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? ;)
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
... 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?
"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.
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.
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
"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...
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
This announcement has been brought to you by GNAA, the Grammar Nazi Association of American
Of American what? 'American' means ... nah forgit it
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
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.
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 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 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