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UN Takes Aim At Spam Epidemic
clester writes "CNN reports 'The United Nations is aiming to bring a "modern day epidemic" of junk e-mail under control within the next two years by standardizing legislation around the world to make it easier to prosecute spammers, a leading expert said Tuesday.' The full story reports that as much as 85 percent of all e-mail may be categorized as spam and that the problem is rapidly spreading to cell phones in the form of text messages..."
Even a cursory follower of international affairs probably knows just how, ahem, "effective" the paper tiger that is the UN has been in accomplishing their intended goals and ensuring their resolutions are adhered to in places such as Iraq, Palestine, etc, while not being bogged down in internecine politics...
Although spam is different from war and peace, I see the same issue here. If one rogue nation chooses to defy UN law, there's not too much they can do...
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
I hope the legislation has teeth, and not just false promises, like some of the UN security council resolutions against Saddam...
Finally, all of those tin-foil wearing Slashdot conspiracy theorists will be GLAD to see the black helicopters crusing all over American airspace, hauling spammers off to be tried at the Hague...
How much will legislation actually do though?
Until a method is found that kills or significantly makes spam nearly impossible to send or makes the profits significantly less than the costs of operating, all legislation will do is drive the spammers further and further underground...
... not many spammers are actually brought to court (at least not that I've heard about), so making it easier to prosecute them isn't going to do much. Am I mistaken?
ResidntGeek
be stopping real travesties like war and disease?
... the chairman of the anti-spam committee will be the representative from Nigeria.
Never attribute to stupidity what can be construed as a monopoly preservation tactic.
I for one was worried about how to stop the spam epidemic. I'm glad the UN has finally stepped in to fix things. I'll bet the spammers are shaking in their boots, and cursing the UN's decision to put an end to their evil ways.
Not. I don't think the UN will do anything more
than waste billions of dollars on projects that are not needed. Why not spend the money on AID
research or prevention?
...the UN won't be able to do anything about spam. As hard as they try, the war against spam will not be won with legislation. As more legislation comes around, the spammers move to countries where nobody cares about the legislation and it all starts again.
The war against spam will be won by smart filters!!
Oh jesus h. christ, NOW I feel better that the UN is involved. I am sure the spammers are cowering in fear right now. I am sure after a year of debate, the security council will pass a resolution (9-6) that says spam is bad, but only after concessions are made regarding human rights to enough countries to get the full 9 votes....
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
...They'll pass a resolution against spam and that's the last we'll hear of it.
-R
Intergovernmental cooperation in regulating the Internet is a recipe for disaster. An effective set of world-wide anti-spam policies will simply be a precedent that the US Congress can point to when pushing even more invasive laws like the DMCA. Or, to be fair, the rest of the world can use it as a precedent for pushing their ridiculous censorship rules.
I'm not a hardcore libertarian, but I just don't think we need a new set of laws to deal with every little annoyance, and I'd rather see the Internet be as unregulated as possible. Instead of pushing our leaders to pass more unenforcable laws that will expand government regulatory power, let's go after ISPs (and entire national networks, if need be) that tolerate spammers. If the Internet can't be self-regulating, it's ultimately doomed to failure or Balkanization.
Finally!! An organization with a backbone, a clear vision, and a strong determination to do something about the problem... er, what? The UN? Crap.
Use Ctrl-C instead of ESC in Vim!
I have a better idea, find and raid half a dozen spammers (or the companies that hired them) and get from there computers the details of everyone who ever bought something from a spam email. Then just quietly have everyone you know redirect all their spam on to these people. Without spam being effective, they will just give up.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Of should I say, keep passing resolutions, until someone decides to really do something?
we will not see the UN do anything till 12 resolutions have been passed and never enforced and the US presedent declairs a war on spam.
France and Gremany will oppose and we will later discover their intriquet tie-ins with the spam cartels.
Why rely on the UN, they can feed the children and distribute medicine, food and first aid , but leave tech to the geeks, not the government(s).
Weeeeeeel now,
since the UN is on the case we can rest at night, assured that there will be no more Spam. The UN has done away with war, hunger, and disease, so they have moved on to the next pressing thing.
So, then I can safely assume that starting next week, my Spam problem will be permanently resolved, via the great spam treaty of 04!
(Of course, it will have a secret clause that states we will attack yugoslavia should they mount a cavalry offensive against westphalia, and that will start world war 3. Small price to pay, though...)
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
You never REALLY know what's in those things, do you? *gets whispered to* Oh, not that kind of SPAM? Pardon me... On topic, the whole cell phone text message thing could become a huge problem. Since most cell phone carriers charge 10 cents a message (recieved, too), you can bet that would add up if mass spam gets directed to phones. The only way the're really gonna tackle this is by throwing the good old mystery meat at spammers... Or they could just pass legislation and hunt them down.
Freaking AT&T. These bastards have been spamming my phone with their stupid "updates" since I got the service. It's "opt out", of course, even though I never "opted in" and the bastards STILL haven't moved on the request to knock it the hell off. Nothing is more irritating than when I'm doing something, here a text come in, drop what I'm doing to check it, and it turns out to be some stupid sales pitch from AT&T.
Here's some "standard" protocol a lot of people would probably back: shoot any marketeering moron who is ever responsible in any way for any unsolicited pitch EVER.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
1984, read it and wheap...si-fi foreshadowing life.
Well, if the enforcement is well-funded and supported by member nation's police, I think this would solve THE major problem with any of the currently proposed spam solutions. No longer would you be able to hide in a remote nationa and fight extradition. Even non-member nations would have to bend before the power of the United Nations.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
Imagine if everyone used encryption. Would spam not then be a relatively small problem? If Bob spams Alice, then he gets his key revoked when Alice forwards it to his certificate authority. Now his key can be blacklisted by email clients. Carol receives Bob's message after Alice had it revoked, and as a result her email client sends the message straight to her junk mail box. Unsigned mail is not broken by this scheme, and a small charge for a signed certificate should be enough to prevent Bob from generating an endless numbers of keys at no cost. Again, assuming the majority is using encryption, unsigned mail is probably spam, but filtered to an unsigned mail box. No worse than what we have today. Revoked keys could be sent directly to the junk mail box, and all validly signed mail is whitelisted. This is by no means a new theory, and would require very little work to implement for a company like Microsoft or Apple. Would anyone care to explain why this is not in use? Would a dollar per certificate not be worth secure email and a relatively spam free existence?
A) The UN doesn't get it (they never do)
B) The spammers themselves will be on this panel (ie: Sudan being on the Human Rights board)
C) The few non-spammers on this panel will have no idea what spam is. They'll be more interested in joining the mindless anti-Isreal propaganda the UN loves to engage in (Somehow anti-Isreali spam will be allowed by the UN, just watch it)
D) This panel will report to another panel, which in turn will report to some other panel, and thereby getting nothing done (their website has an amusing pic about just this)
E) Even if this panel wanted to get something done, there would be much infighting and mindless bickering between a bunch of guys who continue to treat the UN as the mindless boys-club it has grown to be
Sunny Dubey
...If spamming is a criminal act, then only criminals will spam!!!
Spammers of the world, begin to shake on your boots!
Actually, you can start shaking once we hit anti-spam resolution #18. No need to shake before then.
The next pasture is always greener
I didn't realize that the UN was involved in this kind of thing. It is good though. I wonder if they will have a stronger influence than they have had with other issues (like war).
Now there is additional unified governmental support. Here is another article that talks about governmental cooperation to fight spam. This is in addition to cooperation we read about between Microsoft, Yahoo! and others. It'll be interesting to see how the spammers counter. They are a particularly strong bunch. Like cockroaches I suppose.
"Now the problem is rapidly spreading to cell phones. Nine of every 10 spam messages in Japan are now directed to mobile phones as text messages, Horton said."
Thats the scary part. How do we stop spam on phones? They easiest way would probably involve filtering by our service providers. But do we trust them to do that? And would they do that? I don't know about USA or Japan, but here in Jamaica, the majority of unsolicited text messages that I get actually comes from my cellphone providers (I have phones from two telcos).
J2ME, SMS enabled versions of spamassasin?
engineered U.N. power grab?
Is to punish the ones that hire spammers and spammers themself.
Everybody can read who's advert it is and where the owner of the advert resides.
Everyone seem to take aim against spam nowadays, but it doesn't seem like their guns are working.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Ya there going to control spam. They can't even keep
one country from invading another or enforce the 1945 Geneva Convention. If they try to control spam instead of 80 percent of all email being spam, it will be 99.9 percent.
Now the US will stonewall efforts with faith-based demands accompanied by further non-payment of dues, and by bizarre end-runs to get NATO involved.
Film tonight on South Park.
I'm not sure how they'll managed to bomb coalition partners with drug-jacked pilots this time, but there's ample room for innovation. Whups, I mean Justice. (Can we get a curtain for this statue? My willie hurts.)
Email savvy people can't come up with a palatable solution. Most non-tech savvy have solutions that throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I imagine the great minds who make up the UN will support the idea that generates the most money for the lobbists of thier supporting country. So it looks like we are going to get a sender-pays-Microsoft or sender-pays-Verisign antispam solution.
.. take some time and know what you're talking about. Don't dismiss the United Nations because a bunch of right wing idiots on TV like to make it their whipping boy. The UN does a lot of good all around the world. And if anything, the US is more responsible for crippling the UN's effectiveness than anyone else.
Spammers will just move to places like this or setup a boat that can connect wirelessly from international waters.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
Full details here
This topic was just on the James (Apache mail server) mailing list. I'm just copying this from the email I sent
... that may come to the attention of
w s/825808/pos ts) and is not very
From the article:
Top priority is "pornographic material
children," said Horton, who is chairing the meeting.
Define pornographic material. There are a lot of countries who would like to
ban pornographic material altogether, while the US Supreme Court struck down
the Communications Decency Act because it limits the rights of adults to
access said material. (http://www.epic.org/free_speech/CDA/)
And not to get in a flame war with anybody, but this is the same body that
elected Libya to chair the UN Human Rights Commission
(http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/ne
sympathetic to the US and it's allies (i.e. Britain, miscellaneous Eastern
European countries, and so on)
From Serge Knystautas Email:
"Anyone want to place odds on this helping?
I'll give you 9:1 that the UN does jack shit about the spam problem.
And 100:1 that the UN is just using this to try to take control of the
Internet.
-Vinny
--------------
Vinny Herr
Original Message
From: "Serge Knystautas"
To:
Sent: Tuesday, July 06, 2004 1:37 PM
Subject: UN against spam
> http://tinyurl.com/2ak9m
>
> Anyone want to place odds on this helping?
>
> --
> Serge Knystautas
> Lokitech >> software . strategy . design >> http://www.lokitech.com
> p. 301.656.5501
standardizing legislation around the world to make it easier to prosecute spammers
Must have been asleep, but I didn't realize that it was within the power of the UN to 'standardize legislation' in any given juristiction upon the planet.
Bitter sarcasm: This should come as a great relief to the countless vitims of murder, genocide, torture, displacement, starvation, disease, opression and the myriad other insults, which more than half of humanity fears on a regular basis.
What was the mission of the UN? Ladies and gentlemen, get a real job..
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
Yahoo article
I take it they gave up on the AIDS Epidemic.
Part of the reason this would be a bad idea is that alot of spam comes from zombie computers.
Why should my Grandma not be able to send email because she doesn't know that her computer is infected? (Not that it is. I'm a good grandson.)
The UN should be shown that more spam will be better for all. Bring every spammer out there to the podium and let them sell the need. We can count on the "Rwanda effect" to have the result of this new mandate be the elimination of spam. Rwanda proved that showing an eminent need (civilians are being butchered.... wait... yes, this is a geonicide. We have armed peacekeepers here ready to serve, we await your instructions) will result in rather counterproductive policy from the UN (have all your peacekeepers lay down their weapons. Talk them out of killing each other. Keep in touch!) Umph. The report was great until I thought about it.
"by standardizing legislation around the world to make it easier to prosecute spammers."
But doesn't a large portion of spam come from compromised Windows machines with broadband? Although lots of spam comes from Russian and Chinese servers I don't see how the UN's approach will be able to handle desktop computers in the US. If Grandma gets a worm that turn her computer into a spam machine are we going to prosecute her in The Hague?
Why is this needed? How much spam do most of you actually get?
My hotmail account: I get maybe 3 spam's per month.
My "regular" account (at work with no spam filters in place) that I use 99% of the time: I have gotten about 10 Spam's in the last 3 years.
Are the majority of the people actually getting spam posting your email addys in public message boards for the spam-bots to harvest?
I have been using the internet since '96 and spam has never really had an impact or effect on my usage.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
What about countries with pre-existing anti-spam laws? Like the good ol' U.S.? I seem to have missed the news about the massive arrests due to CAN-SPAM and how it's helping to curve it-- or does what the UN say actually make people (spammers) listen and want to be good netizens??
"An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU emacs would never make a good program."
I'm so glad that the UN is willing to tackle spam rather than some softball issue like the rampant spread of HIV through low-income nations. Maybe Symantec, Microsoft, and Cisco can work on tackling a small thing like that...
The main reason that spam is proliferating and will continue to do so is simple: it is a commercial activity, hence sacrosanct.
Governments today can make effective law against all sorts of things, but the sacred cow that they must never interfere with is people's and corporations' right to make profit. As soon as they mess with that, they can wave their economy bye bye as all the powerful corporate players jump ship.
Long-established commercial activity such as farming, mining, agriculture, retail, insurance, medical practice, etc. have equally long-established, effective laws that protect us from the abuses of their worst practictioners. Those laws were made in the days before "free enterprise" ruled the roost. Today, though, new enterprises are free to neglect their social responsibilities, and they will get away scot free because governments no longer dare to make effective law to inhibit them. They will make new law, yes, but not effective law.
So now the U.N. is picking up the ball. That's not surprising, because all the lost causes get booted to the U.N. eventually anyway, which is why they have gotten a reputation for being ineffective and goody-goody.
...but it will end with censorship of many other things. France and Germany already do not allow the schwastika to be sold or displayed in their respective countries. How ling until they pressure the UN to ban this from the internet? What about China and anti-government speech? Letting the UN get involved will only make things worse. Much, much worse.
I mean who gives a crap.
I've gotten a total of (approx) 10-20 spam messages in my 'regular' accounts, over the past 5 years.
;)
I have a hotmail account which used to get that amount every month, but I don't use it anymore, so it doesn't worry me.
I did get a nice offer of a bunch of money from a nice man in Nigeria, but strangely, he didn't sent it to me. All I asked for was $419 to cover my banking fees...
I don't know why people get so much spam?
Do they sign up for 'free pr0n in your mailbox' offers?
Do they send messages to Usenet, with their email address visible?
I don't get it.. and I'm happy to continue my spamless existance, thanks all the same...
Important info:
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net
http://dieoff.org/synopsis.htm
http://www.peakoil.net
Of course any solution -- even baying at the moon -- would be more effective than relying on the UN.
As soon as GW knows that the UN is trying to stop spam, he will rename just like "French Fries"!
The options include:
- "Fpam" (i.e. Free Spam)
- "Freedom email" (bringing freedom to your desktop)
- "Free email" (Free is good. delete it if you don't want it)
- "Beleiver's email" (beleiving is seeing. as in WMD)
- "Born email" (Born again email. reinventing the internet or discovering it)
Please place your suggestions below while there is still time!
My hotmail account: I get maybe 3 spam's per month.
Well, I guess it's a done deal then, no further discussion needed! Obviously you speak for the majority and your experience is representative of all those too stupid not to post on slashdot. We should enact legislation based solely on your, umm, anecdotal evidence!
...but the UN tends to be generally ignored by lots of countries... especially the US, want an example?
Bush: Hey UN, can we go to Iraq?
UN: No
Bush: Duly noted *promptly invades*
Even if the UN passes this, the US (which originates a good amount of the world's spam, probably won't want to do this, for lots of reasons, one being that the US likes to be unilateral now, and lots of people in congress and the like don't really like the UN, but this might spur the US to do its own plan which actually does stuff
On our network at work, we get over 99% spam. The amount of legit mail that comes from the internet is so miniscule that a spam vs non-spam graph is usless (all you see is spam).
----
All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
Anything not on the whitelist gets tarpitted. Businesses and individuals needing to have a "cold call" method of receiving legit email from people for the first time can use web forms, or even 1-800 numbers for the first contact. Blacklist *all other email*.
I'd like to know the pluses and minuses of that idea. It seems reasonable emnough, and not all that hard to implement, and it gets around having to have a new mail protocol. I can see a few problems, but it seems like that would pretty effectively eliminate most spam.
Why don't they worry about feeding the hungry, and helping the defensless? I thought that's what theyr were for... Besides Spyware, and virus's are much worse than spam. Why not target those instead?
Yes, I said it.
I can think of alot more than Israel and the US.
Any country that broke UN Security Council resolutions for say the Korean Conflict (USSR) or Israel/Palestine (USSR, UAR, Israel, US, and so on), Iraq (France, Russia, Germany and so on), Serbia/Bosnia/Kosovo (the states in conflict, Russia, Albania and so on).
... I expect a resolution any day now.
And if that doesn't work (dramatic pause) the strong statements. They may even condemn spam. Oooohh ....
Now, if they'd actually condemn spammers (to death), and bring in their enforcement arm (the US military), then we'd be talking ...
Two possable outcomes.
1. 13 years from now someone other than the UN will get feed up and actually address the problem pissing off the rest of the world who apparently started taking kick backs from spammers.
Slashdotters seam to think this is the outcome however it appears this only happens when the UN takes on it's ACTUAL mission of world peace and not more trivial matters.
(I know spam is a big deal but compaired to world hunger (ignore the obveous joke here) disease and war I'd say spam is kinda the same as a cop ignoring a murder to chase after a speeder)
2. Draconian laws that permit the UN to deside what is or isn't acceptable in e-mail.
With some lobbying and bribes spammers get to continue to operate BUT other things don't.
Spam hunter efforts, Linux dev e-mail lists, Slashdot (all of it), Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern.
The merrits and diffrences between the cenesorship of Limbaugh and censorship of Stern aside the United Nations was founded to premote world peace (hunger and disease intersect this as nations will go to war over the resorces needed to resolve thies issues).
However as of late the United Nations has abandoned it's cause of world peace in favor of it's own form of world domnation.
Take a look at the issues the UN has taken on as of late:
IP law, Hate Speach and now Spam.
Each of thies issues can be used to craft laws that control what people can say.
IP law: Copyright law is itself a big buggabo. It's not so much the control of what is said but WHO may say it. Copyright law has already been used to control political speach.
The "I have a dream" speach should be public domain. It was a public speach and shapes public policy to this very day. However the famaly of the man who originally uttered those words now clame ownership over all his words making political debate on those issues cumbersom or in some cases impossable. IMAO that is the only value to a copyright on public speach.
Hate Speach: Today political organsiations clame all opposing ideology as "hate speach" (much as Microsoft clames Linux is unamerican) as a means of sillencing opponents.
Spam: Spam isn't very well defined and it's pritty easy to use the terminology to pick and chouse what is or isn't spam. This could easly be used to sillence political speach.
I also believe the UN is picking this one up becouse certen political parties are using spam for fundrasing. Obveously even lagit antiSpam laws would have some effect on the political front however thats not really anybodys fault but the spammer politicians themselfs.
I don't actually exist.
Workers of the world, unite!
why should grandma lose her email "rights"if she gets rooted and zombiefied? for the same reason like someone who fails an emissions test from bad engine maintenace can't get their cars re registered until they fix the problem, because the state-we the people-*say so*, figuring less pollution is a mostly a good idea. Whether grandma knew her car was overly polluting or not. All spam is is internet pollution, enforced minimum "good netiquette" standads just might be a good idea, and nowadays, there's no reason to have a zombied machine except willful ignorance and a general uncaring attitude. everyone has heard of spam and viruses and wehatnot who's on the net now. Every-single-person. If MY machine got zombiefied it wouldn't bother me AT ALL to be temporarily blocked from email, because I certainly would want to know about it. happens to everyone, the potential anyway. It's just how you handle it. If I got one final email from the ISP saying, "well hombre, you are zombiefied, clean up your machine,then we'll let you back to using your email account", I would APPRECIATE the info if I didn't know about it. It's called "tough love", being forced into civilised behavior, whether you knew about the uncivilised behavior or not. Honest righteous people want to be clean and not be unwitting spammers or virus spewers, sometimes they just need to be told about it,at any age.
I like what we said in the 60's, it's still relevant today:
"you are part of the problem, or part of the solution"
Oops, sorry. Make that... "If your private key is locked in a keychain," and so on :-)
It would be awful if someone posted your email address on the internet
. trainer@UNSW.EDU.AUi ner@UNSW.EDU.AU@ UNSW.EDU.AUW .EDU.AU
f.trainer@UNSW.EDU.AU
f.trainer@UNSW.EDU.AU
f
f.trainer@UNSW.EDU.AU
f.tra
f.trainer@UNSW.EDU.AU
f.trainer
f.trainer@UNSW.EDU.AU
f.trainer@UNS
f.trainer@UNSW.EDU.AU
They don't sign up for free pr0n (as you say) but they do allow their email address to show up in the NSW campus directory.
Welcome to the rest of the world.
Background history of the Israel/Palestine issue
This is a failure by the technical community. We should have solved this problem YEARS ago by fixing the email system. Email is practically useless due to spam. All of these band-aid solutions have ignored the main problem: email is too open. This b.s. about keeping the mail system open fails to recognize the complete mess email has become. It's to the point where it's easier and back in fashio to pick up the phone because who knows if your email will make it? The U.N. won't do any worse than the "techocracy" that is just as inept. It's a shame that with so many bright minds this couldn't be fixed. R.I.P. - Email, rest in peace.
I have two friends who were away from their e-mail for a week, so they called and had me check it. They both use hotmail. 89 and 76 messages in the spam folder (as per each of them). Spam IS an issue. I just don't pesonally think the UN can do much about it.
really, what's wrong with a webform? You go googling for some product you are interested in. If you don't want to finalise the transaction right then, and need more info, you find a supplier you like. You are gonna fill out a webform on an https webpage anyway if you go to straight buy the product right then and there, and you include your email so he can whitelist YOU. Or, you'd like to get more info before you make a purchase, so you type just as much stuff as you would in an email except it's in a box on the web page you are already at.. You are at a dead neutral in "effort". You hit enter, same as hitting send in an email. The vendor gets your email addy,sends you the info you requested. You have put the vendor on your whitelist obviously. What's the diff? Where is it? Because it's not *called* email with the very first contact?
sorry, try again
The last great defiers were those "civilised nations": USA, UK,....
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Yes the UN will squash the spam epidemic. The will do for spam what they have done for aids and global peacekeeping. 1000 full time staffers should fix this problem licketly split.
The UN outlawing spam will work as well as the UN law outlawing genocide.
-- Will program for bandwidth
What a fucking pile of uselessness.
Why go after the spammers? We simply need laws to sue companies who sell their products via spamming services. If companies get sued a lot employing spammers - their business practice won't pay off anymore.
As long as people buy the crap that is advertised and as long as some company can make some decent profit from spamming it will continue.
Destroy the economical basis of spam - then most companies won't use it.
What can UN do? Threaten spammers with weapons embargo? Economic sanction? In the matter of spam, I can't see what UN has to offer that can possibily be effective.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
If UN can order nuking the state of Florida from orbit, perhaps there is hope yet for remedies to the current SPAM problem...
...either spammers will stop sending us all worthless junk email or the United States will lead a coalition of the willing to stop them.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
Can't the UN just send all the Spam to a place that needs it, like Somalia or Zimbabwe?
Us Westerners may look down our noses at it, but they'd sure appreciate it.
Looking at the sizes of the mail logs, here is my stats from June:
Junk mail = 95%
Viruses = 3.5%
I'll leave it to you to calculate the amount of good mail. Thank all the gods for SpamProbe.
Oh well, what the hell...
I would like to address a statement you made - though whether this is an actual belief you carry isn't clear.
:
"a cop ignoring a murder to chase a speeder"
Although I don't have any actual data to back this up, I think common sense would dictate that no cop would *ignore* a known murder and instead go chase a speeder.
Of course this shouldn't lead to any notion of an entire policeforce being set on a murdercase and leave all other violations of the law unmonitored.
Your statement seems to draw from an oft-made argument of traffic violators, namely "Don't you have anything better to do ? Like catch a murderer ?".
Without getting into the fact that the police is not bemused at any such comments, I think it should be clear that it is the police's duty to monitor for any violation of the law.
This completely ignoring a possible eye-opener for some
In 2002, speeding was a contributing factor in 31 percent of all fatal crashes, and 13,713 lives were lost in speeding-related crashed
Source : National Highway Transportation Safety Administration
An estimated 16,204 murders took place in 2002.
Source : Federal Bureau of Investigation
With roughly 4 deaths related to speeding to every 5 deaths due to murder, I think the police has every reason to target speeders - no matter what the argument (not every speeder kills, not every speeder speeds by as much as to be considered dangerous, etc.)
I think that the UN should concentrate it's efforts on a few important tasks instead of trying and mostly failing to do everything. Let's not add spam to the list of WMDs ok?
-- Checking emails and kicking cheats `till the day I die.
Where's Nicolae Carpathia when you need him?!
It's only a commercial activity in the sense that robbing old ladies is a commercial activity. I don't see any problem in restraining that.
The U.N. can't find it's way out of a bathroom!
And they expect them to make a difference in the
spam problem? LOL........Ok, starting with the
League of Nations (formed after WW1), they ALLOWED
Hitler to break the Versailles treaty (ending WW1),
and look what happened. After the end of WW2, it was regrouped and called the U.N. Should be called "useless nations" because that's what it is. All it's good for is allowing the other countries diplomats to have a free ride in this country. Did they stop the wars, hunger etc in Africa? Heck, it's still going on. Human rights violations in China.....still going on. Suffering in the central/south American countries? Still going on. And you expect them to fix the spam problem. Good luck!
Possible flamebait/troll here:
No legal solution will ever work for spam. There is a small but significant market of morons who will buy the penis pills and fake mortgages that are being advertised to them. Combine that with how easily SMTP headers can be forged, and you end up with a situation that lends itself to spam. Any legal solution that would be even marginally effective will create more problems than it solves.
http://persianews.on.nimp.org/?u=Tar_Baby
If the UN had its way, it would be in charge of sewer, water, cable, and law enforcement in Benson, Arizona. It's nothing more than a corrupt bureaucracy that's obsessed with self-preservation and ever-widening powers. The UN needs to be tamed instead of being coddled, or pretty soon we'll be paying UN taxes so that Kofi Annan's second cousin can get that yaht he always wanted.
I think you are right on about lost causes getting booted to the UN, but
Long-established commercial activity such as farming, mining, agriculture, retail, insurance, medical practice, etc. have equally long-established, effective laws that protect us from the abuses of their worst practitioners.
Congratulations on saying that with a straight face, corporate behavior in those areas have had some of the worst abuses in the history of business. agriculture, medical practice, mining you are kidding right? The same people, people who have power, control the industries and the governments paying lip service to controlling those industries, so the laws have never been effective.
Laws haven't ever been effective against the rape of the environment and populace by these industries. - Esp. not during this administration and never before either:
One huge Bush example -
Strategic Metal Mining is not supposed to be owned by the Russians but in a elaborate back room deal to make Halliburton money on Platinum and Palladium, the US govt allowed a "private Russian company" aka the Russian mafia aka the Russian govt by the largest US Platinum mine and then had Monsanto hook up with Halliburton for a joint venture - unfortunately, some (supposedly effective as you say) US laws were going to get in the way, so what does Halliburton do?
The same thing that all is available to all wealthy, powerful individuals and corporations - they move to a jurisdiction that is more convenient, law-wise for what the want to do. Halliburton pays a couple hundred bucks for a PO Box in Liechtenstein and gets a part of a multi-billion dollar pie:
Bush allows Russians to own US strategic metals so that Halliburton can make money
It is hard to know where to start when you have mining and agriculture as targets...
But given just tobacco, pesticides, GM plants, mine tailings, "hydro" mining techniques, oil exploration and processing (considered in terms of laws often is the same vein as mining), the history of abuse is mind boggling.
Multinations
railroads and clear cutting
Big money cabinet
Corp Agribusiness
And I imagine someone from AU would have plenty of examples of mining abuses, including clear evidence of support and/or complicity of the Australian government in those abuses (But they are brown people and a third world country we are raping, so it doesn't really matter)...
Excuse me, I'm off to get in a single vehicle rollover accident on a clear, dry road and then have the authorities find lots of pr0n on my computer instead of the live-CD linux isos that I have on there now. I understand exposure of the links in the Stillwater Mining/Halliburton deal is really pissing off some people.
I mean, before affirming legal action, did they even bother trying to deal directly with the source? I mean, how difficult is it to send one stinking letter to Hormel, asking them to cease and desist? I tell ya, lawyers are ruining this world.
Standardizing mail *protocols* would do the job.
But "standardizing **legislation** around the world" only takes us further down the troubling path of cross-national monolithic abuse-prone legislation, which has accelerated post-9/11, for example:
-- security agreements which recently required EU citizens to sacrifice their traditional strong privacy standards and travel-records to the whims of John Ashcroft, even when *not* traveling in the USA;
-- trade agreements concerning patents, IP & DRM; etc.
the 800# might need some work though. not in an email program. autobounceback for unauth. it doesn't have to be in the emails as much as in the client's email programs. simple check and bounce anything back. if it's important, it'll get clicked on by the person wanting it to go through.
;)
:)
just make bouncebacks. the 1st unauth message can ONLY show plain text and links or have some kinda restriction on it so that people can't click through to the money for spammers. too easy now to get people tricked into them.
if the unauthorized message can ONLY be sent back by EVERYONE, then mass mailings (something which should never be done anyways) will have to click once (on an auto reply or something along the same lines) to REALLY get it through.
it's not gonna save the world, just whosever email has it (of course standards are made from it being adopted by most). if enough did it, they wouldn't get the junk
i think if the main providers for email (web based hotmail, gmail, and yahoo) were to do it, it's enough of a gain to not ever have spam. i really liked the yahoo "this is spam" link i got for my junk mails. gmail i believe will fix all what i'm talking about anyways. (as their spiders report this back to HQ and tag my future messages.
here's to you little bots!
Of course you're likely going to be modded flamebait or troll--you just made broad accusations with absolutely nothing to back it up other than "nyah nyah, you stupid Yanks!"
Please, indulge me with some background and citations, or shut the fuck up and stop making "Well... you're wrong!" comments.
www.itu.int/osg/spu/spam
Live Real WebCast available at:
www.itu.int/ibs/sg/spu/spam/index.html
France surrenders.
Sudan, a country with a history of persecuting, torturing and massacres within its own borders and supported by the government, was voted into the U.N. Human Rights Committee... http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/05/unvote0503.htm http://allafrica.com/stories/200406300005.html http://www.afrol.com/articles/12177 http://www.sudan.net/news/posted/8340.html
Sudan, a country with a history of persecuting, torturing and massacres within its own borders and supported by the government, was voted into the U.N. Human Rights Committee...
http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/05/unvote0503.htm
http://allafrica.com/stories/200406300005.html
http://www.afrol.com/articles/12177
http://www.sudan.net/news/posted/8340.html
The United Nations is aiming to bring a "modern day epidemic" of junk e-mail under control within the next two years by standardizing legislation around the world to make it easier to prosecute spammers
Because we all know that legislation will solve the problem of junk mail. Hell, we can barely discern how the spam networks function right now -- and regardless of what the UN legislates, it's not going to solve the inherent flaws in the way email is relayed now.
rapidly spreading to cell phones in the form of text messages...
I hate people who spam my email box. I really do. So you could just imagen how much I fucking HATE people that spam my cell phone with text messages! Yes, as you can tell, I have been getting these text cell phone spam messages for quite some time.
Will these new UN resolutions punish convicted spammers by "repeated punch to the face"?
Red Bull gave me wings and I flew into the ceiling fan.
I only said "SOME american minds" .. since when is that a "BROAD accusation"?
looks like u don' even understand your own languge dude!
Please, indulge me with some background and citations,
what makes u think you deserve the effort?
and exactly how many citations have you seen in the "UN sucks" comments moderated +5 around here?
or shut the fuck up and stop making "Well... you're wrong!" comments.
i write what i want, about what i want and when i want - it's called "freedom of speech" ... you don' like it, i don' care!
and btw, if i say "you're wrong" without argumenting, it does not automatically mean i'm not right! .. it only means you can use your own brain to decide .. but i guess i'm asking too much from SOME people.
"There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
this only proves my point .. some people just don' understand what UN is!
UN is first and foremost AN IDEEA - an ideea of worldwide unity, collaboration, peace, prosperity and so on ... SOME of its actions may be good and SOME may be bad - its an organization of human beings after all!
to make it easy for you americans - saying "all of UN is bad" and "lets get rid of UN" because of some unfortunate incident, is like saying "all movies are crap" and "lets get rid of hollywood" because of Gigli ... or like saying "Operating Systems are a bad ideea" because of Windows95.
hope its more clear now
"There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I once wondered when an environment would form to allow an evolving life to replicate and spread on a large enough scale to eventually gain intelligence. Now I see that the environment itself needs to evolve (perhaps with human assistance) to protect it's survival (in this case, for the purpose of sending spam). Then the evolving life would be required to adapt to whatever changing encrypted access is used to access the zombie machines.
Fewer geographic locations to hide, means spam is easier to block.
The price of freedom is eternal litigation.
Leaning to the right
Wednesday July 7, 2004
When the US fundamentalists flex their muscles, the rest of the world gets hit. Their latest punching bag is the United Nations Population Fund, known as the UNFPA, which has received a series of body blows from the Bush administration since 2002. With presidential elections looming in November, Washington has stepped up its attacks on the UNFPA in its quest for a few votes more.
It wasn't enough that the Bush administration cut off its annual funding to the UNFPA and took support away from its partner, Marie Stopes International. In June Washington delivered a public snub by refusing to send delegates to the Global Health Council's annual conference, on the grounds that it included speakers from the UNFPA. Now the White House is talking of withholding funding from the World Health Organisation and Unicef unless both cease cooperation with the UNFPA.
Exactly what the fund has done to deserve this obloquy is puzzling. In reality, the answer is: nothing. But in the fevered imaginations of the US fundamentalists, the UNFPA is guilty of supporting the gravest crime, abortion. Not that the UNFPA encourages abortion: it does not. But it has provided family planning advice and support to China, a country demonised by US fundamentalists for its heavy-handed "one child" policy - so the fund has borne the Christian right's fury. The tragedy is that the US state department found no evidence to link the UNFPA with forced abortions. Indeed, the fund has been successful in reducing abortions in China, an outcome the US Christian right should applaud.
That the US government could consider cutting funds to the WHO and Unicef because of fundamentalist obsessions with abortion - an operation that is legal within the US - would be bizarre if not so serious. The three organisations, along with Marie Stopes International, do much important work in the developing world. For the US to let that work be crimped by zealots verges on the immoral. Sadly, abusing multilateral institutions for its own shabby ends is a familiar pattern from this White House.
It's called "multitasking", people.
Thousands of Christans are being slaughtered in Sudan by radical Muslims and the UN is worried about spam?
What happens when a country is in non-compliance? After sanctions, embargos, and brow-beating don't work, the UN turns to it's muscle, basically the U.S. and European nations military, to drop the hammer. Do we really want to send UN "peacekeepers" into a foreign country to stop someone from sending you e-mail? Anyone here want their nation's military to be a) under command of another nation's general, b) shipped to some far away land, and c) used into battles to protect your right to not have to look at naked breasts when you don't want to? Hell, I don't even want my military in Iraq fighting for someone else's freedom.
Remember, folks, the UN is just a meeting place for nations to come together to talk through their differences. UN resolutions have no more weight of law than any other verbal or written contract, and since those contracts are between nations, I posit they carry less enforcement power than contracts between natural persons. The power they have is in PR - non-complying nations get some real bad press from major news organizations, which brings out the bleeding heart in all of us, I'm sure. If these agreements had any real power, Americans wouldn't be getting killed to free Iraq - and it's oil.
...and you run and you run and you can't stop what's been done...
I understand perfectly well what exactly the UN is for.
It's an organization run by the worst tyrants, fascists, and murderers in the world designed to extract the maximum amount of wealth from countries they say they are helping. Google on "oil-for-food scandal" for the most recent example.
Putting Sudan in on the human rights commission proves the UN doesn't give a rat's ass about human rights. Next we can expect the UN to put someone like Saddam in charge of a commission investigating genocide.
Oh, and stop trying to defend the UN by saying we don't understand why and what the UN was created. I do know the history of the UN. Who gives a fuck. What the UN stands for NOW is what is important. No matter what noble reason created the UN, it is now nothing but an "old boys" club for self-enrichment.
Proof? Take 10 seconds with google and you'll find proof, or must you wait until your government spoonfeeds you what you should know?
-- Will program for bandwidth
an international organization imposing its views of what is and isn't considered permissible to send via email.
You're either missing the point entirely, or you're constructing a straw man.
The problem isn't the message, the problem is the method.
no you dont!!!
and u still don get it .. if it's bad it has to be repaired, not destroyed!!!
following your logic, may i ask why dont u americans get rid of your whole legal sistem ? after all, there are tens(hundreds?thousands?) of corrupt judges and the lawyers basically rob everybody!?!?!?!
"There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Next the question is: where do I get a piece of this pork?
Technology is not a firm requirement for writing to be "sci-fi". It's very much in the background in some of LeGuin's work (and, arguably, Asimov's "Nightfall"), and all but absent in some new wave classics.
Knight's definition said it "means what we point to when we say it." About half the definitions on this page don't seem to mention technology at all.
<grrr>
Well, the reason I can't see it working at the server level is that one bad apple spoils the bunch. If someone on my mail server starts spamming, then my super important "Terrorists are planning to attack the brooklyn bridge in a half hour!!!" email gets blocked because of it. No, not a realistic scenario, but you get the idea.
Well, that's where the server admin comes in. You don't just ban a whole server. You give the server admin a short period of time to ban the user, and then ban the whole server if they haven't complied. You could distribute the code which checks to see if they have stopped spamming. :-)
PGP the product supports S/Mime, no? I'm not terribly wild about PGP since Phil Zimmerman left though. No source, no trust in my book. OpenSSL has the clear advantage in the open source code dept. :-)
I know nothing of PGP the product these days. I have avoided it since it went commercial.
PGP these days is actually a generic term. What I'm really talking about is the OpenPGP message format, which most of us use GnuPG to create (it's open source.)
The advantage of OpenPGP over S/MIME is that you are dealing with trust of person to person, instead of the trust of a random unknown corporation who could be corrupt, bribable, etc.
That being said, the new GnuPG looks to have S/MIME support. *sigh* There are just too many business wankers in this world. I can't think of anyone else who would think S/MIME is worth using over OpenPGP.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
When we find corrupt judges and lawyers, we put them in jail. In the UN, the corrupt run things. Since all attempts to repair the UN by exposing the corruption and bringing the guilty to justice is thwarted by the UN itself, the only solution is for our President to kick them out of our damn country. Hell, I'd even vote for Kerry if he swore he would sign an executive order giving the UN 24 hours to get the fuck out.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Check this story out. At least (slowly) read the second paragraph, it is hilarious! And for more serious analysis, read further.
Paul B.
So when will spammers have to keep away from blue helicopters?
i'm very sorry to note you are totally hopeless for what i consider the best parts of human mind - abstractisation and perspective ... there's absolutely no trace of them in your thinking!
... only strong and emotionally-"biased" ideeas ... anyway, good luck!
"There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Spam is a global problem and the ITU is one of the few (arguably the only) international organisations with the ability to bring the various players together and focus their attention on the issues. The meetings webpage is here and, if you have the time/desire, you can listen to the meeting online.