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US Congress gets Spammed by Self

Posted by Hemos on from the a-taste-of-the-real-world dept.

Doug Muth writes "There is an article on MSNBC's website that talks about a recent bout of spam that seriously bogged down some of the mailservers delaying message delivery for some users by "several hours". Maybe now that they got hit in the face with a spamming incident Congress will finally try to write some decent anti-spam legislation. " Heh - an aide to Rep. Alcee hastings (D-FL) sent out an e-mail to hundreds, potentially thousands of people on an internal mailing list - no BCC or majordomo, so when people hit "Reply All"...well. You can imagine the fun that ensued. The great part is that the letter was apparently recommending a weight loss pill.

5 of 115 comments (clear)

  1. Funny? Try Scary by Alex+Pennace · · Score: 4

    This incident is a laser pointer at the crux of the problem: our old guard politicians just aren't capable of handling today's technological world.

    We need to get some geeks elected soon, or at the very least get the 18-24 demographic group into the polls.

    1. Re:Funny? Try Scary by Roundeye · · Score: 3
      Um... no.

      They make it a crime to send unsolicited commercial e-mail to a recipient whose ISP has a posted policy forbidding it. Tying in the source ISP might be part of the issue, but this is hard to pass the courts (free speech, prior restraint, all that sorta stuff tends to get in the way). At most forcing the source ISP to submit usage/registration records under force of court order is probably sufficient. Of course for obliging ISPs "conspiracy to commit a felony" (if the crime is a felony) is likely sufficient to keep ISPs from "knowingly" harboring spammers.

      As far as tracing spam, yes, Virginia, much of the unsolicited email out there is essentially forged. However, most forgeries are poor, and few forgeries are truly hard to trace. In addition, open SMTP relays are becoming harder and harder to find. In addition to any legislation that exists, resources like the RealTime BlackHole List make it harder and harder for the spammer to even send or relay spam.

      Of course this discussion is completely independent of whether I believe illegalizing spam is a good idea. I personally think the government shouldn't have its nose in the issue, and it reeks of censorship. Given a little more time users will be more savvy, tools like the BlackHole List will be more prevalent, and spam-ridden ISPs (like AOL) will be forced to filter more actively or lose a noticeable number of customers to places (like Mindspring/Earthlink) which do more filtering. I have had a Perl source and content-based spam filter in place for over two years now and have filtered over 700 spam mails automatically (about 10 false-positives...). Between that and the judicious use of spam-drops (like the hotmail address listed above) my life is generally spam-free.

      --
      "Cause there's 40 different shades of black, so many fortresses and ways to attack, so why you complainin'?"
  2. Quotes from Congress... by The+Musician · · Score: 4

    Here's some amusing quotes from the article in RollCall.

    • I have 20 e-mails. It totally filled up my in-box.
    • It's annoying. I've gotten so many of them and they're so large, it's made my system unstable today. It's crashed twice today.
    • "Thanks, I need to lose 40 lbs.," the employee wrote in a reply -- to the whole House.

    Wanna bet they're using Micro$oft?

    --

  3. Time to amend the Constitution! by fable2112 · · Score: 3
    U.S. Representatives must be at least 25, Senators must be at least 30, and the President and VP must be at least 35. Kind of sucks for the 18-24 crowd, though I don't think there are quite so many age restrictions at the level of local politics.


    Come to think of it, people's brains need to get amended a bit, too. Those may be the age limits, but how many under-30 Representatives are there? I'd say probably not very many. The youngest president we've ever had was IIRC 41, and he wasn't elected -- he was a VP who succeeded a Prez who got shot (T.R., who became President after McKinley's death.)


    Even when Clinton/Gore ran for the first time, "are they too young?" was a big campaign issue even though they were in their mid-40s. Sheesh. For all the "Don't Trust Anyone Over 30" buttons, it seems like in practice "Don't Trust Anyone Under 50" is the way politics are REALLY played.

    --
    "Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today ... but it wasn't anybody I knew" -The Moody Blues, "Dear Diar
  4. No Hipocrisy by schon · · Score: 3

    You're missing something...

    Unrestricted internet communication IS NOT THE SAME AS HARRASSMENT.

    SPAM == HARRASSMENT.

    Harrassment is illegal - freedom of speech does not give you the right to scream into your neighbor's windows at 4:AM with a megaphone.

    The people who are crying for anti-spam legistlation are only trying to clearly define what spam is, so that existing legal principles can be applied.

    But what I'm getting at in the end is that anyone who can say that they want to legislate SPAM while simultaneously stating that there should be no internet censorship of any kind is simply a fool.

    So... by this logic, anyone who says "there should be no internet censorship", and also says "kiddie porn should be illegal" is also a hypocrite? Not likely. One has absolutely nothing to do with the other.