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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?"
let's just hope they don't put the spammers on "Double Secret Probation"
Mike
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?
Is the FTC required to knock on folks door and inform them they are about to start gathering evidence? Why does a spam bill need to be passed for this?
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
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.
I wonder if he got that job just on the basis of his name...
Making stupid comments so you don't have to.
be it by a federal law enforcement or your local police. It's really useful in cases where a subject of the investigation is a flight risk. But - the secret parts dont last long - once someone outside the circle of investigators gets interviewed, the cats out of the bag.
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."
The government does a LOT of things without telling you about them. Secrets allow important things to be done, and for bad people to be caught without knowing that they are being chased. It's called the element of suprise. Advertise an anti-spam solution, and a clever spammer will figure out a way around it before it even hits the market. Monitor the spammer before they think anybody is watching, and you may be able to catch them doing bad things without covering their tracks. I say secrets are for my own good. Go Feds.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
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
This is just yet another attempt by a government agency at empire building. SPAM is nowhere NEAR a level of importance or National Security that would require investigations or legal proceedings to be held in secret. Conduct those in the proven existing methods. Very little NEEDS to be kept secret.
Have the representatives of the people once again intentionally forgotten that little fact: they represent the will of the people, and they govern solely at the sufferance and will of the people?
Has anyone checked the watering schedule for the tree of liberty recently?
If we let them do it to spammers, who will be next? P2P file sharers? Oh wait....
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).
I'm for governments being able to quietly investigate crimes before they arrest someone. Cops going up to your house saying "We're just outside, and we'll be following where you're going, FYI!" just doesn't make sense to me.
I'm against them being able to blanket spy on everything everyone does just in case someone might intend to or commit a crime. The difference being that in this (FTC's) case, they've identified people they want to investigate - they're not fishing quite as much.
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.
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
If you read a previous article about netblock hijacking, the methods by which spammers operate my themselves be illegal. These are the crimes which by investigating, the FTC may expose and leverage for the FBI to bring them to trial (wire fraud, etc.)
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE