national security.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
If the police are investigating you for fraud, they're not required to write to you in advance to let you know. As the law stands right now, the FTC *is* required to give notification to anyone they're considering investigating. This proprosed change would simply put the FTC more in line with law enforcement agencies.
That said, I don't think this should be handled by the FTC at all. Rather than having the FTC go after spammers for "misleading advertising", we should have the police go after spammers for fraud and theft of services. Still, given the current regulatory situation, where the FTC seems to have the best chance to shut down spammers, I see nothing wrong with changing the rules which govern the FTC to help them.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
I'm a pragmatist in another way.
Give powers to the government and they WILL be abused.
Repeat after me, trying to keep a straight face:
DMCA will only be used against pirates
RICO will only be used against drug dealers
I'm not sure how this is any different from "normal" law enforcement practice, where investigators may put a suspect under survelyance without their knowledge. From what I gathered reading the article, they're not talking about hacking into suspected spammers boxen - they are talking about what constitutes more or less normal police investigative work.
Considering the fact that (SPAMMER bullshit excuses aside) SPAM amounts to Theft of Service, it strikes me as appropriate for the FTC to treat it as an illegal act and use appropriate Law Enforcement techniques.
With proper oversite (important in ANY situation where The Man is watching someone) this is almost certainly more of a Good Thing (tm) than Big Brother in Action.
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
Is this acceptable, or another mis-step down the slippery slope?
It's my personal opinion that playing Big Brother is SUCH a dangerous intoxicant, that it is no way ever acceptable. However, this does not mean some times it is not necessary. (The conculusion to draw is that it is sometimes necessary to do unacceptable things.)
I used to know this guy, well, let me just say he built a lot of airfields in Honduras in the 80's okay? I asked him: "Is Big Brother here?" He said: "When he wants to be."
We cannot avoid that sometimes our government *needs* to do sneaky, underhanded, yet wonderfully effective shit. This ain't one of those times.
Having seen federal employees at work first hand I am against any sort of Government secrecy. If we grant secret investigations to anyone we run into two inherent problems:
1) You are trusting that those doing the investigating are competent and ethical.
and
2) The door is now open for other secret investigations.
We've given up enough of our freedom over the last few years, to give up even more would be trouble. Does anyone actually believe that the US Government can stop spam?
First they came for the hackers.
But I never did anything illegal with my computer,
so I didn't speak up.
Then they came for the pornographers.
But I thought there was too much smut on the Internet anyway,
so I didn't speak up.
Then they came for the anonymous remailers.
But a lot of nasty stuff gets sent from anon.penet.fi,
so I didn't speak up.
Then they came for the encryption users.
But I could never figure out how to work PGP anyway,
so I didn't speak up.
Then they came for me.
And by that time there was no one left to speak up.
-- Alara Rogers
(why did the lameness filter try to block this?)
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
The FTC is involved because the Internet has become a way to trade. The Internet though isn't solely a money venture, it's a library containing a great deal of information (among other things). The only reason this is a "privacy" issue is because of this information. If the sole purpose of the Internet was to make money it might not even be an issue of privacy.
The ability to keep criminal investigations private isn't a new thing. There is no reason that the FTC should have to divulge information about on going investigations regarding spammers. The FTC should have the ability to say, "Yes, we're investigating a number of spammers." and not have to tell Congress and the public who.
The only thing that really concerns me is this:
"The FTC also said Congress should revoke an exemption in the law that restricts its authority over telecommunications firms and other 'common carriers'."
If Congress decides to let the FTC do as it wishes with common carriers that might unknowingly harbor spammers it could be very, very bad for Internet users and ISPs. The FTC should not become the RIAA/MPAA. The FTC should go after the people generating the spam, not the networks the spam traverses.
I don't have a problem with secret investigations provided the law is not broken in order to carry it out. For example, if they wish to purchase the advertised service to check whether the claims about it are correct, I see no problem in doing that without informing the person who they are looking into. On the other hand, if they start doing phone or data taps, they had better get a warrant first.
And another question is what happens once the investigation is done. If punishment can be handed down with due process, then that is seriously troubling. But if after the investigation, an open court proceeding is still required, then I don't see this taking us down an Orwellian path.
The problem with secrets is, it makes it too easy for someone with power to screw someone without it. History has shown, over and over again, that secrecy inevitably leads to abuse. Transparency is the key to honesty. The only way to protect the rights of individuals from being trampled is to forbid the government to keep secrets except in matters of extremest urgency. The end does not justify the means.
From the article, it seems as though the FTC is asking for powers beyond its regulatory charter, and that makes me a more than a little nervous. No government agency has ever relinquished a power that has come into its possession, at least not any that I know of.
Hell, I've got a much better solution. Rather than turning spammer's PII over to law enforcement, it should be posted on a public forum, as some of the hackers have resorted to doing with one or two of the worst offenders. How many Fingerhut and Lillian Vernon catalogues do you think it'll take before the spammers collectively yell "Uncle"??
Doing my level best to piss off the religious right wing...
Last I checked, going back as far as our system goes, the way things worked is that investigations were conducted as quietly as possible by the police, who quietly ask the permission of judges for warrants when they have a good reason to violate somebody's privacy. When the police have a suspect that they're sure about, they make an arrest.
At that point, the suspect are quickly told what they are being accused of, shown what evidence has been collected, and given the chance to challenge any evidence that may have been improperly gathered, and if evidence is found to be improper it is ignored. Any witnesses that are brought forward to accuse them are made available to be questioned by those representing the suspect, and those representing the suspect's side also get the same ability to force a witness to testify as the government for use in their defense.
Investigations secret, accusations public... seems to be working well enough so far.
No, seriously, bayesian filtering works, as does blacklisting addresses and implementing anti-account harvesting systems. And it isn't like the tech is difficult to get your hands on either.
The solution to spam isn't going to be in letting big brother take care of it for us, I'm sorry. The solution is in the use and proliferation of the proper technologies that are designed to block spam and the creation of a community throughout humanity that can coordinate to stop the problem. Yes, spammers will find a way around them eventually, but making it much harder to do something means that less people are going to try, and one guy in nigeria spending 24/7 to figure out a way to get past a bayesian filter isn't going to defeat a hundred or so fathers who are good programmers who also don't like their kids getting porn and other junk.
The only kind of law I would like is a law that punishes companies who hire spammers, the threshold of proof being at least X number of e-mail advertising the company in question and no proof on the part of the advertising company that they didn't hire anyone. The fine being around to the tune of $50 a e-mail. It doesn't leave the term spam out in the open, and it doesn't keep protesters and free media places from spreading their word.
This kind of legislation is obviously brought up by worried companies who think this will help or solve the problem, and offset some of the the cost of blocking spam onto citizens. Kind of sad really, I'd rather see them targeting telemarketers.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
Personally, while I'm totally against informing on random contacts who might be "suspicious," I'm totally for mobilizing the citizenry to jail spammers. The difference is: spammers are not random contacts - we wouldn't even notice them if they weren't in fact doing evil. So don't waste government employee resources, just set up a system where citizen leads are entered into an intelligent database that then is directly used by special prosecutors whose budget is financed by total confiscation of any home, building, vehicle, computers or other property used in conjunction with the crime of spamming.
This is a case where abundantly redundant evidence can easily be gathered if hundreds of thousands of pissed off citizens can report. Set a threshold of, say 1,000 complaints to jail any particular spammer, and employ people who know how to analyze e-mail headers, and the chance of frameups will closely approach zero. At that threshold, set a minimum sentence equal to first time sales of crack cocaine, and impose a three strikes=life penalty beyond that. Make some exception for minors, but impose the death penalty for employing minors in the act of spamming. Provide the same penalties as for spamming to those who knowingly sell network resources directly to a spammer (with a threshold for "knowingly" that also reflects a certain number of citizen reports - say 100).
Technology and citizen vigilance can make this the most fairly enforce set of laws in history. We need to free ourselves from this climate of anything-goes commercial abuse of honesty and business standards. Criminal law belongs here as much as anywhere - but unlike most of criminal law, citizen vigilance can be particularly effective, cost-saving, and preclusive of a government agency itself achieving too much power or secret police status. Because the crime is computer- and internet-enabled, so can be the solution, using the strengths of our systems and online community to put these bastards beyond all access to the net and the streets.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
As much as I hate spammers (slow torture is the proper punishment for them), I don't like the precedence it would make. Give the government a little "secret power" for one situation, and they'll start expanding it into everything.
The possibility for abuse is far too great. Every single extra bit of power given to the government has been abused. WITHOUT EXCEPTION!
-- Will program for bandwidth
They came after the Catholics, and I was not a Catholic, so I did not object.
They came after the trade unionists, and I was not a trade unionists, so I did not object.
Then they came after me and there was nobody left to object."
Corporate officers can also be sheltered from legal repercussions in many cases.
And while it may not be a consideration for all, corporations have no ethical, moral or religious standards to uphold or be held to.
As is often said :
Corporations have no soul to damn nor body to kick.
They won't be (even though it feels this comidic). More likely we will have millions of "People of Interest". Sadly, this is a stupid way around the patriot act II which would have extended Ashcrofts ability to spy on all of us.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.