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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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...
Our national youth radio station ran a program this afternoon getting people to email the prime minister (john.howard.mp@ahp.gov.au) telling him they supported his policy of spam.
Australian sarcastic humour, at its best!
You Sir, get the grammar-nazi award of 2004! Congrats
*applause*
Life is not for the lazy.
...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.
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.
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?)
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?
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.
But in this case its not the government sending messages, its a politician sending crap trying to get re-elected. There is a difference.
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.
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.
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"
"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 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
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
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.
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.