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FBI Raids Home of Spam King Alan Ralsky
wstearns writes "The Detroit News is reporting that the FBI has raided Alan Ralsky's home. In the raid, the FBI took computers and financial records, effectively shutting him down. Mr. Ralsky has been frequently covered here."
Will I be notified, if they find out I'm a victim??
:-)
Hell the guy from nigeria didn't write me for a while, I'll send him an E-Mail. I'm still waiting for a large transaction
about time someone got him
The cow goes "tink"
I am heir to the FBI throne which was recently desposed. FOr only $2000 down, you can secure your right to this massive wealth as well.
Want to find other gamers to play board and role playing game
Did they get his Spam Crown and Scepter?
NOW who will fill my inbox?!
Wah Sig!
I had thought my Inbox was rather empty today...
-- Seq
...unless they shot him.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
You mean there wasn't a shootout where he got shot? With crack sprinkled on him?
Awwww =(
Seriously -- whether you like Ralsky or not, this practice of seizing computer equipment is probably unconstitutional. He is being deprived of his property and his ability to make a living, without due process of law. According to TFA, all of his computer were seized, shutting him down.
We may object to Ralsky's nefarious tactics, but the point is that SourceForge could in principle be next.
"Effectively" shut down? So he's free to just buy new servers, host them elsewhere and restart his spamming or have they slapped an injunction off him telling him to stop?
He must have been spamming something obscene, because the FBI doesn't have the resources to deal with spammers while they're on this moral crusade to re-puritanize this god fearing country.
Besides, spamming is okay as long as you're a big corporation that either does or may contribute or lobby congress at some point.
Spamming is only bad if you're a private citizen doing it, sort of like how raping teenage babysitters, doing coke, driving drunk and killing women when you drive off a bridge and wander away is only bad for private citizens.
I mean, I'm sure he opted out of FBI raids on questionable business practices....
Last time I checked, it was legal to e-mail someone you don't know.
if you read the article (not slashdotted yet):
The law also forbids spammers from using multiple e-mail addresses or domain names to camouflage their identities. Penalties include up to 20 years' imprisonment and an $11,000 fine per offense.
Warrants show FBI agents sought evidence Ralsky and Bradley sent commercial e-mail using at least 14 domain names.
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
If you know this happened, you can be sure they had a warrant. That means there was due process.
Seriously -- whether you like Ralsky or not, this practice of seizing computer equipment is probably unconstitutional. He is being deprived of his property and his ability to make a living, without due process of law. According to TFA, all of his computer were seized, shutting him down.
Last I checked, a warrant was generally needed before property could be seized. Last I checked, a warrant equated to due process, at least until the trial ends. How else do you think the police get to keep evidence until the trial? Not all evidence is at the scene of the crime.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Oh bullshit. You don't know what you're talking about. The FBI can't seize someone's property without a warrant, and they can't do a raid without a warrant either. Ralsky had due process, and he has more due process coming up, he'll either be charged and the seized property will become trial evidence, or he'll get his property back after the investigation.
I just phoned the Detroit office of the FBI who raided Ralsky's home at (313) 965-2323 and told the responding agent that I was so unbelievably happy that their office raided Alan Ralsky.
The agent was amazed and replied "uh thank you. We don't get calls like this very often."
OMG. Wow.
This is an excellent opportunity to show your support that we STRONGLY support their action and efforts!
If they know their is huge public support for this, that may help them to shut down more of these spammers!
This is AWESOME!
Just call and say thanks and this will keep things moving in the right direction.
w00t!
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Warrants unsealed last week revealed that agents in September seized computers, laptops, financial records and disks from the 8,000-square-foot home of Alan M. Ralsky.
Apparently, he is getting due process.
The world would be a better place when spam is gone.
Subzerorz
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The spam problem will never be halted by arresting the spammers. There's so much money to be made that there'll always be someone to step up to the plate as soon as a spammer is taken down. The only way to stop spam is to stop it being profitable. Stop people buying from spam adverts and noone will bother to send the adverts. The only ways to do that though is to stop people seeing the adverts (spam filtering), or to educate them that 99.9% of products advertised are a complete rip-off .. and the 0.1% that aren't should be avoided because the company selling them resorts to spamming to sell stuff.
Much as it's great to see a suspected criminal arrested for sending this crap out, there's no chance that it'll actually made any significant dent in the torrent of spam flowing through mail servers every day.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
Ever talk to someone whose property has been seized?
*IF* it comes back functional, it's obsolete by the time you see it again.
They also take the weirdest shit.
A kid running an abandonware bot on IRC had his music CDs, consoles, and books taken as well.
Still, I wish they'd just stick Ralsky in an evidence locker for two years.
But the principle is still unjust.
They may have had a warrant, but what if he wasn't doing anything wrong? Then he's being deprived of his property by the government despite being not doing anything wrong.
Seriously -- whether you like Ralsky or not, the practice of sending people gobs and gobs of email without them asking for it or doing business with you in the first place is probably unethical.
This is a very good sign.
The reason spammers operate is because it has been profitable for them due to their operating expenses (apathetic law enforcement, hazy jurisdiction, theft of third-party bandwidth and resources).
As more of these people get raided and have to deal with serious legal and criminal issues, the "cost" of operating will go up substantially, and as a result, it will not be as profitable for them to operate.
Let's hope the FBI follows through on this and puts this guy in jail. There's no doubt he committed a ton of crimes, including computer tampering, pornography, identity theft, etc. Spammers routinely break loads of laws in operating their business. Finally, we're seeing some agencies start to enforce these laws.
Seriously -- whether you like Ralsky or not, this practice of seizing computer equipment is probably unconstitutional. He is being deprived of his property and his ability to make a living, without due process of law.
Yes. Next thing you know, when they arrest murderers, they'll take away their guns! That's a clear violation of the second amendment. If we allow that to happen, next thing you know the UN will swoop in with their black helicopters and steal our precious bodily fluids. They must be stopped!
Robert Mueller's maanhood didn't grow to the size of a cucumber like Alan Ralsky promised....
Yeah, and why would they seize mounds of crack, or fully auto weapons, or perhaps kiddie porn on computers? This is EVIDENCE OF HIS ILLEGAL ACTIONS, you moron. If his livelihood WAS illegal activity, then he should damn well be deprived of it. Christ.
i would just like to say:
:)
You did WHAT???
i haven't had the time to read the comments so this joke has probably been already said, but:
you've slashdoted him via snail mail
Someone else will just rise in his place. Spamming is good money, because they are complete rip-offs.
What we need to do is make spamming uneconomical. We need to block all spam, so that spamming won't be worth spammers' time. It needs to be a collective effort. We also need to arrest big-time spammers (like they did) to make other spammers afraid to be spammers.
If we filter all spam, then none of it will reach your in-box (just your bulk mail). If it doesn't reach your in box, then spammers would ask "why spam?" We need to be more aggressive on filtering spam.
-ELiTe185
You go to federal "pound you in the ass" prison for stuff like that
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
If this was a comparable crime, then why wasn't he arrested and charged? Anyone with mounds of crack, or kiddie porn or anything like thatwould have been arrested on the spot.
Ralksy isn't the worst of the bunch.. perhaps his BIGGEST mistake is actually having some sort of media profile. There are plenty of spammers out there who are even more despicable than him, but it seems that Ralsky is an easy target. Perhaps they should consider going after Robert Soloway or Alec Defrawy next?
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
From the Wikipedia article on due process:
Was he notified before the raid? Did he get a chance to be heard and to oppose the raid before it happened? I know he will have an opportunity to do so in the trial (if there is one), but the point is that even now his livelihood has already been destroyed.
I know it's hard to sympathise with Ralsky, but this could also happen to many other people if they are sued by the RIAA or MPAA, using exactly the same legal principle.
This is the proposed message:
DeAR u.ser
Precvio3sly you have b33n victim of unsol.citated e-mail, so called s.pam selling u v1agra and p.enis enlarg.ements products, us.iNG aNNoying layouts ant teipos to confu..se your s.p.a.m..filters.
The FBI now offers you the ReA.L links to the places where you can buy your V.1agrA and P.eniSEnlar.gement produCTs for the real pr1ce without the middle S.P.am man.
Please go to v1agrahfDUgfapitdrGPSRGf.fbi.gov for the fastest S$hop
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
I am 100% all for this guy to stop what he's doing, but there is more to than just less spam in our inbox if this guy goes away.
"Last year, Michigan lawmakers passed legislation that allows parents to put their children's e-mail addresses on do-not-spam lists. Even though he insists he doesn't target kids, Ralsky was an inspiration for the bills."
I'm more afraid of legislature crafting the legal system to catchup to one guy. I mean, this is more freightening thought. No matter how bad this ex-convict asswipe deserves it, our legal system cannot just craft a law in order to make an example out of single case. I am not an expert on law, but shouldn't our legislature think abroad especially when considering this isn't local or state, but FBI, federal enforcement agency is to enact and enforce such ideal?
I'm sure, a lot smarter people than I, thought this law through before passing it, but I'm sorry, I can't justify supporting a law which is crafted to make an example out of one man's action on Federal level. This sounds too close to persecution and walking on really thin line here.
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
Or perhaps Indymedia:
c e_fbi_mlat_request/l
http://indymedia.org/en/2004/10/112239.shtml
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/11/home_offi
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BOW410A.htm
My original comment was rapidly moderated up to +5 Interesting and spawned a lot of replies. Then it sank to "1,Interesting". Looking at the moderation screen for the article, apparently it has now been moderated 0 times.
And I thought capricious editors were only for the paranoid. Thanks, guys.
No, they had warrants. To get warrants, you *already* need enough proof to make a crime probable. The seizure provides them with *additional* evidence.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Spammers routinely violate numerous state and federal laws. Computer tampering is actually now a capital crime under the USA Patriot Act. If this guy interfered with any network that conducts commerce or government activities, he could be convicted under these clauses. That's the tip of the iceburg.
He can wipe those computers.
Now, if he is found not-guilty and it isn't returned then there will be problems.
Alleged drug dealers and drunk drivers have the issues you are thinking about. Inpound the car, sell it at auction...whoops, not guilty.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Hmm... don't you think it's kinda strange that the worlds number one spam arsehole is arrested just days before important discussions concerning the future of the Internet are held particularly when a number of countries have expressed serious concerns at the lack of aciton against SPAM + PORN?
Brazil: "For those that are still wondering what Triple-X means, let's be specific, Mr. Chairman. They are talking about pornography. These are things that go very deep in our values in many of our countries."
Syria: "There's more and more spam every day. Who are the victims? Developing and least-developed countries, too. There is no serious intention to stop this spam by those who are the transporters of the spam, because they benefit...The only solution is for us to buy equipment from the countries which send this spam in order to deal with spam. However, this, we believe, is not acceptable.
Find more comments here
P.S thank you to the posters of this insightful post and this one.
P.P.S Just a personal message to Alan: Hope you die in prison you scum sucking lazy obese cocksucker.
Spam is awful, but 20 years in prison for it is just absurd.
After all, I am strangely colored.
Ya, a bullet to the head is less expensive to the tax payers and makes other human waste of space think twice.
If someone makes their living kicking my in the guy parts, forgive my complete lack of sympathy when he gets his steel-toe shoes confiscated. "But without shoes", you say, "how will he make his living?" My answer: who cares? That's his problem, and not one I'm at all interested in.
What gives him the "right" to earn money in this illegal manner, and why shouldn't the FBI be allowed to gather evidence against him? It's not like they confiscated his TV and pool table.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Stiff punishments exist as much to be carried out as they do to DETER people from comitting crime. If you know that you can be sent to prison for 20 years for doing something, you'll be less likely to do it. If you know that you'll get probation and community service, or even a couple of months of jail time, you know that the millions you can make on your illegal activities will probably justify this risk.
UNIX: A computer user is defined as a programmer. WINDOWS: A computer user is defined as a consumer.
The FBI will be performing a raid on your crack house at 123 N. Main, on October 27th at 11:45pm. We better not finding anything illegal there.
Your friendly Federal Bureal of Investigation
I'm sorry but are you a fucking retard? The point of a raid is to go in and find indisputalable evidence that the crime was committed. A warrent will show that there is some evidence to it happening, but the raid will produce the evidence that will make the trail happen and get the assholes into jail. Or are you just afraid the FBI will raid your house and steal your computer to arrest you for all your downloaded p0rn, and MP3s.
The punishment may seem "absurd" to you but perhaps not to others. If you consider that he is effectively stealing bandwidth and computing resources from email servers and client recipients then he's stealing on a massive scale. Perhaps if you rolled the clock back a few years and were paying per minute or something on your dialup you'd feel differently. Just because fairly ubiquitous bandwidth makes it *less* of a nuisance than it was not too many years ago doesn't make it any less not his bandwidth and disk space, and cpu cycles, etc.
If the kits didn't exist, they would have to send the sample to the lab to have it analyzed. That's what they are doing with the hard drives since there is no step 1,2,3 test kit to prove this crime.
It comes down to the police having enough good evidence to convience a judge that the crime most likely did happened and that he should write a search warrent. I have no problem at all with that as long as the police and the judge are technically savy enough to analyze the evidence to know what it really means. If they aren't savy enough, that's when you are likely to get the bad warrents and the bad outcomes.
Indeed. Most of the damage is not done to the user, but to the ISP, backbone providers and hosting providers. For the user it might be an annoyance, but for them it costs money.
If he did commit crimes, i agree.
If he did not ( spam IS legal if you follow the rules remember ), then its harassment.
Not all are criminals, and while annoying as hell, do follow the laws so they can stay in business.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So let's only imprison him for one hour..
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
It should be if your livelihood is doing something that is illegal.
I believe there are provisions in the Patriot Act that give the government the powers of search and seizure without a warrant. Historically there's also civil forfeiture where the cops can take your car, house, boat, etc. with a warrant if they find drugs.
The issue is that *we don't know that he was earning his living in an illegal manner until he has been convicted!*
Now, this guy -- by non-judicial standards of ethics -- needs to be kicked in the balls and force-fed his own p3n15 pi11z. But the FBI, as an arm of the law, has to play by the law. That law says that you can't shut someone down from doing something unless you have evidence that it's illegal.
There's a fundamental difference between confiscating someone's crack and confiscating their computer. Mere possession of crack is illegal; if you stop a guy with crack, you know he's doing something illegal with it, and can take it.
Whether or not this guy is doing something illegal hasn't been determined yet. By all accounts the purpose of the raid wasn't to gather evidence to be used at trial; it was to stop the flood of spam by seizing his computers. While that's going to make the Internet a better place, it's not the way the law works. If the FBI really wanted to look for evidence, they'd bring a hacker with them on the raid and do a find | grep p3n15 on his boxes.
What do you mean not doing anything wrong?
There is plenty wrong with him denying people the use of their email facilities.
Even forgetting that, there is plenty wrong with what he is selling. Vicodin is a Class A drug in the UK and presumably similar elsewhere, so selling that gets you a life sentence.
One one hand, we want our judges to be able to have the power to secure evidence so that justice can be done. On the other hand, we don't want our judges to have the power to inflict harm upon citizens unless that person has been found guilty. The conflict is that securing evidence has the potential to inflict harm upon innocent people.
In this case, it's a guilty spammer. But what about when it was the innocent Steve Jackson Games? I don't want judges to have the legal capacity to deprive Steve Jackson Games of their computers without a trial. Maybe we need something like Grand Juries to authorize large seizures? I don't know, just an idea.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I just think it's a shame there wasn't a long series of "accidental" FBI firearm discharges in Ralsky's direction.
Yes. It's only spam. Unless you're a family on 56k having to download several hundred kilobytes, or even megabytes, of e-mail you have no use for, no wish to receive, and no convenient way of stopping since your ISP will only offer to sell you their "premium" e-mail with anti-spam services for some extortionate amount.
Not everyone knows how to set up their own mail server, blacklists, or whatever. Not everyone can simply up and switch providers every time their current address gets unusably bogged down with spam.
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
Key here is "law of the land." Do you actually expect the FBI to call people up and go, "Um yeah make sure you're around a 3:00pm tomorrow because we're going to raid your house."? If the FBI was lawfully granted a warrant for the raid and seizure, then due process was followed. Since this guy is spamming, presumably illegally, seizing his computers as evidence doesn't seem to far out of whack to me.
How is that better? Do you have any idea how much of an ISP's bandwidth is devoted to spam? Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's not a problem.
This will not prove to be much of a bust. If there were anything of substance in the information there would have been a felony arrest rather than merely a search warrant.
Of course, there are clandestine warrants - entry and installation of a logger followed by entry with a "regular" warrant to collect the data & computers. Perhaps an arrest will follow shortly.
If all the matter comes down to is a nice little fine....
This clown will just up his contribution to the Republicans - just making money as a free rider is status quo ante for the Bushies.
Off topic I know but....
A good friend of mine had something like this happen to him.
He was hanging out with a friend tha was doing tagging (spray painting) and was caught by the cops. My friend wasnt doing any of it, but because he had a sharpie (marker) they took everything he had in his bag, which was everything he needed for school, 2 weeks worth of homework, 5 or some books etc. It basically ruined my friends chances of finishing the semester even if he could afford to buy the books again.
Yeah he shouldnt have been walking with someone who was spray painting on walls, and is your traditional "wrong place at the wrong time" situation. It's been 2 years now and still has not gotten any of his stuff back.
TruePunk | Games
As for murderers...generally, pistols and shotguns aren't essential to your livelihood, and they can kill others. Computers are essential to IT businesses such as Ralsky's, and they can't injure anyone.
You're not quite grasping the analogy. Ralsky, a convicted felon, has set up a giant spam operation. The feds convinced a judge that in addition to all of the moral lines he's crossed, he's also crossed some legal ones. The computers are the tools used in his criminal enterprise, and they also contain evidence of his crimes.
It's rather clear that the intent was to stop him, not to determine his compliance with laws.
They've already determined to a judge's satisfaction that he's probably not complying with the laws. What's wrong with stopping him from continuing to break the law?
I'm quite sure the FBI doesn't want to be flooded with hundreds of calls, even ones showing their appreciation. They only have limited capacity for accepting calls, and there are more important things that they need to hear. Things like information leading to catching criminals, saving kidnapped people, and other important jobs.
Help them by not calling.
"it's not about aptitude, it's the way you're viewed" - Galinda
Has he been tried and convicted for these crimes, and sentenced to have his computers confiscated? If not, then legally speaking, he's not guilty.
Yes, he probably has been doing something wrong, but he's being punished for it without a fair trial. Do we really want the government punishing people without absolute proof?
And although Mr. Ralsky says he is effectively out of business, I trust him and this statement as much as I trust his honorable treatment of email address removal requests - which is no trust at all*. He certainly has backup tapes off site. He also has the means to start right back up - or he should have, considering the money involved. If he doesn't, then he is an idiot, and gets what he deserves. SBC wouldn't go out of business if their bookkeeping computers were seized - same principle here.
I know I expect SourceForge to have backup tapes held off site. If SourceForge and OSDN don't have disaster recovery plans already written and tested - shame on them.
Every business that depends on IT should have a DR plan. Even if law enforcement mistakenly seizes your computers - that doesn't excuse your business from failing. Once you get 'large enough' it is irresponsible to not have a DR plan.
*According to the Spamhaus Project, Mr. Ralsky hosts his email servers in China to evade U.S. law. And as an email administrator, I don't see any evidence that email removal requests result in less spam - quite the opposite, really.
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
This guy is not harnless, he causes economic damage to the nation. Those are real-world consequences of having to divert resources that could be used to help businesses grow, into fighting spam. Setting up spam filters costs money, having workers delete dozens of junkmails daily costs money, downloading hundreds of gigs of junk costs money. Whether you like it or not, this guy causes real problems.
Yeah! Rights are only for hippies and criminals! Law-abiding citizens don't need no fucking rights!
You look very well adapted to the direction your country seems to be heading for, my friend.
Also, for the people actually paying attention to the arguments instead of knee-jerk reactions like this idiot above, raids and property seizure can serve two purposes: collecting evidence for the trial or preventing a criminal activity from continuing. Obviously surprise can be essential for the former, but in the latter case I believe some consideration should be given to avoiding crippling economic damage to a person that has not been declared guilty in a trial. And that's something that by many accounts hasn't historically been the case in FBI raids.
Now, I happen to live outside the U.S., so if you're happy with that it's (mostly) your problem.
Obviously, God needs to kill more kittens.
Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
he had a "prior business arrangement" with them.
All higher costs incurred by the ISP are passed along to the consumer, ergo all of the damage is done to the user, though indirectly.
If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
Ignorant, uninformed responses like yours really tick me off.
As an ISP that has to spend twice as much on bandwidth and resources as I need because of the bandwidth spammers consume, I can certify that it costs me a lot of money.
Upwards of 70-80% of all mail traffic on the net is spam. Probably at least one third of all Internet traffic may end up being bandwidth and resources these scumbags steal, usually by exploiting armies of compromised, zombied PCs to do their distribution.
Don't even get me started about the countless hours of tech support, computer downtime and other wasted resources due to innocent (and sometimes naive) computer users who have inadvertently had trojan software/plug-ins or worms invade their machines... This is all the work primarily of spammers.
It's not a simple case of installing a mail filter. That doesn't do a goddam thing to stop spamming. This is like you turning off your television as a way to stop the war in Iraq. Good luck.
How about we imprison him for one half second, the time it takes to hit delete ...per message
We've secretly replaced Slashdot with new Folgers Crystals - let's see if it notices.
he causes economic damage to the nation.
By that token you could go after many companies. You could argue Microsoft causes economic damage by failing to properly secure its software which results in companies losing millions in lost productivity.
People should have a right to contact anybody anytime about anything. How much spam have you had from this one guy? I mean if someone is diliberately filling your inbox with junk I agree with you. But spam is a distributed problem. And don't give me this deterent-crap. Locking people up for spam is like locking people up for drugs and will have little affect in the long run. In the end, it's up to individuals to take responsibility not big brother.
I'll put this situation in a few ways:
1) To have a warrant issued for your property, the odds are incredibly minute that you aren't committing a crime. Unless you were an absolutely idiot, you presumed from day one of your operations that your criminal activity may invoke a warrant for your personal property. Anyone who has been involved with crime basically assumes that, at some point, soon or far, their information will be subpoenaed, their property raided, or they will be arrested and charged in the act. This is the risk you prepare for.
2) To have a warrant issued against you follows that there is typically ample suspicion (some founded, some not) and evidence that you are engaging in criminal activity.
3) As seen above, you don't have to be declared guilty to have a warrant issued against you. Same goes for an arrest, detention or charges. As much as we wish an individual's right's are respected, the truth is you were likely engaging in criminal activity and henceforth deserve no such privledge to the know that you are being eyed by law enforcement. This would make cleaning up operations far too easy and further increase criminal activity.
So basically what I am saying is that although you think criminals should be informed that they are going to be raided (the principle of which is just ridiculous, but I'll let it rest), there is a very strong chances that they already knew they would be raided. Anyone who has been involved in criminal operations (and I don't mean robbing a convenience store) prepares for the day that their door gets busted down. It's all part of the risk -- and game. Don't sympathize or fight for this gentlemen's rights because as I see it, it's just fair game. The battle between law enforcement and those above the law is always an interesting one.
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
No he isn't harmless. He hires virus authors to write programs to infect PCs so he can spam from them. He ddoses networks. He rips people off.
He might not go round clubbing people and taking their money, but he's still a big time criminal, defrauding people of millions of dollars. He's causing economic harm on massive scales, and the people being hurt are more often than not the elderly.
He's also an easy target since he publically boasts about what he does, the FBI would be considered neglectful if they didn't take him down.
Alan Ralsky is one of the most egregious and pernicious of the spam scum out there. He tops the ROKSO (Registry of Known Spam Offenders) lists and is responsible for a very large volume of spam originating from APNIC netspace. Much of his spam hosting is overseas and he regularly emits spam by relaying it through zombied systems open relays or proxies. As you will see from the article some of his own state's anti-spam legislation were actually created with him solely in mind.
I can only hope we see more of this in kind, especially Waggoner, Marin, Scelson, Lin, Martino and ESPECIALLY Soloway who, like Ralsky, has always been quite the unapologetic spammer.
As an earlier poster said, thank you to the FBI for their hard work, and also for starting to take this problem seriously.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
yeah maybe he can tell other inmates about penis enhancement products, that will work well for him
I get no spam. -- John C. Dvorak
No "shot while resisting arrest"? Too bad.
That law says that you can't shut someone down from doing something unless you have evidence that it's illegal.
Well, considering you can't get a warrent unless there's enough prior evidence pointing to the likelihood of a crime being committed, I'm thinking you're right. You did see the part about warrents, right? And the warrent will list explicitly what can and can't be seized during a search. You have to tell the signing judge what it is you're looking for. A judge will not sign a "blanket warrent".
There's a fundamental difference between confiscating someone's crack and confiscating their computer. Mere possession of crack is illegal; if you stop a guy with crack, you know he's doing something illegal with it, and can take it.
Um, no. If both are being used to commit a crime there is no difference. And your crack analogy may be flawed. That's if you're talking about some guy being nabbed at random because he's acting in a suspicious manner. If, instead, you're talking about a warrent served to collect bags of crack at someone's home, then your analogy isn't flawed - simply wrong. If I have a delivery truck I use to make a living but I use it to run down pedestrians in the evening (hey I gotta unwind), it won't matter that my means of income has been removed. It was what I was using to commit a crime. It will be seized and scrutinized for evidence. The same would hold true if I committed a crime with my computer. It doesn't matter what else I use it for. The fact that I used it for criminal behavior means it gets nabbed for evidence.
If the FBI really wanted to look for evidence, they'd bring a hacker with them on the raid and do a find | grep p3n15 on his boxes.
It's obvious you know nothing about forensic examination of computer systems. You may end up using that technique to recover evidence, but only on a mirror created from the original. And only after you've secured the system. On-site investigation is a last resort and only should be used if there is no other way to get the information. If you were rely on "an investigator did a find | grep p3n15" on the premisis without securing the system, making memory dumps (if possible), mirroring the drives (and mounting them ro - well, all your computer evidence would be most likley be challenged successfully by a competent defense and tossed out. For collecting evidence of a computer crime that would be recklessly irresponsible. It's called chain-of-custody.
"This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence" - Vyvyan "The Young Ones"
They didn't just take away his stuff. They took away his stuff, to then copy it onto network storage. Then copy the drives onto otpical media. Then copy it onto hard drives. All while leaving the originals unmodified. Then they will analyze the data to gather evidence.
It would be real sweet to know the domains that they used so that every spam victim can file suit against Ralsky and Bradley. We can take out spammers with distributed lawsuits. A spammer can survive 1,2 or maybe 10 lawsuits, but can they survive 100? I, with help, took out Avtech.
I tracked down a big time ink spammer, going under the name of payless inks, top quality inks, inks on sale. I posted the strings to search for on my spam page so that any spam victim can file suit. If you file suit, contact me and I'd be happy to serve the summons and complaint.
Fight Spammers!
I for one applaud the efforts of our FBI Overlords and welcome more news like this in the future.
-Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
" How about we imprison him for one half second, the time it takes to hit delete ...per message"
Are you really that naive? What about the time it takes to sort through hundreds of spam messages to find the legitimate email? What about the time it takes to sort through your spam folder for false positives? What about the money you have to spend for anti-spam software?
You must not get much email from real people if you think dealing with spam is as simple as "hit delete."
Jeez!
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
You can be sure spammers pay a bundle for bandwidth.
After all, I am strangely colored.
The naivete of some /.ers astounds me. Do you really think Ralsky is "deprived of his ability to make a living" by the seizure of a few computers? Do you really not understand that Ralsky probably has a few dozen other computers in another location? Do you really believe Ralsky does not have the means to go out and buy another 100 computers to replace the half dozen seized? Do you really believe Ralsky even *needs* any computers? He's made millions already. He could retire right now and live the rest of his life in comfort on a beach in Bimini. Ralsky doesn't need to "make a living." His "need" is to feed his greed.
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
I have a choice whether I buy Microsoft products or not. I do not have a choice whether I receive spam (short of stopping using email altogether).
If you're deprived of your major source of income for any period of time and not reimbursed, that's already a punishment. And in the US, you're supposedly innocent until proven guilty, and sentenced after you're convicted, not before.
We know that this guy's a spammer. Determining whether it's done legally could well be accomplished with audits, just like the issues with IP infringement with SCO and IBM. It then follows that a warrant rather than a subpoena was issued solely to halt his actions without a trial.
Good Fucking Riddance.
Here's hoping he stays shut down permanently.
Only on
The FBI is a rather large orignization. They are capable of doing many things at once. The US attorney's office has made it clear they are going to persue criminal cases against spammers now, and thus the FBI will be investigating.
Now not all spam is legal, as per CAN-SPAM, some is legal. However most isn't. Most of it is fradulant in nature, or does not have the proper opt-outs and such. Thus, it can be subject to a criminal investigation.
But please, stop the stupid hyperbole. The FBI is plenty capable of doing more than one thing at once, including things you like and things you don't. The answer isn't to get all whiny about it, it is to try and get the law changed. The FBI doesn't make the law, they enforce the law. If you disagree with the law don't demand they don't enforce it, demand that our legslature change it. It's quite clear our definitions for obsecity are out of date and need to be updated.
Write your congressmen and let them know this, and make it clear that it is an issue that will influence how you vote. Oh and pleaes leave out the hyperbole and personal attacks. That won't win you any points. You want to appear professional and rational. Let them know you have good reasons for believing what you do and that it is something they'd better pay attention to.
The fourth ammentment is supposed to protect you from 'unreasonable search and seizure.' Ideally, this means that unless they have some evidence of wrongdoing, they cannot search your home, unless the present situation presses them to: i.e., they hear somebody screaming bloody murder inside. They can search your car, but that's a well-established exception.
The War on Drugs, the Red Scare and indeed the entire concept of the FBI is centered around violating those constitutional rights. Indeed, evidence that is obtained by illegal or legally questionable methods should be thrown out of court, and often is. I wish it happened more often. The whole War on Drugs is just a big mass of nonsense to send people into prison, preferably small-time dealers/users who don't have machine guns, and the more people go into prison, the more it is apparent that these agencies are doing their job. They get a big pat on the back from the guys who run correctional facilities, and there you have it: the Prison-Industrial Complex.
Perhaps now the powers that be have figured out that you can finger some nerd for something, get him in jail for fourty years, and he's almost certainly not got a gun. Let me leave you with a quote:
When the Nazis arrested the Communists, I said nothing; after all, I was not a Communist. When they locked up the Social Democrats, I said nothing; after all, I was not a Social Democrat. When they arrested the trade unionists, I said nothing; afterall, I was not a trade unionist. When they arrested the Jews, I said nothing; after all, I was not a Jew. When they arrested me, there was no longer anyone who could protest. -Martin Niemöller
There was no mention of it in the article, so it probably wasn't used in Ralsky's case, but....
In the US, law enforcement working for any level of government can seize whatever they want under the RICO Act. They simply have to say "this object was related to selling drugs" and its their's. Doesn't have to be true. Doesn't require a trial. Doesn't even need evidence to support the statement. It is just gone. And good luck getting it back if it isn't related to drugs. http://www.fear.org
I believe it is unconstitutional, but it happens on a very regular basis. One day I hope someone is able to bring it to the US Supreme Court and have all forfeiture laws abolished. But while it exists, it couldn't happen to a more deserving person if they did permanently seize Ralsky's equipment. Even bad laws can be useful occasionally.
Only on
I'm not sure who's next in the direct line of the spammish succession, but there are certainly enough acknowledged royal bastards to pass the throne to, if need be. (I'm not sure if King Al Ral has any jewels to turn over.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
We have to turf about 94% of all incoming email. I personally get more than 1 Mb of spam filtered to my junk folder a day for manual perusal in case any important messages got tagged by mistake.
Twenty years in prison is peanuts for the suffering these monsters have caused. Put me in a room with this poor excuse for a human and a big woodchipper and I'd be entertained for several whole minutes. No need to look in on us.
If I had modpoints... It is interesting, and really I have to say that from the other country's perspective, we certainly have been slacking.
Because advertisers pay to send paper junkmail, about $.20 per mail.
First they came for the child pornography wierdos
and I did not speak out
because I did not look at child Pornography
Then they came for the spammers
and I did not speak out
because I did not spam
Then they came for the GNAA
and I did not speak out
because I was not a troll
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Because advertisers pay to send paper junkmail, about $.20 per mail.
Good point.
This is the FBI. Come out with your penis enlarged!
Table-ized A.I.
I think he isn't that naive at all. With the "per message", that'll still be quite a lot of days in jail for such a huge spammer, so he's just using a spammer's excuse against them...
If that is, indeed, his point, then point conceded. However, if he was/is trying to minimize the crime/punishment, then my original point stands.
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
Last I heard, the anonymity of the internet was considered a good thing. I myself use multiple e-mail addresses from multiple domain names. And no, I'm not a spammer
So if you use multiple e-mail addresses from multiple domain names, and you sometimes want to be anonymous when you use the internet, now it's OK for the FBI to raid your home and take away your computers that you use to make a living with?
Given the abuses of civil liberties we've seen at Guantanamo (some of them involving US citizens), isn't it a little scary that the FBI can so effectively quiet someone's voice overnight?
I hate spam as much as the next guy, but what government giveth, government can take away. The way to fix the spam problem is not legislation. Spam is a technical problem with a technical solution (SPF, DomainKeys, SenderID, ...) We just need to pick one and get on with implementing it everywhere. The whole problem is just a historical accident arising from the origin of the internet in local academic and military networks where everyone knew and trusted everyone else on the network.
It's only one small step from (a) taking away your computers in the middle of the night to (b) taking you and your computers away in the middle of the night.
Find free books.
I know it's hard to sympathise with Ralsky, but this could also happen to many other people if they are sued by the RIAA or MPAA, using exactly the same legal principle.
The solution to victimless crimes isn't to protect criminals who cause harm; it's to revise the laws so they're worth respecting.
Hmm.... I tried to make this comment earlier but was unable to post for a while, so here's take 3:
The point is that FBI seizure of computers for evidence is extremely disruptive, and (since the computers are generally kept for at least a full obsolescence cycle and often damaged) amounts to taking stuff and not giving it back. We've all heard stories about people and organizations who lose lots of stuff for no good reason. The most famous recent one was Indymedia but there are others. That sort of thing is not supposed to happen.
Hmmm... Tried to reply to this hours ago but was blocked from posting for some reason...
The idea is that seizure of the computers completely disrupts his business and livelihood. Ralsky may (or may not) be a cut-and-dried case; but even if he is found innocent he is unlikely to see his computers again for at least a year or two. At that point they will be obsolete, and unless he has replaced them his business will likely be completely gone. There is little more than semantic difference between "seizing for evidence" and "seizing and never giving back". Consider Indymedia, who had their computers seized for months during election season and were never charged with anything.
Public paddling! Who's with me!?
It's never just a game when you're winning. - George Carlin
(Mod parent "-1, moronic application of incorrect Niemöller quotation.")
:)
If only psychologically and/or genetically defect people could reasonably be expected to protest against the arrest of Niemöller, then there was obviously no fault with his arrest (and imprisonment in Sachsenhausen/Dachau) and thus no reason to protest.
Or are you trying to say that the whole German state at the time exclusively consisted of commies, teamster mafiosos, social democrats, kikes, and the criminal traitor Niemöller? Damn, then not much has changed!
should be directed to:
Alan Murray Ralsky
6747 Minnow Pond Dr,
West Bloomfield, MI 48322
Telephone: 248-926-0688 * Confirmed
Remember console frequently, and console late at night. Snail Mail gladly accepted. In fact, considering the trash he's sent us, filling his voicemail is entirely appropriate. Read him your spam. Read it slowly.
tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
Ever heard of the RICO act? The gov. can charge *your property* with a crime. If you can't prove that your property was not gained from committing an act of racketeering, you don't get it back. It's frequently used as a revenue-generating tool; i.e., siezing cash from suspicious looking characters during traffic stops, in airports, etc. It is also used to deprive persons of effective counsel by seizing bank accounts that would otherwise be used to pay for lawyers.
So, in short, yes, the Eff-Fucking Bee Eye can seize your property without ever charging you with a crime, and it's damn hard (read *impossible*) to get it back if they don't want you to have it.
From the information I could find, Ralsky was sending something on the order of a billion spams a day and has been spamming since 1997. That's somewhere on the order of 2.92 trillion spams sent. At a half-second of prison time each, I come up with a sentence of approximately 46 years.
Compared to that, the 20 years he could get is actually lenient.
For sale: one sig space, gently used. Inquire for details.
A few years ago, Ralsky was deluged with hundreds of unwanted magazines at his house, after anti-spammers signed him up for subscriptions. I wonder who that could be? Hmmm.....
But the principle is still unjust.
Not it's not. The principle is this: we the people elect, or through our elected officials appoint, sober, thoughtful judges who decide whether the risk of temporarily depriving an innocent person of their property (or similar hardship) is outweighed by the very likely finding of guilt. It's the job of the investigators and prosecutors to show the judge (or panel of judges) that warrant being asked for has merit. Do you reall, really think that even a first-day-on-the-job investigator couldn't show a judge the way in which the spammer in question was breaking the law? It's a no-brainer for the judge - the evidence in this investigation is huge, and the person under investigation goes to no trouble to hide his activities.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
he is unlikely to see his computers again for at least a year or two.
/. Indymedia stories.
Can you provide some links for this?
Consider Indymedia, who had their computers seized for months during election season and were never charged with anything.
I think you mean this case where they wanted copies of the drives, not the drives themselves nor the computers. As I recall, it was at the request of Italy, who wanted evidence for something. The drives were gone for three days, not the months you say.
Take a look at the
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
he has a point, though; half-a-second times, say 50 billion messages would put him in jail for roughly 800 years.
Meanwhile, I suggest one better. jail him for average transmission time between SMTP server and user, and fine him for bandwidth costs.
Do some math now...
call it 0.01 seconds per message, at about 100kB
I presently pay $10/month for 1G of bandwidth/month at my host, making one spam cost 0.095 cents.
That's 15 years and a fine of $47,500,000 for 50 billion spams.
Seems appropriate...
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
Start arresting domestic offenders. Then, pressure other country's governments to follow suit.
They took down EliteTorrents, didn't they?
-ELiTe185
Taxpayers inconvenience spammers!
Watch the entire internet run faster due to this guy's capture, speaking of which I wonder if he get's spam, do spammers spam him?
Maybe his sentence will be to send out thousands of unsolicited emails apologies for all the SPAM he has sent.
They should make Ralsky send personal email apologies to every person he's ever spammed
Laws only work when enforced. If the idiots in D.C. didn't pass the I-CAN-SPAM act, much spam would be eliminated as the California law would have made each spam illegal. But even with strong laws, the only way to stop spammers is to either take away all their money, or put them in prison and give their cell mates penis enlargment pills and cialis softtabs.
Fight Spammers!
Non-compliant spam now requires felonies. Multiple felonies. Not just CAN-SPAM violations, but forgery, viruses, theft of service, money laundering, and other clear crimes. Those are things that law enforcement understands.
Remember, there aren't that many spammers. ROKSO says that 200 spammers are responsible for 80% of spam. That's not very many from a law enforcement perspective.
MessageLabs says that spam peaked last year. At peak, 60% of all E-mail was spam. It's down below 50% now. However, it doesn't seem to have decreased since Ralsky was taken down last month.
In a forest, a large tree may block light from everyone around it. When that tree falls, often MANY smaller trees will sprout up to take it's place.
I've noticed in the last few days, the amount of spam arriving in my gmail box has gone from one or two a day to hundreds a day overnight. I'm worried about what that means....
They were they, they were certainly armed. Why, oh why didn't they shoot him while they're at it?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
In order to try and convict him of anything you need evidence, seizing his equipment is not a punishment for him but an attempt to gather evidence of his innocence or guilt. I can't see any other way for this to work.
I live outside the US too and I am pretty sure a very similar system is in operation here too and I am happy that this is the case.
If the FBI warned him they would shortly be droppping around to look for illegal activity on his computer systems you can be pretty sure by the time they arrived there would be no evidence whatsoever.
If he, or anyone, is that worried about their activities being interrupted by raids like this I'm sure they can buy insurance to cover the loss of earnings caused by the seizure.
If we want to catch criminals then we need procedures in place such as the one in operation here, certainly not everyone who's stuff is seized will be a criminal and the FBI should make sure they take good care of it whilst in their possesion and return it promptly but the inconvience caused is one of the costs of living in a society which can effectively deal with crooks. This is a pay-off I am willing to accept.
That quote is totally inappropriate to this discussion.
Mr Ralsky is not being persecuted because of his political views, religion or anything else. The FBI is attempting to find evidence of criminal activity because they realise that without evidence the case will never get to court. When the case gets to court Mr Ralsky can defend himself and a jury will decided whether or not he is a criminal. If they decide he is a criminal then he may be locked up.
charge 1cent for each email sent, and 1cent for each attatchment, but you pay the reciever of the email. so if i email my brother and he replies there's no net charge. if i send a mailout to 10 or so friends saying i've got new baby photos on my website it still only costs me a few pence. if a spammer is sending lots of emails it's costing them cash, if i get 100 spam messages a day then hey, it's making me money!
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
It's rather clear that the intent was to stop him, not to determine his compliance with laws.
Something else worth considering is that the evidence on his computer equipment can be modified or erased. Once he knows they're on to him, if he still has access to his equipment, he can get to work covering his tracks. If the authorities don't seize the equipment, it becomes useless as evidence.
Serving Suggestion: Defrost
Brazil: "For those that are still wondering what Triple-X means, let's be specific, Mr. Chairman. They are talking about pornography. These are things that go very deep in our values in many of our countries."
As if nobody in Brazil has seen a pair of boobs before...
Blank until
Bad meme! If you treat it as a training issue, you're dodging the responsibility. As has been said upthread, spam is theft. It steals our CPU cycles and our bandwidth. People like you stuffing your head in the sand and ignoring the problem only help the spammers win.
You're not getting it-- if it wasn't for the idiots who buy things from spam e-mails and thereby make it a profitable venture, spammers would have no incentive to bother in the first place.
I'm not proud to say that I worked for an ISP that I found out was also a major spam operation soon after I began working there. I didn't agree with what they were doing and as a reult I didn't stay there very long. But I saw the reports from spam campaigns, and there's no denying that it was VERY profitable.
If this is genuinely to gather evidence than that's fair enough, and in this case, it's probably a net good. Can't say I'm totally happy about it though. The problem is I keep getting the impression this has been done specifically to shut him down, and the "gathering evidence" was simply a pretext.
I believe the original poster was saying that we have no idea what reason(s) the search warrant was issued for. It could have been full of 'if ' statements, too. A warrant should be based on something other than speculation. Assuming they had some evidence to get the warrant, then I don't have a problem with it. I only object if there was no evidence and the government was abusing the law again.
Selling drugs can be a federal capital crime under the Drug Kingpin law.
Weird fact about that law:
It specifies lethal injection (btw, they don't use doctors to administer it - as it is a gross violation of medical ethics and the Hippocratic oath to kill your patients - unless you are a bariatric surgeon in which case no one seems to care, but I digress), for all other fed death penalty cases they use the method of the/an involved state and if the state/states has/have no death penalty the feds get to pick any state's method.
Also, "felony murder" (i.e. committing a felony and someone dies) can also get one the death penalty. Hack a PC, and the owner gets upset, has a heart attack and dies, and you can be killed by the gov't.
Any felony can cost you your life.
If someone commits felony spam and someone dies of anaphylactic shock or a Viagra-nitrate interaction from pills bough because of the spam - technically they could be executed.
Quite unlikely and has nothing to do with the USA PATRIOT Act.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Mr. Ralsky got a reporter's ear, and used it to yell out 'help, help, I'm being repressed!'
I don't believe him. I'm sure he has a DR plan in place and has already activated it.
Sure, in an ideal world, his gear wouldn't be confiscated. If the warrants were issued against SBC, probably some sort of deal would be worked out where a set of backup tapes were handed over instead (I believe this was the case with one of the Presidential investigations).
But in Mr. Ralsky's case, his operation is clearly on the edge of legitimacy, and so he should know he needs full disaster recovery plans and test schedules.
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
I believe they have to present their evidence for the necessity of taking the actions they took to a judge who will not permit them to continue if all he is hearing is speculation.
I agree the system shouldn't be abused but then I think everyone will agree to that. I'm not sure what cases you are referring to where the government has abused it's power ( I'm not saying this doesn't happen ) but I expect that in the vast majority of cases the system works effectively and is a benefit to society.
Certainly when abuses are detected then action should be taken and I think what you are arguing is that this doesn't happen as it should do which is a different issue but for which there is no evidence of it happening in this particular case.
If an announcement gets missed in the flood of spam, he misses that meal (or whatever).
The sentence lasts until the total amount of spam equals that he has sent or caused to be sent.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
What a shame that techies seldom get it right. During the Clinton administration all you people did was whine about high taxes. Then you voted for George Bush and watched as he destroyed your industry.
Now you cheer an overzealous FBI because they attacked a spammer. Hopefully, the results will be less of a disaster than your quest for lower tax rates.
How about focusing on the right solutions...
1. Protect America - An overzealous FBI is far worse than spammers.
2. Sender Authentication - Fix the SMTP protocol.
3. Doing it Right doesn't Pay - Make it illegal to blackhole legal solicitations.
4. Level the Playing Field - Provide email marketers with the same rights as USPS marketers or limit USPS marketers to the limited rights of email marketers.
Keep doing what you're doing and all the spammers will move to countries that need the money, the spam problem will get worse, and the FBI will be visiting you in the middle of the night to make sure you're voting for the right candidate.
Last time I checked, it was legal to e-mail someone you don't know.
Yes, just like it is legal to gently nudge someone on the street.
Smashing his head in with an iron bar is just a slightly stronger nudge, isn't it? It's basically the same thing, right?
There's the same small difference between sending someone an e-mail, and spamming 10 million people. Per day. Every day.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I've had a yahoo account for...easily 8 years. Maybe longer.
I still use it. Sure, I get (literally) 1000's of spam in my junk mail folder per week, but barely any makes it through to my actual inbox.
I can't imagine a scenario that would force someone into having to switch thier email address because of spam. (Note that I'm talking about normal spam/email, not some wierd personal attack).
Using a web-based service where you can view the subjects, then choose to open on an email-by-email basis, does reduce the problem. However, if you're using a client such as Thunderbird or Mail.app (or Outlook Express), it's typically configured to download the emails one at a time in their entirety. This proses a problem to a home user without huge amounts of bandwidth, who simply can't afford to wait for it all to download, so they can flag it as junk, delete it, and so on. Even on a 1mbit connection, it's a massive pain having to wait for tons of messages to download and be purged - your filters may not let you see the messages, but they're still there and being downloaded.
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
As a bare minimum, it includes an individual's right to be adequately notified of charges or proceedings involving him, and the opportunity to be heard at these proceedings.
This was done, in this case, when they raided him they would have told him why the equipment was being seized, and the investigation with him as the subject. His opportunity would come later to be heard in trial. You dont "Notify" people of raids, that would completely defeat the purpose since you would be allowing them time to destroy evidence.
Why would any legitimate advertiser want to navigate around filters? Surely if somebody is using a spam filter, they don't want to receive the messages?
Interesting use of 'anti's', by the way. Quite apart from the misplaced apostrophe, the only people I've seen use that term are people on nanae whining about how we're hurting their legitimit bisneses and infringing their frea speach rites. Getting frustrated with the filters, are we, sir?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
So do you support the death penalty? Sure there are abuses and innocent people being put to death, but in the majority of cases the system works effectively and is a benefit to society.
When you are talking about killing someone you need to be 100% you are killing the right ( genuinely guilty ) person because once you have killed them there is no comeback or recourse you could take to correct your mistake and compensate them afterwards should you later turn out to be wrong or to have acted improperly. I don't think the criminal justice system can guarantee this so I don't support the death penalty for that reason.
What we are discussing here is a totally different matter, people are potentially being inconvenienced rather than killed so if it later turns out that the FBI were acting improperly Mr Ralsky can sue them and get recompense for the trouble they have caused him.
Rat in action. Note the satisfied smile at the end. Note also that he takes the time to degauss properly.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
In Texas, if you have to shoot someone (justified), the police keep your gun. I think this really sucks because odds are the person you shot may have like-minded friends. I think there's a definate market for disposible guns.
Think of it this way:
The vast majority of e-mail flying around is spam. If it weren't for that, the ISP's infrastructure could handle a significantly smaller demand. Fewer servers running and under less power, AC, datacenter floorspace, etc.
How green is it to have a power bill measured in thousands of dollars per month?
Way to completely miss the point - For those who don't get it, I'll explain: I was suggesting a life sentence, or multiple consectutive ones, in a humorous manner.
We've secretly replaced Slashdot with new Folgers Crystals - let's see if it notices.
FBI raids YOU!
I'm going to have to agree with you here, and yes, I took things an order of magnitude out of context further than necessary. Spammers use others time, machines, and service and really are annoying as all hell especially to ISP's (although mabye when european law forces ISP's to log 12 months of data, an increase in spam might stop this law from being taken seriously).
However I will warn people to wary themselves of the slippery slope; there isn't as much ground between 'crucify the spammer' and being on the cross yourself as one might think, especially if you're vocal like I sometimes can be, and in these strange times.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
I'm sorry but are you a fucking retard? The point of a raid is to go in and find indisputalable evidence that the crime was committed.
They do notify you before they enter the premise. This usually means they knock on the door and tell you that they are about to do so in 5 seconds.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)