Slashdot Mirror
Australian Prime-Minister Sends Spam
Boricle writes "The Australian Prime Minister has been personally funding the sending of political spam to the members of his electorate. The spam has been sent under contract by his son's company of whom he is 'very proud.' Political Spam is permitted under Australian Spam Legislation."
After all, you have a pre-existing business relationship with them, right? You do pay your taxes, don't you citizen? ;)
We, as Australian's vote him out!!!
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
needs to be "booted" out of office.
But is it legal for the labor party to send spam?
Nothing surprising here, it's just as bad as the Can-Spam Act, which is just another way of allowing spams to continue.
Uselessful technology (Air-Charged
I'm interesting in HOW he's able to do this. I mean, is it a clause that SOLELY allows political spam, or is he exploiting a loophole, as a previous poster pointed out, about pre-existing business relationships. If the former is true, then its very amusing how these politicans make "backdoors" for themselves in law.
One of the candidates in John Howard's electorate (the Australian version of a Congressional district) is former chairman of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Bulk Email, Troy Rollo, who is not happy, John
Subject: Fr33 V!/\Gr4 V0te for $president 4|\|D r3c!3\/e l!f3t!m3 s[_]pp!y
It's 20 million people AC...
And more than 50 of us have email addresses.
... such as a prior low-level scandal where he initiated a government bail out of his brother's failing company (in preference to a number of other high profile corporate crashes). Now he's contracted his son to send spam.
not surprising at all.
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
It's interesting to note that it was John Howard's Government that brought in these Anti-SPAM laws - as well as the exemption for Political Parties. link
I'm sure Troy Rollo (a candidate for John Howard's seat of Bennelong) will milk this for all it's worth - as he's also on the anti-spam group "Coalition Against Unsolicited Bulk E-mail in Australia (CAUBE.AU)".
they even managed to spam the anti-spammer.
Probably not the smartest thing to do.
John Howard would "never, ever, not in this government, or any future government" do this.
Oh, wait...
I would have thought that with a son in the IT industry, Jonnie Howard would have been at least mildly concerned about the software patent/IP issues in the unpopular "free trade" agreement we recently got shoved down out throats.
Too much to expect, I suppose.
We don't even have an alternative come the next election because the Labor party has accepted them too. So much for democracy & having a choice.
So what can the average joe citizen do to fight crap like this, when all the parties seem to have identical policies on issues like this?
He was using Windows on his machine, so he can't be blamed for the inadvertent transmission of personal files!
(This is not a troll. I believe a spammer got acquitted citing this ground).
-
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
"I'm very proud of the fact that my son has started a small business in his 20s and I get a real buzz out of the fact that he's prepared to have a go in small business," Mr Howard said.
"That is what the future of this country is all about."
This from a man who has made it harder than ever in the history of this country to start and run small business through legislation, taxes, and new paperwork requirements.
In addition he has announced tax cuts for the middle to higher income earners and no help at all for lower income earners. Small business in Australia is treated like nothing, even though close to half of Australia's economy runs on the back of it.
The average small business owner is crushed by the weight of ever increasing government reporting requirements and he thinks that small business is the future of the country.
Yeah, right...
"And then I visited Wikipedia
If a piece of information released by the prime-minister or the president is untrue, or unlikely to be true, can't it be labelled spam in the case of political messages? I think many heads-of-state actually use this as part of their survival strategy - send out spam, and then find scapegoats, remove them - problem solved, popularity ratings restored!
-
your new around here aren't you?
So the future of Australia lies in f**ing up everyone else's life so one person can get ahead?
We can all pack up and go home now. Australian mateship is dead.
i will be very happy when howard is out! but i wont really be happy when latham is in :/
? atipet
http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi
for us to FW them back? It's still political spam, it's just spam to the spammers.
Ill have to hope I get a spam from him. I believe the law says political partys can spam but not companies. So does this mean a company can from doing the spamming for a non-profit/political organisation? Maybe not
meridian at tha.net
Want to find out more about this idiot?
Try: http://www.johnhowardlies.com/
Homer: "Stand back, or I'll boot your Prime Minister! I'll do it, so help me God I'll boot him!"
Environmentalism is the new Victorianism. Everyone ties on a green corset and pretends we're virtuous.
That's the guy who said in 1997 "the people have voted against the GST", only to reintroduce it in 2000 anyway.
That's the guy who said that 200 thousand people protesting in Sydney against the war in Iraq means that there are millions of people in Sydney who don't oppose the war.
That is the guy who doesn't want to take responsibility for what his ministers are doing and what he himself is doing.
Voting 101 for Australians
It looks like Australian has a two party system, but nothing is less true. Put your primary vote on a minor party (so not Liberals/Democrats and not Labour) but on for example The Greens and your second vote on a major party, you give a signal that to the major parties that they are doing wrong while they still get your vote if The Greens don't get voted in. (Non australians, no need to try to understand this.)
I think abuse of this sort of thing should be regulated.
But I don't want the government stopping political messages from getting to me. Democracy is more important than stopping a few messages.
A quick browse through his sons' company shows that they also offer Bad HTML and Service Level Agreements as low as 80%.
And their mission plan is "Net Harbour delivers unparalleled, innovative and trusted IT solutions to Australian businesses. We understand that your investment in technology needs to deliver a measurable return. Our mission is to help you identify the technology solutions that will deliver this return."
I might wander past their door on Monday (Suite 516, Level 5 15 Lime Street Sydney 2000) and see what sort of hole-in-the-wall refugee from 1999 this company is.
because a political organization has contrated a 3rd party to send spam, the 3rd party may not be exempt from the anti-spam laws as the contractor is not a political org. I hope they wipe the floor with these people.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
I also submitted this story to /., with a comment that the PM's own email address is not nearly as available as many other sitting politicians.
Give him a chance. Howard is a failure, and Latham is an unknown quantity, but Howard is a know failure with no hope of redemption, and Latham may surprise us.
So known bads are worse than unknow potential bads.
Fuck, still clear as mud.
Political Spam is permitted under Australian Spam Legislation.
Sounds like the perfect setup for a legal Joe Job...
I should email everyone on the planet about this upcoming presidential election. If I can piss enough of the opposition off, my guy will have it in the bag!
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Nepotism aside, the problem with what this person is doing comes down to the responsibility of governments. The idea that what is otherwise considered an illegal nuisance is allowed under law for government figures is incredible.
Participating in one's government in a free society should be a choice - but here people are having the system forced on them through automated means.
There is no compelling state interest to allow this sort of behavior, so why are political mailings legal where commercial mailings are not? What's next, concentration camps with mandantory viewing of political TV ads?
Er... oops, thinking I should have kept that last thought to myself...
M
"That is what the future of this country is all about."
Oh, yes. It's all about the success of businesses due to nepotism.
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
whois netharbour.com.au
Domain Name: netharbour.com.au
Tech Name: Tim Howard
Tech Email: tcwhoward@yahoo.com.au
You Sir, get the grammar-nazi award of 2004! Congrats
*applause*
Life is not for the lazy.
So out of the 20M lets say 10M people get this spam, and out of that opinion is raised by 1% (a little high I think) of those people. That is 100,000 people positively effected by this campaign. That seems pretty impressive. Think of how many people you normally see at a political rally.
I hate spam as much as the next guy but it would be interesting to see how the numbers in the polls turn out!
"Initial success, or total failure!"
remin8.com
...is go and check out the site of the small business owned by the son of the very proud father
http://netharbour.com.au/ (Net Harbour)
They seem to be using the trademarks of their competitors in their metadata too!
Have our betters no morals???
nick
Just when email started to come up, a minister sent out SPAM. He did it in such a amateuristic way (he included a picture of himself,... in BMP format) that he made a complete fool of himself. Since then , nobody tried again.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Oh, there's a backdoor all right. The government passed a law that made it illegal for companies to spam, but not political parties or charities.
So the Prime Minister is allowed to spam. However, in this case, he hired a company to spam for him -- so it might be illegal. That's why the Opposition is calling for an inquiry.
Here is the original report, by the way -- the one linked to by the Slashdot story just reports what this one said.
And you might be interested to know that this is the company that did the spamming.
I should buy some cement.
I hate to reply to a troll but come on, there are heaps of reason a person could develop pancratitus
John Howard has shown through example he is very capable of leading this country.
Yeah, right up gee dubya's ass.
nick
which also features a form for sending him (his office staff) a message.
Although perhaps I should have thought about this before posting to /. - given the close relationship between John Howard and George W Bush, I may well find myself on a do not fly list next time I'm in the USA!.
Irrespective of your political beliefs (which have left out deliberately) spam is spam is spam is annoying.
Cheers,
Boricle.
It's "Labor", fella, not "Labour". I'm not overly keen on Latham either, but I'm not going to run around acusing him of alcoholism because he has a dud pancreas ( sure you're not thinking of his liver? )
I had pancreatitis four years ago, and I didn't start drinking until about two years ago. It was due to gallstones blocking the bile duct of my pancreas. That's at least one additional cause of pancreatitis for the parent poster. Not that I know anything about the politics in it, but a political argument based on misinformation should be left to professional politicians, not slashtrolls. :)
-1, "1337" speak
Yes, but what if 900,000 people have their option negatively effected by this as well? Which I know I would.
I think it's important that there's an exception for political speech. Saying 'you can't send unsolicited email' is much like saying 'you cannot speak in public'. I have little problem with restrictions on COMMERCIAL email, since that's rarely (never?) important to guarding anyone's rights. (And no, you don't have any inherent right to make money by annoying people.)
You DO, however, have the right to tell people your opinion, and if you happen to tell many millions of people at once, well... that's technology now. Social pressure will be enough to contain this problem: Howard has probably gotten a lot more negative backlash from his spam campaign than positive. There really aren't any other alternatives... unless, of course, you want the government to get in the business of determining what kinds of political email are acceptable.
Surely, Comrade, you'd have no argument with the Party ensuring your email is safe? Think of the children.
For this and a million other reasons (not the least of which is this government's terrible morals) I suspect most Australian Slashdotters will be voting for someone else.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Well he would be Proud of him, just like his father he's a nasty little crook. no news here.
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit
I always knew he was a slimy 'orrible piece of shit.
And he is stuffing up our copyright laws even more. I won't be voting either Labor (sic) or Liberal until at least number 4.
(note to non Australians:
We are compelled to vote in Australia.
We are also compelled to list a preference for all candidates on a ballot paper (at least in a Federal Election in the lower house).
So while we may have a slightly better system then Yanks and Brits, it isn't that wonderful (don't you just hate first past the post?).)
It's the Australian Labor Party you insensitive clod!
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
Congressman Jeb Hensarling spams my vanity domain regularly, even after being told I don't want any "updates."
I've also regularly been targeted by various Texas Republican mailing lists, despite past assurances I've been removed from their lists.
I'm an independent that often votes for Democrats, and this just bolsters my opinion that many Republicans, at least in Texas, don't care about individuals' wishes, just want votes. I don't care if they want to litter my postal mailbox, except for the environmental impact of all that trash, but email costs me a lot more to read than for them to send, even when I'm filtering. They're the majority party down here - can't they just leave me alone?
Let me guess, in your world, we should also pray that Bush is re-elected so the rest of the world can go down the toilet as well?
Sendmail is like emacs: A nice operating system, but missing an editor and a MTA.
> Prime Minister who has given Australia several years of service to a very good standard and low BS
Can you say 'children overboard' boys and girls?
You are incorrect on every point you've made, and here's why.
a sp). Your assumption that he is an alcoholic has been rebutted by Latham himself, and I assume you wouldn't be so arrogant as to declare you know more about Latham than he does.
1. He is not allowed to spam all he wants, because there's a law in place that says he can't. If he's exploiting a loophole, it demonstrates the inefficiency of his government to make effective law.
2. The Labour Party has a party line that is decided as a group, and all members must adhere to that party line once it's decided. The fact that they were divided does not show dissent, it shows that there was a decent debate over the matter and that they're all capable of independent thought. That is something to strive for in order to create healthy debate about a policy which is going to affect at least 20 odd million people, not something to ridicule.
3. Pancreatitis (if you bothered to google it, or at least read the papers with an unbiased eye) is caused in approx. 80% of cases by gall stones and alcoholism. Approx. 15% of all acute cases are not able to be diagnosed with a cause (http://www.emedicinehealth.com/articles/10597-2.
4. There are more than 2 choices, and the increasing swing to the Greens is indicative of this.
5. John Howard's level of bullshit is incredible. He has consistently shown his ability to circumvent the truth, to not own up to his mistakes, and to lie to us. Go read Margo Kingston's book "Not Happy John" to get a rough idea what I'm talking about, or google to find a number of websites that can list just how many times he's lied about policy. His "examples" of leading this country are a disgrace, from his use of political power to further his own family's ends, his inability to be a man and own up to his mistakes and take the blame, to his power-hungry attempts to abolish the Senate and remove the only political limitations he has.
Finally, I have left out any comments on what is obviously your own personal opinion and not something you're trying to put across as fact (e.g. Latham is bullshit). But, you're the reason we're under increasing pressure internationally when we go travelling to explain Australia's actions, and you're the reason people like me want to leave the country permanently (and some have) because it makes us sick to see what's happening here.
Good luck voting in the next election, because I can assure you we'll be on opposite sides of the fence and your "Liberals" will need it.
Your point would have more weight if it were possible for people's opinions of John Howard to be affected negatively.
By this I mean that he's already as low as he can go, not that he enjoys such popular support that people will never think ill of him.
I should have modded this up....
You do have a point - having the right to tell others your opinion could be interpreted as a valid reason to allow this sort of spam to be permitted.
SCREW THE ADS! http://adblock.mozdev.org/ Proud user of teh Fox of Fire - Registered Linux User #289618
Right.
That fucking arsehole has gone far enough.
Truth overboard.
Weapons of mass destruction.
Camp David is cool.
No GST ever.
Who wants to help me run our own anti-Howard election campaign?
Apparently it's legal to spam people if it's for political purposes!!!
I've got the actually emailing covered. I just need addresses. Who knows where I can get LOTS of addresses of Australians?
Considering that most people believe that Howard is a habitual liar, we probably won't know the truth of this until the next election.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
If political spam is, well not allowed, but actually done as a service by the elections officials as a means to allow registered candidates to, for free, reach registered voters who have not opted out of their communications, I think it can be a good thing.
The great flaw in the political system is how candidates must raise money to buy advertising to push their messages at voters indiscriminately. Mostly TV. We've built a vastly more efficient medium on the internet for doing that. If we can reform campaign finance for real with the internet it could be the biggest thing we do with it.
More details in this blog entry on political spam
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
It's different for politics though - if the number of people who react negatively to your spam is much larger then the number of people who react positively - in all likelyhood you'll lose votes.
Just because doing something is legal doesn't mean you'll benefit from doing it.
Every day I wake up to find that the idiot Australian Prime Minister has embarrassed me again.
Now he's spamming? And he's arrogant enough to believe that he's doing nothing immoral?
Get rid of the bastard.
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
has a really fucked up idea of "free speech".
but at least in the USA, free speech does not mean "a guaranteed audience".
nor does it mean you are free to force your speech upon unwilling recipients.
yet this is exactly what political spammers try to achieve. they purchase "opt-in" lists then carefully and deliberately tailor their emails to evade filtering.
"free speech" also does not mean you can steal other peoples resources in order to "speak in public".
relay rape and using compromised PCs to send spam has been a favorite of political spammers (as well as "regular" spammers).
recall that the recent california political spams were sent through compromised school network PCs in korea.
there is also quite a difference between public speech and spam. with public speech you are not trespassing on individual private property in order to "exercise" your "free speech". with spam you always are.
your right to free speech does not override my private property rights.
"We therefore categorically reject the argument that a vendor has a right under the Constitution or otherwise to send unwanted material into the
home of another. If this prohibition operates to impede the flow of even valid ideas, the answer is that no one has a right to press even 'good' ideas on an unwilling recipient. That we are often 'captives' outside the sanctuary of the home and subject to objectionable speech and other sound
does not mean we must be captives everywhere. (cite omitted) The asserted right of a mailer, we repeat, stops at the outer boundary of every person's domain. " - Justice Burger, for the majority, in ROWAN v. U. S. POST OFFICE DEPT. , 397 U.S. 728 (1970)
thank you US Supreme Court for one of your saner rulings.
and just to make it clear:
my domain = my pc, my hard drive, my mailbox. my property. not yours to abuse.
I used lived in Australia a few years back when I was studying at the UWA, and IIRC (which I do), John Howard is an idiot. He's the only thing that's not amazingly great about that wonderful country. I guess all the positive things about Australia (the climate, the friendly people, the bizarre animals, Tim Tam, Cottesloe beach etc) has it's negative counterpart... concentrated to a single individual.
So all I do is create the "Increase Your P3n1s Size Party", send out "political messages", and only have the cost of a few election deposits every four or five years?
A similar thing has been done before in the UK - an anti-abortion group had some people stand as candidates in an election. They had no intention of winning, or even gaining any votes. What they wanted was to get their adverts on TV for relatively minimum outlay, thinly disguised as "party political broadcast"
It's not like that's his only way to reach the electorate, is it?
Saying 'you can't send unsolicited email' is much like saying 'you cannot speak in public'.
I, for one, do not consider my email box a public forum. You see, once I download the mil from the server, the email is on my PERSOANL, PRIVATE computer.
What is your penile percentile?
As a polititian, Johnny Howard is still winning, of course, but you gotta give the kid marks for trying. I mean, short of becoming plague-rat there was no way he could win, was there? :+>
So where does a message stop being "political" and start being "commercial" anyway? This loophole could easily be extended beyond moral reason.
Just have some guy start an obscure political party with "opinions" like "Buying Viagra Now Will Safe Our Country" or "Buying Your Toner And Ink As Company XXX, Helps Our Economy" and you've basically circumvented the law.
Considering the loophole also works for "free for profit organizations", coincidentally started by an employee of the same company which provides free resources to help the organizations' efforts.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Yeah, right up gee dubya's ass.
It is good to see that our two countries (GB and AUS) still have much in common.
I am looking at you Blair.
http://www.alp.org.au/media/0804/20008111.html
:D
Of course, in politics nothing is certain, but this is about the best one could hope for. And if it's the official party line, well, everyone on Labor has to vote along party lines
who reminds this somehow to the Simpsons Episode where Bart made this phonecall to australia?
Forward the spam.. send the spam, send it again, and again and again, untill election time...
"/Dread"
"During the early years of the ALP, the Party was referred to by various titles differing from colony to colony. It was at the 1908 Interstate (federal) Conference that the name "Australian Labour Party" was adopted. In its shortened form the Party was frequently referred to as both 'Labor' and 'Labour', however the former spelling was adopted from 1912 onwards, due to the influence of the American labor movement." More here.
I've started my own party (see sig) because quite frankly, I am not enamoured with the policies of most current parties (Greens are probably most along my lines of thought and are probably the exception to this).
I've started small, and won't have the numbers to contest this election, but at least I'm trying to sincerely change the system for something better.
To those Australians who feel let down by current parties - why not drop by and say hi in our forums (which are a bit quiet at the moment), and have YOUR say on what you'd fix. If enough people did this we'd have a viable party and be able to change things for the better.
Visceral Psyche Films
Witness the overbearing left wing of Australia in this thread.
The left wing in our country is so batshit crazy when it comes to Howard. Take a look at the moderation in this thread. Anything remotely supportive of Howard has been modded down, and heaps of pure flamebait has been modded up to 4 or even 5!
Seriously, the things Howard has done that you people gripe about is so trivial. The hate mongering going on from the left in our country is absolutely outrageous.
To me it seems lots of you rabid lefties just need to gripe about the government to make yourselves feel important. Gripe, gripe, gripe, and no suggestions to be found anywhere. That's all I hear from the left. Meanwhile, the Labor party does backflip after backflip, suggests outrageous penalties for failed patent applications, appoints former rock stars to their cabinet, plagiarizes Bill Clinton, takes ideas directly from Dick Morris, and other such nonsense, and you all just turn a blind eye to it!
I wish all these histrionic lefties would just give it a rest for a minute.
I, for one, welcome our new spamming overl^H^H^H^H^Hpoliticians
And this gets modded up to 4? Got anything other than knee-jerk reactions and hate mongering, Labor supporters?
20 million total pop. Let's say 50% has internet access and email. 30% of those recieve the SPAM, and 10% of those open it. 50% already support the Prime Minister and 10% can not be swayed. Of those that are left, only 15% change their opinions in a measurable way in favour.
.15% changed their opinions in some slight way. 80% of those go on to vote. 75% are in favor of the PM at that time. Of those, 70% would have gone on to vote for him anyway given time.
20 mil turns to 10 turns to 3.3 mil turns to 330k turns turns to 30k.
The PM picks up 6000 supporters from this. Considering the number of people who hate spam and spammers, is 6000 new supporters enough to offset that percentage of the 20 million population that will hear of this and find the tactic enough to sway their support away?
But, you're the reason we're under increasing pressure internationally when we go travelling to explain Australia's actions,
No, having travelled around recently with Americans, they're the ones having to explain George Bush, all us Aussies have to answer for is the Crocodile Hunter.
I have started my own political party. I have 16 members. I do not have the money to buy traditional media exposure, so very few people are likely to hear about my party.
With all that, I still REFUSE to spam Australians to let them know the party exists, and if I catch one of our members doing it I'll do my best to revoke their membership (a democratic process - I cannot arbitrarily revoke a membership myself).
Spam is the scourge of the internet and there is no good reason for ANYONE to send unsolicited email in the hopes of getting something in return (be it donations for a charity, political stuff or anything else currently covered by loopholes).
Feel free to discuss this in our forum if you like - we're open to all and welcome all input, for or against any subject. See sig for more.
Visceral Psyche Films
Sometimes I wonder why I don't have moderation points to vote posts like this down.
bash$
Email Info @ netharbour.com.au and tell them you don't like spam and you won't eat it!
If you live in Bennelong, send John Howard your comments here! (If you aren't sure whether you live in Bennelong, maybe you should send him a message that you don't like spam, and can he please check if you live in Bennelong?)
Also, you can go here to email the Prime Minister. Tell him what you think about spam.
I'd like to see the Prime Minister flooded with complaints about his spamming, to discourage him from ever doing this again.
Yes I agree the legislation was imperfect, and I do not understand the rationale behind this insane clause to allow for politic spamming, it's truly disheartening that politicians would do something so blatantly weaselly. It's not unexpected, but sometimes I wish they'd be a little more subtle in protecting their interests.
As to your assertion that the "labour party" supported this legislation, I found the following statement on the record:
http://www.alp.org.au/media/1203/20006527.html
The relevant section being:
It is clear that this legislation will not stop spam outright, but it is an important step in addressing the problem. Therefore, in addition to monitoring the operation of the Act, Labor will maintain pressure on the Howard Government to ensure that appropriate attention is given to other solutions.
My understanding is that the Australian Labor Party was not happy with the legislation at the time, and that their ammendments were not fully adopted, but they voted for it anyway, because they felt this legislation was better than no legislation.
It's just how it works when you aren't in Government.
How can you present yourself as an authority when you don't even know how to spell the name of the Labor party?
Oh, and what of the factions in that party which regularly oppose the 'party line'?
Hey, weren't you saying that to the parent poster? Hmmm, hoist on your own petard, methinks...
Howard is hopeless, but so is Latham. We are in the unfortunate position of having no choice. The minor parties assign preferences to the two major parties, meaning a vote for a minor party is effectively a vote for the major party of their choice, not yours.
Agreed.
And Sir it is my personal opinion that you should buy some of my clinically proven penis enlargement cream!
Remember of course the wonderful Australian power of the preferrential voting system. If you are able to find a minor party which you agree with on a couple of issues you can throw your vote their way so they know you care, without throwing it away completely ala the American system.
Yep: political leaders who don't spam us.
I should buy some cement.
He sent the "SPAM" to the members of his electorate (of whom there are probably around 60,000, the % of which that are emailable is unclear to me). As an election is due, they (the politicians) will be sending unsolicited voting material to a hell of a lot of people in the coming months. Franky I would rather have the electronic version rather than the glossy dead tree version of the same piece of literature.
So whilst everyone is up in arms about this "SPAM" event, it is not quite the same as "Get y0ur M3ds here" and certainly not "untargetted" SPAM. A previous poster highlighted that political speeach is an important exemption to the SPAM legislation and I think that is very true, particularly for the smaller parties. But I agree there is a balance to be struck, it's just that I think that this episode is probably the right side of the line wherever it ends up being drawn. Besides, the exemption under whcih this mail was sent is hardly a loophole it is an explicit exemption for political and not for profit organisations.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
Work from home! Guaranteed income! Help Australians produce more offspring! Even the Prime Minister of Australia agrees that this is the business of the future!
By distributing our herbal viagra will ensure that all Aussie men can perform their duties (remember one for yourself, one for your wife, and one for the country!).
And vote Liberal for bigger erections!
Yours truly,
John Winston Howard
--This email has been authorised by George W Bush--
What is the inverse of the Matrix?
How about political leaders who appoint former rock stars (that don't vote) to their cabinet, plagiarise Bill Clinton, and get their political ideas straight from Dick Morris then?
Howard is hopeless, but so is Latham. We are in the unfortunate position of having no choice.
You never have a choice - no matter who you vote for, you'll always get a politician.
Oh please, stop mis representing the system! If you don't want your preferences to go to the minor parties then you just vote below the line and assign the preferences yourself, if you can't figure out how to do that much then you shouldn't be voting anyway. (and Howard is really one of the worst leaders we ever had, Latham may be poll driven but so far he hasn't deliberately tried to mislead us.)
Unlike the promises made in other spam, he can actually give you an election.
Aye matey, no worries. G'day.
Sigs for Nerds. Sigs that Matter.
From their web page...
Features of this page including the navigation menu require that your browser has JavaScript enabled. This site also encodes email addresses in JavScript as an anti-spam measure .
Good day,
I am contacting you because of a business concerning a huge sum of money stashed away in the treasury of the government where I work here in Australia. Though I know that a transaction of this magnitude will make any one apprehensive and worried, but I am assuring you that all will be well at the end of the day. I actually decided to contact you due to the urgency of this transaction.
PROPOSITION;
I discovered a large sum moneys owned by the Australian taxpayers, but I could not bring myself to return it to those who did not have families or incomes above $50,000 per annum. The funds have been accumulated by excessive taxation and aggressive economic rationalist policy including the sale of essential public infrastructure and amounts to over AU$2,000,000,000.00 (two billiun Australian dollars). Data collected and stored in secret Liberal party files inaccessible through FOI channels shows that the public would prefer it to be returned to the ailing health care and public education systems but we feel that only the privileged classes should be able to enjoy the full benefits of these systems.
As such, I am willing to share the spoils of this enormous sums of money with my fellow Australians. I will send you $600 per dependant child under the age of 18, and a further $3000 if you are due to have a child in the next month. All that I ask in return is that you provide your FULL NAME, FULL ADDRESS, DIRECT TELEPHONE AND FAX NUMBERS, OCCUPATION AND POSITION, NATIONALITY, DATE OF BIRTH and VOTING INTENTION to your nearest electoral official at a date yet to be named but we assure you could happen at any stage, even this very weekend!
These requirements will enable me to be continue my endeavours to subvert the democratic process in Australia and to heighten the classes distinction between privileged and working classes, and in addition to the sum of moneys already mentioned, I shall be compensating you further with very generous political and financial advantages should you meet my criteria of what an Australian should be.
If this proposal is acceptable by you, do not take undue advantage of the trust I have bestowed in you, I await your urgent mail. Please reply to my private and confidential email: john.howard.mp@aph.gov.au
Best Regards,
Mr. John Howard,
Prime Minister of Australia
The australian constitution doesn't actually give citizens freedom of speech. See http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/rn/2001-02/02rn 42.htm
We know who the spammer is. We know who is sending the spam. This is an opportunity to let someone who can change the law, know how we feel about spam. It would be hard for a politian to live like that famous American spammer.
Never buy anything from a spammer - never vote for a spammer.
He that liveth by the sword, shall die by the ... billions of swords sent to his freaking in box!!!
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
e-tax is not compatible with Linux or Apple Macintosh computers. However, if you have suitable Windows Emulator software installed you may be able to use e-tax.
I guess those pesky Linux users don't earn enough to pay tax. Those Macs must be pretty big deductions though. Hope they can afford the Windows Emulator as well...
[/troll]
Sorry, couldn't resist!
Seriously, having oversight of a small business here in Oz the biggest headache is, four years after GST introduction, trying to convince suppliers to give me proper tax invoices and so on. Having to do the whole withholding tax thing is a major headache, not to mention a great way to lose supply.
Cogito, ergo sig.
...I got a string of spam messages from the Democrats a year ago, complete with 30K MS word files attached
Needless to say I told them where to stuff their emails but they kept asking me which Office application they should use to open my GnuPG key
For non Australian readers the Australian Democrats market themselves as a kind of youth orientated, up-with-it niche occupying party. They have a lot of power because they can tip the balance in the Senate
Unfortunately, these politicians are all in the same business. Liberal party kow-towing to GWB will determine where my vote goes but I am under no illusion that Labour would have been much different
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Registrant Contact Name: Tim Howard
Registrant Email: tcwhoward@yahoo.com.au
Let's hope Timmy can still remember the domain management details when his yahoo a/c gets v1@gra'd beyond usefulness. I give that 48 hours.Maybe a little more if I don't go and "unsubscribe" him at a few casino sites - I can get more than enough URLs for that out of my inbox, since I'm the poor bastard the bounced bounces bounce back to for my work domain. I never though I'd find a practical use for that shit.
More tappa tappa tappa...
;; ANSWER SECTION:
netharbour.com.au. 3510 IN A 210.23.135.54
Okay, that's an IP assigned to Pacific Internet. A quick trawl through some mail logs showed that that IP is also for:
mail.andma.com.au
mail.servicefirst.net.au
mail.roytal.com.au
mail.dallascosmas.com
We've got no mail coming in from there, it's all outbound. So, it looks like I can't even pre-emptively block the bastard's mail by originating IP without wiping out most stuff out of PI's outbound mail relays which would piss too many of my users off. Oh well, netharbour can still mysteriously make its way into the proxy porn filter...
Anyone know what sender address Timmy uses on his campaigns, so I can put a nice little "666 go fuck yourself" into /etc/mail/access ?
Even though what you're doing is within the letter of the law, Timmy, you have still become a spammer and I hope you will go fuck a chainsaw. I want the Libs back in next time (the devil you know, and all that) but why don't you invite Daddy to join you?
Hugs and Kisses,
An anonymous administrator somewhere in .au
I'm at least as interested in where he acquired the email addresses that received the spam, and how they were filtered for the location of his electorate. None of the articles that I've seen so far have been specific about this, but I think it'd be quite telling.
Perhaps someone in Australia could fill us in. Is there a government database somewhere of local people's email addresses that he used, or has he been scraping and purchasing addresses from the web and other spammers?
Actually, I'm not an authority and nor do I pretend to be. Any of the above points I made could have been written by anyone who bothered to do some research.
But I would like to apologise to the Labor party for misspelling their name. It's not the first time, and I'm sure it won't be the last. Thanks to you, I now know why (http://www.alp.org.au/about/history.html).
In reference to your discussion of factions within the ALP, regardless of their motivation in decision making, they all MUST follow the party decision, which is referenced in Section C of their constitution (which I also looked up just to confirm, thanks again for the self-education prompt).
One of the other posters already pointed out your remarks being incorrect about the preferences deals, so it hardly seems as if I'm that far out of line, eh?
Next, they'll try to name political spam something different, like vegi-mite or something.
www.facebook.com/DareDefendOurRights
www.fairtax.org
According to the article, Net Harbour also did the spamming. Thanks for spelling out the domain name, netharbour.com.au which translates to [210.23.135.54], belonging to the Pacific Internet Australia 210.23.120.0/19 network. I don't know whether the campaign was mailed out using that IP address too, but it appears have made it into a few broad blacklists already.
If you don't want to receive "legal" junk e-mail, use a blacklist or two. Maybe we should create a blacklist specifically for political spammers? Sure, we do recognize their freedom under the law to annoy their neighbours, and we do so by awarding them their very own, exclusive blacklist, not to be confused with mere open proxies. We can even afford to list them manually, to make sure there is no mistake.
Political spam is free speech.
Limit the right by to communicate with strangers by what criteria?
Established Powers would love to limit speech as much as possible. Think NEW thoughts? Heaven forbid! Create NEW political parties? How dangerous! Shut up and only speak when given permission.
Political spam is free speech and if limited is the limiting of freedom and democracy itself. There are costs to freedom. Being subject to opinions you didn't want to hear is a minor cost. Occationally being asked to fight and risk death against foes using real weapons is a real and major cost. Be grateful we are only talking about spam.
for those on broadband it doesn't cost a thing
Perhaps where you're from, broadband doesn't cost anything, but for everyone else, we have to pay for it.
Your bandwidth isn't free, moron.
Server storage space isn't free, either.
Your ISP pays for it, and guess where your ISP gets their money from? Spam accounts for approximately 30% of our bandwidth costs. It *DOES* cost something.
Oops, that should be the 210.23.128.0/19 network, of course. My typo.
According to whois.apnic.net, spam and security complaints pertaining to that Pacific Internet Australia network can be sent to <abuse@pacific.net.au>. According to the Pacific Internet Email AUP, unsolicited bulk e-mail constitutes abuse, and there is no obvious exception made for political campaigns as far as I can see. Maybe Australian law permits network providers to enforce stricter terms on their customers than the terms implied by the law itself? I don't live in Australia, so it will be up to the Australians to find out (if the junk mail was indeed distributed using Pacific Internet resources).
Okay, he's sending SPAM; so what. A friend of mine work for a telephony company and they send out phone SPAM for politicians all of the time.
This is yet another reason not to vote for Howard.
:)
Not that I need any more reasons.
Not after going into IRAQ without support from the australian people to look for weapons that dont exist and terrorists that were never in IRAQ (despite the claims of links between IRAQ and WMDs/Al Queda)
Not after increasing the HECS bills that UNI students have to pay.
Not after caving in to big US multinationals and "harmonizing" Australian IP laws to be more like those found in the United States of Big Corperations.
Not after supporting the FTA which is totally one-sided (in the americans favor of course).
Not after being in bed with Bush.
Besides, Micheal Moore called Howard an idiot on National TV. If that isnt a reason not to vote for the idiot, I dont know what is
Sure, Latham may be supporting some of these things too but he is supporting less of them than howard (and has stated at least once that he would undo some of the changes like the changes to HECS).
At least they don't lie about every single important issue like little Hitler does.
... it would then be legal to mail-bomb the prime minister office with your political view ?
Or maybe DoS them with packets containing your own political agenda (flood them with DNS request for "cut.the.taxes")
Saying 'you can't send unsolicited email' is much like saying 'you cannot speak in public'.
No, saying 'you cannot put your unsolicited email in my mailbox on my mailserver and my computer' is like saying 'you cannot speak in my bedroom'.
Email is private property, not the public.
Not only that, the party, if they receive enough votes get reimbursed some money for campaign costs and other things.
How the politicians seem to exempt themselves from any laws that might effect their ability to beg for campain funds or votes? In the US they are exempt from the Do Not Call List.
Maybe it's time to elect amatures to all political offices. Look where the professionals have got us.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
The son is one of the people who thinks SPAM is a good thing. He has a few IT people on his staff. He has to to have a system capable of sending all that SPAM, but the son himself is pretty clueless in terms of technology.
The last company I worked for had a similar mentality. The managers decided that it would be a good idea to SPAM all of our existing clients. I got out just a few weeks before the SPAM system went live, and I know the developer who wrote it isn't happy about what he had to do.
Having IT people on your staff does NOT equate to having a clue when it comes to IT issues.
This is a politician propping up his son's get rich quick scheme.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Has anyone (apart from Mr "Not Happy John", whose testimony I take with salt, as has an axe to grind) actually received this spam? I'm in John Howard's electorate, and I haven't received it. All I'm seeing so far is news about the event, not the event itself. I haven't even seen any comments here saying, "yeah, I got that spam". Am I missing something? I see the smoke, but where's the fire? On the other hand, I keep getting spam from oic.org, an industry association who seem to have rather close ties with Labor senator Kate Lundy. (Evidence available on request.) I note that oic.org sends their spam through Pacific Internet, and I believe that's the same provider that John Howard's son is using, so he's in the right place if he wants to spam.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
So you spam a bunch of voters and 0.01% have a positive reaction to your message while 99.99% hate your guts for spamming them. How does that get you elected?
Non-political spam works because the 99.99% of recipients who hate your spam have no recourse. In politics, those 99.99% can vote against you.
Opera lets you resubmit a page as many times as you wish.
The form on the PM's site is a Cold Fusion Template. Resubmitting it sends the same message again.
Thus, you can have Opera automatically send a few thousand copies of your complaint by clicking a few buttons.
Thus with Opera, you can send thousands upon thousands of copies of the same message to his in box.
Just like the SPAM I receive.
Bastard.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
This really does look like a professional outfit....
They allow pot-smoking there?
I might just have to visit australia after all!
Learn to spell troll-boy is that Labor part.
I'm pretty sure the prime minister (or any member of parliment)cannot constitutionally hold office if under criminal investigation.
Meh... they lied about the Children over board, they lied about Iraq and WMDs so they'll get away with this and get re-elected and the cut more money from health and education and give more tax cuts to big business.
Ahh... but you see, the emails only went out to his ELECTORATE. Electorates typically have 50,000 voters in them. This is a storm in a teacup.
John Howard has shown through example he is very capable of leading this country.
Yeah, right up gee dubya's ass.
Only John Howard has the balls to lead Australia =]
4. There are more than 2 choices, and the increasing swing to the Greens is indicative of this.
God help us is all that can be said about The Greens getting power. Could you imagine how much this country would go down the shitter if Bob Brown was running the show? Christ, he's more of an arsehole than Latham.
No, I can't imagine the country being worse off with Bob Brown as PM. Please, explain how this country would be ruined by the only leader and party with an untarnished image.
On a somewhat unrelated note, I made the mistake of supplying my email addy to the INS (now Homeland Security?) and suddenly started to get a ton of spam from the President and his election campaign. I am not a republican (nor a democrat) and he is one of few people I have in my blocked senders list.
"Howard is a failure"... but the economy could hardly be stronger... beats labor's effort of fucking up the country for 13 years before Howard came in.
John Howard dragged us into the "coalition of the willing" with the US. The comments of Howard and foreign minister Alexander Downer criticizing countries that have pulled out of Iraq haven't gone down too well.
I do think our part in the coalition has raised the amount of attention we receive from various islamic extremists. I remember hearing a report that Australia had been specifically mentioned in message claimed to be from Osama bin Laden. I think Howard's sycophantic position of following the US has put as in more danger and tarnished our image overseas. I'm afraid that we're no longer those nice Aussies, but in some people's eyes we're now those American wannabe's.
The minor parties assign preferences to the two major parties, meaning a vote for a minor party is effectively a vote for the major party of their choice, not yours.
Vote below the line, idiot.
I can't say about Australia, but the principle of Free Speech in the United States does not extend to giving people the right to steal (or do any other harm) in order to carry out that speech.
1. What if I were to come onto the property of your home and spray paint my important non-commercial politcally-oriented message in reverse image on the outside of your living room window so you could easily read it from the inside? Would my free speech rights still be protected?
2. What if I were to crack into your office network and plant trojan programs that would ensure my important non-commercial politcally-oriented message regularly pops up on everyone's computer screen? Would my free speech rights still be protected?
Of course you can put up defenses to physically prevent me from doing this. But I doubt you'd want a barbed wire electric fence in front of your home. So you are going to trust that reasonable people would never do this, and that law enforcement would deal with it (e.g. because it is illegal) if anyone does exercise their free speech rights at your expense.
Likewise, we would not want to have to put up such defenses on mail servers, either. Just as it would be a big hassle for your friends and invited guests to enter your home with all that barbed wire fencing and the machine-gun toting guards checking identity, it would also be a big hassle for the equivalent to be done on the input side of mail servers. We don't want to go that way at all, now do we.
So can we come to an agreement that Free Speech is a good thing, but it does not justify or permit the utilizing, taking, damage, or destruction of the property of others to carry out this Free Speech, without their consent?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
So if someone want to tell YOU their opinion then you have to sit down and listen to it?
I have the right NOT to listen to other peoples opinions. Regardless of what the content is. The problem with spam is that it obscures the legitimate traffic in your email inbox using up time and resources that you own.
Hopefully the backlash will prevent others from trying to use this loophole. Until then ISPs should be required to implement greylisting and spamassassin across the board so spam is blocked before the public sees it. Only in that way will the spammers NOT get money from the small percentage of simple minded users that seem to think it is a good idea to help the ex-president of Nigeria with his financial problem (while making a tidy profit) or solve their limp dick problem with really cheap viagra.
Real solution to this is to spam everyone with a viagra message but send out pills that sterilize these dolts so they don't reproduce. Eventually the spammers will have no one that responds in 30 or 40 years.
I have actually met John Howard. Now I've lost all my respect for him, I don't support spammers. I never liked Mark Latham, but I guess I'll have to support him because he doesn't spam.
-- Somebody stuck somewhere in a big world wide web that I can't escape from
And it's real dark in here.
Another point of note is that a federal election is due this year, and the conjecture is that it will be happening in mid October. It could be a sign of things to come for Blair and Bush wrt public perception of Iraq, given that the Spanish have already booted their incumbent government (the other of the original four countries).
InfoSec that matters, when it counts.
Christmas Island has been used as an offshore tax haven for dodgy companies for years, and as somewhere to lock up refugees, since it is somehow magicly within and without Australian control.
Double standards come with the territory.
This is a clear breach of the right to privacy. How can this be fought? The ephytomy of it all is that he got the post of communications minister!
The economics of spam is that you can annoy 99.9999% of your readers and still make a profit from the 0.0001% who buy something from you. This equation does not quite compute for political spam: if you annoy more than 50% of readers the exercise becomes self-defeating.
And if you are a major political party, the whole system of forged email headers and root-kitted cable-modem customers is not available to you.
I feel an anti-spam solution developing out of this -- if we can somehow make ordinary citizens work under the same limitations as major political parties, we would have much less spam. What we need is a global register of annoying people. Whenever we receive a spam, we vote against the spam sender and our vote is recorded on the register. If your mission in life is one that annoys some people and benefits others, then so be it, and you will live with being known as annoying to some. But if you are only annoying and have no positive side, then you must live with the shame and the humiliation.
There will have to be some way for annoyance votes to "flow through" the communications system. In general the sender of spam is only indirectly identifiable via the "payload", e.g. a domain name or toll-free number. If we vote annoyance against a toll-free number, this will apply to the phone company, unless the company reveals the renter of the number, in which case the votes can then flow past the phone company and on to the individual in question. (Your 0800 contract will have fine print allowing the phone company to do this if too many people identify you as being annoying.)
Music: a super-stimulus for the perception of musicality. Musicality: a perceived aspect of speech.
I'm sure John Howard would love to get some spam in return.
ps - his address is john.howard@aph.gov.au