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Spam The Internet United States Your Rights Online

Disgruntled Fan Arrested, Indicted For Spam Attacks 363

Posted by timothy from the malice-on-display dept.
An anonymous reader submits: "A *very* interesting precedent here might get set here. A California man has been arrested by the FBI for sending spam spoofing the From: email address of several Philadelphia-area newspaper editors and writers. The charges relate to the damage caused by having the bounces sent back to the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, with a total of more than 160,000 bounced emails. Maximum penalties: 471 years in federal prison, $117 million in fines." And not just arrested, either -- Reader red_dragon points to the indictment (PDF linked from this U.S. Attorney's Office release).
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Disgruntled Fan Arrested, Indicted For Spam Attacks More

Disgruntled Fan Arrested, Indicted For Spam Attacks

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  • well... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Moebius Loop ( 135536 ) on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @02:43PM (#7165753) Homepage
    Sending spam is bad.

    That being said, does it seem a little unfair that the indictment charges him with "hacking", when in fact he just spoofed his email address?

    "Oh, beautiful for spacious skies...."

    gah.

    • Re:well... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by UrgleHoth ( 50415 )
      He did more than just spoof. According to the story, he hacked into accounts:

      Meehan's office charges that from about November 2001 to December 2002, Carlson, "a disgruntled Phillies fan," hacked into computers of unsuspecting users and from those computers launched spam e-mail attacks with long messages voicing his complaints about the Phillies management.

    • Re:well... (Score:3, Informative)

      by ninewands ( 105734 )
      Quoth the poster:

      " ... does it seem a little unfair that the indictment charges him with "hacking" ... "

      No, the volume of mail they are talking about would require use of multiple "zombies" to send ... consider the fact that a significant amount of spam is sent through Win95/98/Me boxes with DSL/cable connections. Since none of those OSs include smtp servers, does it not seem necessary that this dork "hack" into the box, install his MTA and THEN set it to spewing out spoofed e-mails?

      Just my US$0.02

      Qu

  • 471 years in prison for spamming? 100s of millions in fines?

    I dont care how much you nerds hate spam. Prison is for people dangerous to society. Murderers, rapists, other assorted thugs. Society isn't helped because a spammer is in jail.

    Why this the first case they pick up on, because this guy dared to screw with the media? (Think Lamo and the NYT thing). Government/media go hand in hand these days.
    • The penalties aren't for the spam he sent, but rather for spoofing the sender's address. Many (hundreds of thousands) of the spam emails he sent out were to bad/non-existent addresses, and were bounced back to the real addresses he faked as his own. The people who received the "returned" emails are suing him, not those that got spammed.

      That being said, I agree that the maximum penalties are harsh, to say the least. Then again, they are maximum penalities, and I'd be surprised if he goes to jail for more th
    • And if I grab a dog by its back legs and beat my wife into a coma with it, I spend more time in jail for what I did to the dog than what I did to her.

      Realistically, there will not be bouncecount charges on the complaint, and all the bounces will be consolidated in some way. A sensible prosecutor would try the first, say, thousand messages, and leave it at that.

    • Re:A very (ludicrous, retarded, draconian) precede (Score:4, Insightful)

      by abb3w ( 696381 ) on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @03:00PM (#7165814) Journal
      Prison is for people dangerous to society. Murderers, rapists, other assorted thugs. Society isn't helped because a spammer is in jail.

      Well, it's not helped by leaving them out of jail. They are a public nuisance to millions of people. And in this case, cost someone money. Now, having them taken out and shot, or having their kneecaps broken, would probably be better way to deal with spammers than throwing them in jail, but we have this "cruel and unusual" clause here in the US, so jail it is.
      And yes, the Media has some protected status here in the US; pragmatically, because the government desires to keep anything powerful from getting too pissed at it, but also on the principle that people interfering with First-Amendment protected organizations are Bad.

      • Now, having them taken out and shot, or having their kneecaps broken, would probably be better way to deal with spammers than throwing them in jail, but we have this "cruel and unusual" clause here in the US, so jail it is.

        Why don't we just repeal that, too? Why the hell not? The so-called Bill of Rights looks more like swiss cheese than any protective layer over our rights.

      • Have you ever spent any time in jail? It isn't a joke and not for people that are mere nuisances. Nothing but serious business behind those walls. I'd prefer prisoners to be a danger to society, not just guilty of being an asshole.

      • But, is the punishment fitting for the crime? What punishment will the CEOs/CFOs of Enrons, Worldcoms, etc. get compared to this misguided fool? Sure this Phillies fan sent out tons of spam, but unlike Ken Lay, he didn't bilk people out of billions of dollars.

    • Re:A very (ludicrous, retarded, draconian) precede (Score:5, Funny)

      by dr_dank ( 472072 ) on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @03:03PM (#7165827) Homepage Journal
      Prison is for people dangerous to society. Murderers, rapists, other assorted thugs. Society isn't helped because a spammer is in jail

      Research shows that many inmates tend to become even more hardened criminals once they are sent to prison.

      When he gets out in 2471, society better watch out.
    • If you were a real thug, your prison term would look more like 4.71 years. Let's not even think about how easy sex offenders get off.....

      ===========

      • Re:Ironic (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Let's not even think about how easy sex offenders get off.....

        EEEEeeeeeeew. I'm hoping that was intended to be the pun it turned out to be.

    • No, you read it wrong. Only about a fourth of that was for the spamming.

      The rest was for being a die-hard Phillies fan. Come on.

    • If you can claim over $5k in damages, they'll take a look at it. If you can claim $Millions in damages, they'll actually work on it. The article doesn't say what their actual claim of damages was (the pdf just states that they aggregated more than the $5k trigger). That's why they went after him.

      And by the way, prison is for people who break the law. It's part rehab; but mostly it's punishment. I for one, hope it stays that way. This guy especially doesn't need skills to succeed; he's obviously got t

  • Hmmm (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @02:43PM (#7165756)
    A *very* interesting precendent here might get set here.

    This might *not* have been read by a slashdot editor might *not* have read this.

  • Uhm (Score:4, Funny)

    by B3ryllium ( 571199 ) on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @02:46PM (#7165764) Homepage
    For forged bounced emails, the fine is 1 day in prison and/or $734. Per email.

    I got 500 bounced emails from a university in Canada once, should I sue them using this as a precedent? :)

    I could *really* use $365,000. I'd even accept it in Canadian dollars (in fact, that would be easier, given that I am Canadian).

    • Re:Uhm (Score:5, Funny)

      by mythosaz ( 572040 ) on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @02:55PM (#7165792)
      Forged canadian emails are only worth 5/8ths of a day in a US prison.
    • I'd even accept it in Canadian dollars (in fact, that would be easier, given that I am Canadian).

      That's going to a problem in the US courts.

    • Re:Uhm (Score:3, Funny)

      by _xeno_ ( 155264 )
      I got 500 bounced emails from a university in Canada once, should I sue them using this as a precedent? :)

      I could *really* use $365,000. I'd even accept it in Canadian dollars (in fact, that would be easier, given that I am Canadian).

      Uh, unless something happened recently that I'm not aware of, the United States has yet to annex our neighbors to the north. So I think you'd probably be out of luck on that one.

      But if Bush gets reelected next year and can't get any other country to help support his War

  • 471 years. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Leffe ( 686621 ) on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @02:51PM (#7165776)
    471 years in jail, eh? What's so wrong with lifetime?

    And isn't prison about rehabilitation? Will this guy rehabilitate by never in his life having a chance of getting out.

    Or is prison just about hot male on male action nowadays? I'd say so...

    I hope Arnold will create some kind of prison reform.

    Oh, and there's a word I didn't know in the article(and I won't even bother checking some book). What does 'scatological' mean?
    • It means "Having to do with poo", or obscene language relating to poo.

      http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=scatologi cal [reference.com]

      i.e. Eat [insert scatalogical expression here] you fool!

  • My share? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Fletch ( 6903 ) * <fletch@nosPam.pobox.com> on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @02:52PM (#7165779) Homepage
    $117mil/160k mails = $731.25 per email.

    Now, I've had spammers use my address as a from: address a couple of times, resulting in a couple of thousand bounces in my inbox.

    When should I expect my check for $1,462,500 to arrive?
  • Why are they prosecuting this guy and not the serious spammers who do this every day?

    Is it simply because someone complained to the right people at the FBI to get some action? If so, how do I get the same support if someone does that with my email address? If not, then shouldn't he be able to get off by claiming that he's being singled out instead of receiving equal justice?

    • RTFA (Score:3, Informative)

      by McSpew ( 316871 )

      It isn't *just* that he sent thousands of spams. He allegedly hacked into others' PCs and sent the spams from them. Doing so with a bogus return address would have been bad enough, but he allegedly forged return addresses to redirect bounces to Philadelphia sportswriters. Unlike most spammers, this guy had an axe to grind, which made him far more traceable. Also, unlike most spammers, he attacked a very targeted group of people.

      The clown involved in this mess is well known on the rec.sport.baseball new

  • Why are they going after this guy (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Trailer Trash ( 60756 ) on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @02:54PM (#7165786) Homepage
    When people like Steve Hardigree have done orders of magnitude more damage, are just as easy to find, and have all the evidence ever needed for such an indictment stored at spamhaus.org? It doesn't make sense. Even if you can't get a conviction, which seems unlikely, wouldn't it put a serious dent in the spam problem if some of these worthless spammers were handed an indictment of this size?

  • Killing Spree (Score:2, Insightful)

    by dj961 ( 660026 )
    You know if the guy just went on a killing spree, he probably would have gotten less jail time. Makes you think how valuable your life is in the eyes of government.

    • Re:Killing Spree (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 )
      You know if the guy just went on a killing spree, he probably would have gotten less jail time. Makes you think how valuable your life is in the eyes of government.

      here in lies the redicilousness of the laws....

      as the laws are now.. If I were in that guy's shoes, I'd arm myself to the teeth, and plan on killing a very large number of cops,agents,people etc while running to another country and robbing banks to get the funds I need to escape.

      why? because the above possibility of jail time plus fines giv

  • Gov't wants us to rage with assault and bettery (Score:4, Insightful)

    by elwinc ( 663074 ) on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @02:54PM (#7165788)
    Given the disparity of penalties between, say, a mugging and this spam attack, it's clear that the government would prefer that we express our rage with assault and battery. Most murderers get off with less than 471 years. Lemme know your favorite assault weapon so I can start settling my scores the gov't approved way. note to humor impaired: that's sarcasm there. I agree with General Clark: if you want assault weapons, join the Army -- they've got lot's of 'em.

    • Clark is paraphrasing Himmler (Score:4, Informative)

      by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 ) on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @04:20PM (#7166188) Journal
      I agree with General Clark: if you want assault weapons, join the Army -- they've got lot's of 'em.

      General clark is paraphrasing Himmler (along with other NAZI sources).

      "Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA - ordinary citizens don't need guns, as their having guns doesn't

      serve the State."

      -- Heinrich Himmler


      "All military type firearms are to be handed in immediately ... The SS, SA and Stahlhelm give every respectable German man the opportunity of campaigning with them. Therefore anyone who does not belong to one of the above named organizations and who unjustifiably nevertheless keeps his weapon ... must be regarded as an enemy of the national government."


      -- SA Oberfuhrer of Bad Tolz, March, 1933


      (Clark had to join the Democrats once he uttered his version. There's no longer a chance he could collect enough Republican primary votes to secure a presidential nomination.)

  • Interesting Precedent Indeed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Cyberllama ( 113628 ) on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @02:55PM (#7165790)
    If that, in and of itself, can constitute a crime then pretty much every spammer ever is guilty of the same thing -- just spread about amongst different people. Instead of one company incuring all the "financial damage" of bounced emails, it's many thousands with the "damage" spread around.

    Still . . . I have to believe that there is something more to this story than is posted here. If the hacking charge truly comes from simply lying in the "From:" portion of an email, then I will have lost all faith in humanity.

    And of couse, the punishment is obviously completely absurd. I'm torn about what to do with this guy myself. Clearly what he did constitutes a DOS attack of sorts, and yet what he did is essentially no different than what every spammer does everyday. IANAL, but if this case is sucessfully prosucuted, wouldn't that give precedent for prosecuting every spammer out there?
  • Maybe he should kill off the FBI that have evidence / charging him. Least he'd get a lower maximum sentence.

  • Kill a person, get 20 to life (Score:4, Insightful)

    by l0ungeb0y ( 442022 ) on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @02:58PM (#7165804) Homepage Journal
    "Carlson faces a maximum sentence of 471 years imprisonment and $117,250,000 in fines."

    Well damn, I'm heading out to the gun store, gonna rob me some banks, shoot me up some people up and still get out of prison faster than this guy.

    Is it just me or has the US Guhvumment been totally hijacked by corporate interests to the point where the US Constitution is just a minor inconvenience?

    What happened to no cruel nor unusual punishment, the punishment fitting the crime, our inaliable rights?

    The only time I have heard of such a possible maximum has been in the case of multiple-murder and serial child molestation. And even if they give him say... 5 years, he will be financially ruined forever at even a fraction of the proposed monetary damages. So his life might as well be over.. quite lliterally made a slave to the corporations he will have to pay this "restitution" to...
    And wasn't slavery constitutionally abolished over 100 years ago? Well as long as he isn't black I guess it's all ok.

    • If convicted, Carlson faces a maximum possible sentence of 471 years imprisonment, $117,250,000 in fines and a special assessment of $7,800


      Sure he can soak up a measly hundred seventeen million dollar fine, but that special assessment close to eight grand is gonna put him under for sure...

    • Try shooting 71 people, and seeing what your maximun prison time is (Hint it will be much longer).

      Maximun sentinces are rarely given. They are intended for scare value, and to give prossicution some room to get a easy case. Better to testify against yourself in exchange for 4 years than to not help against yourself, taking the chance they will get you anyway and put you in for life. Once in a while some really bad person gets maximun sentinces (And I don't doupt that once in a while someone just annoys

  • Journalism 101 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dachannien ( 617929 ) on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @02:58PM (#7165806)
    Why did the article authors mention the guy being a possible white supremacist? They say that in the first paragraph, as if it were something important, and then don't bother going on to connect that to the events described in the article.

    I mean, generally speaking, most people agree that any form of racist supremacy is bad, but if it doesn't have anything to do with the charges against him, then mentioning it just incites the audience unfairly. If his political views do have something to do with his actions, then they should have let us know instead of leaving us hanging.
    • I'm guessing that people just like labels.

      Take the Louisiana's election for governor several, several years ago. One of the candidates was David Duke. Duke is somewhat infamous for being a high-ranking member of "the Klan" many years ago. He claimed multiple times, publicly, that he made some mistakes in the past and he no longer held those views anymore.

      Now, I'm not endorsing his behaviour or even saying I liked anything about the man, but his official title on *every* TV news report was, and still is
    • "I mean, generally speaking, most people agree that any form of racist supremacy is bad, but if it doesn't have anything to do with the charges against him, then mentioning it just incites the audience unfairly. If his political views do have something to do with his actions, then they should have let us know instead of leaving us hanging."

      I agree with you. But when I read the article I sort of assumed that the content of the spam he sent out included offensive racial content. It might possibly be relev

    • Why did the article authors mention the guy being a possible white supremacist? They say that in the first paragraph, as if it were something important, and then don't bother going on to connect that to the events described in the article.

      Pure and simple, they did this to make him seem more human and likeable. Everyone knows that racists are intellectually impaired, this lets everyone know that he is stupid, and therefore maybe did not realize the depths of the evil that is spamming.

      I mean come on now..

  • I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell you. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Our Man In Redmond ( 63094 ) on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @02:59PM (#7165811)
    I could have expected this from a Flyers fan, but a Phillies fan?

    What's this world coming to?

  • Justice? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kaa ( 21510 ) on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @03:00PM (#7165812) Homepage
    Yes, VERY interesting...

    Let's look at California penal code.

    How about throwing acid in someone's face?
    244. Any person who willfully and maliciously places or throws, or causes to be placed or thrown, upon the person of another, any
    vitriol, corrosive acid, flammable substance, or caustic chemical of any nature, with the intent to injure the flesh or disfigure the body of that person, is punishable by imprisonment in the state prison for two, three or four years.

    OK, let's see, what if I attack someone with a knife?
    245. (a) (1) Any person who commits an assault upon the person of another with a deadly weapon or instrument other than a firearm or by any means of force likely to produce great bodily injury shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for two, three, or four years

    Hell, given that Arnie is now governator of California what happens if I start spraying machinegun fire around?
    (3) Any person who commits an assault upon the person of another with a machinegun, as defined in Section 12200, or an assault weapon, as defined in Section 12276 or 12276.1, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for 4, 8, or 12 years.

    So, four years in jail for permanently disfiguring someone, four years for cutting somebody up with a knife, twelve for machinegunning people and... 471 years for spoofing a From: email header.

    Ah, yes, justice...
    • Agreed. We all probably can concur that large scale, unsolicited spamming is bad and the people who do it and try to conceal their identities, and cause damage and waste lots of time should be punished. But clearly 471 years for what is fundamentally one or a couple of offenses that are being made into some ungodly number of separate crimes is way out of wack with any normal concept of justice.

      No matter how profitable spam might be, it seems to me like 5 or 6 months in federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison

    • Re:Justice? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ixitar ( 153040 ) on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @03:45PM (#7165959) Homepage
      You are forgetting the fact that the 471 years are multiple sentences running consecutively.

      Now, lets take a look at your examples again.

      Disfiguring with acid

      10 victims = 20 - 40 years
      100 victims = 200 - 400 years

      cutting someone up with a knife

      10 victims = 20 - 40 years
      100 victims = 200 - 400 years

      Gunning down people with a machine gun

      10 victims = 40 - 120 years
      100 victims = 400 - 1200 years

      He has 79 counts of computer-hacking related offenses and also with identity theft. Over 160,000 forged e-mails. Lets try using two years for each computer-hacking offense

      79 * 2 = 158 years

      That leaves 313 years for the forged e-mails.

      When prosecuting someone, it is a good idea to charge the perpetrator with as many offenses as possible. I think that the cracking offenses alone are sufficient, but a little overkill definitely sends a message.

      Mr. Carlson's alleged activities were definitely overkill.
    • If you cut up one person with a knife, then you get 2 3 or 4 years. If you cut up a thousand people with a knife, hopefully you never get out, but the penalty would be per act, so 2 3 or 4 thousand years.

      Spammers and other net vermin (cowards all) cause a small to moderate amount of harm to millions of people. They are getting away with it because they are not held accountable.

      If the harm product of Spammers and other shitheads (defined as harm * number of victims) were held constant, and the number of vict

    • Re:Justice? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Cato the Elder ( 520133 ) on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @03:50PM (#7165980) Homepage
      "471 years for spoofing a From: email header"

      Not at all. He is facing 79 criminal counts, He would only get 471 years if he were sentenced to the maximum for every count AND served them consecutively.

      It's the consecutively part that makes the 471 number meaningless. This is clearly a case where sentences should run concurrently.

    • Yes, but if you have 79 counts of machine gunning, like this guy does of identify theft, then you would have a maximum sentence of 12*79 = 948 years.

      The indicment (which covers the course of more than a year) is on charges of identity theft by forged headers, not spamming.

  • This guy is screwed (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by TopShelf ( 92521 ) *
    I highly recommend following the DOJ links to the indictment. This guy hacked into other computers to send out tens of thousands of bogus emails that caused massive boucebacks to the victims. Sure, the "maximum" sentences look absurd, but that's where the interesting part of this case will come in. The guy clearly needs to have the book thrown at him, and spend some time in "federal, pound-me-in-the-ass prison." Just how much remains to be seen...
    • How dare you read the articles and the links in the articles to the background material and post a reasonable response to those who obviously haven't even read the flipping article. This is slashdot. Home of the knee-jerk reaction based on headlines and some weenie's self-serving synopsis of an article. I bet you even read up on the issues before voting.
    • This guy hacked into other computers to send out tens of thousands of bogus emails that caused massive boucebacks to the victims.

      Ah, yes, but what does "hacked" mean in this context? As far as I can tell, it means that he went through open SMTP servers -- ugly, nasty but also a pretty generous definition of "hack," as most on /. will probably agree. (Next up on Channel 8 at 11, "'Ping:' Harmless ICMP toy or virtual carjacker?")

      Furthermore, there's a fundamental confusion in the indictment: after statin

    • What the fuck is wrong with you (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @04:53PM (#7166539)
      Do you really think that rape is an apropriate punishment for any crime, if so why not make it at public spectacle. Then I'm sure it will really scare all the criminals into law abiding citicens.
      It is sickening the way people on slashdot seem to find the barbaric conditions of the american prison system one big joke. Do you really think that you are immune to the justice system, and that you never ever could end up in prison yourself - The same way every heroin addict never believed that he could be addicted, when he tried that first fix.
      Rape is not a joke, no matter what the sex of the victim!

  • hacking charge: yes, spoofing charge: no (Score:3, Interesting)

    by penguin7of9 ( 697383 ) on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @03:01PM (#7165821)
    The part about hacking into people's computers should arguably be a prosecutable offense. But "spoofing" the from address should not be: the "From:" line is currently pretty much only advisory and will remain so until there are significant technical changes to the email infrastructure.

    And it's too easy to put in the wrong "From:" line accidentally when configuring mail systems. For example, I was using the right account name with the wrong domain name for a week once in my From: line (I thought my mail was broken). Someone else actually got some of the responses intended for me.
  • Why did they go after this attack instead of the DOS on the spam blacklists?

    Oh yeah, I forgot, because this was against a newspaper, and not some small fries blacklist operators.

    Money talks, huh?
  • This guy has been polluting Philadelphia Phillies message boards on mlb.com, espn.com and others. The admin of the board I follow (philliesphans.com) assisted the FBI in nailing this guy.

    Click for the thread [philliesphans.com]

    In short, this guy is a major prick. I do think the charges are excessive though.
  • This is a civil matter. The newspapers should sue the guy, he did something wrong, but there is no point in putting the guy in jail for the rest of his life and make him bankrupt. After all, putting someone in prison will acomplish nothing, they are meant to correct people or keep dangerous ones out of society. This will just spend more of tax payers money needlessly. Putting someone in prison for the rest of his life is expensive, and after all don't we have better things to pay for like an illegal war bas

  • they say he's a Nazi too! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by johnpaul191 ( 240105 ) on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @03:05PM (#7165842) Homepage
    as if spamming wasn't enough.... yeah weird..... for you non article readers:


    In 1996, Carlson, who California law enforcement officials believe placed anti-African Americans, anti-Jewish and anti-Latino leaflets into supermarket products, was sentenced to 32 months in prison for vandalizing more than two dozen luxury cars.


  • No wonder ID theft is so popular these days (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Dav3K ( 618318 ) on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @03:08PM (#7165862)
    How nice of the US Attorney's Office to publish the defendant's FULL NAME, CURRENT ADDRESS and DATE OF BIRTH prominently on the web, for all to see.(See linked PDF in topic) Even better, this guy is going to be out of the house for a while, so it should be no problem to pick up his mail.

    I swear, the only thing protecting this guy's ID now is his new-found criminal record.
    • Because your name, birthday and address are such a secret, right?

      The problem isn't the release of that information - the idiot is anyone who accepts name, address and birthdate as proof that you're you.

  • China struggles to keep up (Score:5, Funny)

    by TheNarrator ( 200498 ) on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @03:12PM (#7165876)
    News Flash: China, in a desperate attempt to keep up with the United States has introduced a wave of new registration including the death penalty for spamming. A seperate bill, also introduced, proposes 30 years hard labor for trolling Slashdot.
  • The article begins with the line: "A California man who's an apparent white supremacist...". I don't mean to condone white supremacists, but what relevance does this have to his use of spam? The white supremacist angle is never mentioned again in the article. If the spam he'd sent had contained white supremacist views, that would be relevant, but the article doesn't bring up any such thing. I'm therefore struck by the notion that its inclusion is an attempt to predispose the reader to disliking the subj
    • Its very simple. The simple fact you feel the need to state you are NOT a white supremacist proves what power the label has over the people.

      Its a notch below saying someone likes Hitler. It has the same effect. People are immediately turned off.

  • I agree with a few of the posters here who point out that the 471 far exceeds any "normal" crime.. Really silly how killing someone has a lesser penalty. The government needs to keep its head about when it comes to online crime - right now it's unbalanced at best.

    Having said that, I feel that malicious domain forging should be specifically addressed. Make no mistake, it is an assault and can do some real damage. Getting "joe-jobbed" does the following:
    • Overloads your mail servers/inbox
    • Damages potent

  • The guy is a major prick (Score:3, Informative)

    by red_dragon ( 1761 ) on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @03:44PM (#7165955) Homepage

    A friend of mine is the webmaster of PhilaPhans.com [philaphans.com], and was also affected by Allan Carlson's activities. He pointed me to this little note [prisonactivist.org] (scroll down to "Elysian Valley, Burbank"), where the guy's name pops up again:

    Virginia de la Torre found a hate message in Aug. tucked inside a frozen chicken dinner. Robert Kennedy, a Long Beach lawyer representing the California Grocers Association says that since 1992, there have been more than 800 incidents of hate messages found inside products sold in stores in Ventura, Los Angeles and Orange counties. "You name the store, you name the product, and they've been hit," he said. "The slurs are against Jews and blacks and Hispanics. It's an ongoing problem." A Los Angeles Superior Court judge issued an injunction against Allan Eric Carlson of Glendale, prohibiting him from putting such pamphlets into packages in any of the 1,100 stores in the three-county area that are members of the grocers association. Carlson had been arrested and is on probation for two similar incidents; in one he vandalized notebooks and books with WAR [White Aryan Resistance] stickers and stamps; in a second, he assaulted a school custodian after being caught stuffing flyers into student lockers in Simi Valley.

    So there you have it. Like McSpew said, he's a crank and a racist.

  • Try math (Score:2)

    by El ( 94934 )
    It's not that the penalty for spamming is harsher than the penalty for other crimes, it is that the penalty is per offense try committing 160,000 acts of assualt or murder, and then see what the maximum penalty is... would you beleive 160,000 consecutive life sentences? How 'bout 480,000 years?
  • His excuse in court: "Verisign Made Me Do It!"

  • In this case it might be a little overkill... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @04:06PM (#7166055) Homepage
    ...but trust me, having at least linear punishment (3x the crime => at least 3x the punishment) is very useful. Here in Norway, we have a law that I'd basicly call the "quantity dicount law" which means that you'll by default get less punishment than the sum of your crimes taken separately.

    Frankly, the results of it are silly. If you've got e.g. 10 outstanding shoplifting charges already, your 11th will add almost nothing to your punishment because even though there's one more charge, you get less for each. In other words, once you've become a criminal, keep up!

    Of course, I don't think this guy is concerned about the 472nd year in prison, so it has pretty much lost its effect. But for punishments inside a normal lifespan, I'd say it's fairly effective. Then you can use common sense (what judges and juries are for) to do reasonable corrections, as I'm sure they will in this case.

    Kjella

  • A fair punishment for Spammers (Score:5, Funny)

    by yorgasor ( 109984 ) <<ron> <at> <tritechs.net>> on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @04:21PM (#7166195) Homepage
    Give him some webmail account that he can access over dialup from prison. Publish that email far and
    wide so it'll end up on every spam list in the world.

    Then, tell him that once a year he'll get an email with a password that if he gives the prison guard, he can leave at any time.

    This email can come in any form, with any subject heading, very likely disguised as spam. His webmail account will also have a 5Mb limit, and if the email bounces because it just happens to come when the mailbox is full, he'll have to wait for the next year.
  • The spoofed messages always appeared to be coming from someone named "Pissed Off Phan," with a return address matching a staff writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

    I sincerely wish I'd saved the text of some of them. The were uniformly well written, however, devoid of the usual spelling mistakes you come to expect in unsolicited e-mail. Of course, the author was motivated not by greed, but by vitriol: the only thing which separated his message from a bona-fide editorial was his pathological hatred of Lar [http]

  • Yay for the FBI (Score:3, Insightful)

    by swb ( 14022 ) on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @04:35PM (#7166374)
    I can't say I blame them for arresting this guy (although the idiotic federal multipliers for sentencing are almost silly), but isn't this just another lame PR exercise? This guy was just pissed, not a deliberate long-term spammer -- it was a one off offense, and while deserving of punishment it unfortunately will give the impression the FBI is doing something about it, when it clearly isn't.

  • All the people who think the penalty is too high (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Zakabog ( 603757 ) <john&jmaug,com> on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @04:56PM (#7166570)
    Don't forget that's the MAXIMUM penalty. For every bounced e-mail there is a certain penalty, they add up and form a maximum penalty. A judge will set a MUCH MUCH lower penalty based on the crime and the damage done. The only reason the penalty was so high is because everything is automated, it's a lot easier for a computer to commit a crime 160,000 times.

    If you made a script that raped or murdered 160,000 people your maximum penalty would be quite high too. I think it's about 4 million years in prison for 160,000 second degree murder charges. And I think the minimum sentence for 160,000 rape charges would be a bit under 3 million years. It wasn't that the penalty for this persons crimes should be over 400 years in prison, it's just that the maximum penalties add up to that and the fines also just happen to add up to over 100 million.

  • Many people are forgetting (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Ezubaric ( 464724 ) on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @06:26PM (#7167273) Homepage
    That our laws are not just for punishment. They are also to deter. Think about it this way; lets say I have a 50% chance of getting caught if I mug somebody (hey, there are cameras everywhere and the victim can make a positive ID).

    If the penalty is (I'm making stuff up here) $10,000, then I'd only want to rob somebody if I can make off with $5,000. Thus, I'd only be on the lookout for blind billionares.

    But, spamming is much harder to catch. You don't have to be anywhere special to spam (you don't have to reveal your identity unless you're an idiot). So let's say there's a 1% chance of getting caught. Thus, if the fine is $10,000, then I'll only spam if I can get 100 back. Not so hard.

    So, we can either increase the probability of getting caught (pretty hard) or increase the fine (just pass a law - very easy). So if we make the fine $500,000, then I'll spam only if I can get $5,000 out of it.

    Thus, you deter spammers to the same extent as you deter muggers. It just sounds strange when it's applied to an idividual.

  • As a victim... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by csnydermvpsoft ( 596111 ) on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @06:43PM (#7167404)
    As a victim of this guy's antics, I say it's about time this guy is put behind bars. My dad, who runs the software business for which I handle IT, was impersonated by this guy after proving the guy wrong on a couple of points on the old forum on the Phillies' homepage. Apparently this ticked the guy off, and he went on a forged usenet post rampage, posting spam messages appearing to come from our company, as well as trying to portray my dad as a child pornographer. It was all we could do to stop the flood of bad PR coming our way. After the guy started impersonating reporters and Phillies officials, the FBI got involved, and my dad was able to give them information about what IP address he was posting from, what ISP he used, etc.

    Click here [philliesphans.com] for a thread on a forum that I run that has more details on some of this guy's antics.

  • I'm glad they finally shut him down. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by oneiros27 ( 46144 ) on Wednesday October 08, 2003 @10:13PM (#7168701) Homepage

    I'm glad they finally shut down this annoying person, as I was one of the people who kept getting his rants. [So if 100,000 messages bounced back, how many of them went through?]

    Here's a sample of one of his rants ...

    Date: Sun, 09 Jun 2002 15:01:44 -0800
    From: Pissed Off Phan <Walker_Lundy[at]philly.com>
    Subject: The Scam Shifts into High Gear
    Message-id: <0GXG00CWZL761J@mtaout06.icomcast.net>

    This morning the "news"papers inform us "little people" that our hero at 3B is now out of here. They will soon shift into a mode of self proclaimed innocence as they shift the blame for this to Ed Wade. That isn't completely without merit since Wade would resign before trading Rolen if he had any character. Heck, if he had any smarts he would see that trading Rolen is going to be one of his last moves as GM, so does he really want to be fingered as he must know that he will, as the guy who traded both Curt Schilling and Scott Rolen?

    Wade should think about that for a long time. I would not want to be in those shoes if I was going to be in the Philly area in the future. Those "passionate Phans" may "tip their caps" to the guys at the "news"papers, but they are often violent toward someone like Wade.

    Just ask Terry Francona.

    However, I digress. Does anyone find it a bit strange that "The Fatman" has clammed up about Scottie? He has been the front man laying in the punches since last year when he kicked it off by altering Bowa's "quote" about the middle-of-the-order to finger Rolen instead. He's back writing again, but nothing about you-know-who. Somehow I think that's about to change though, and I get the feeling that this week is when that change will occur.

    Don't ever let it slip from your mind that it was "The Fatman" who wrote Curt Schilling out of town. He actually sold that to us as an "opportunity". He didn't mention in any of those columns that it would be an opportunity for us Phans to watch Curt pitch in another World Series though.

    Part of that opportunity is still with us at 1B. Let's take a look at this "opportunity" a little more closely. This "opportunity" is 27yrs old and has been a big leaguer (if not a "player") for four plus seasons and in this time he has risen to the heights of a career .744 OPS that is near equal parts OBP and Slugging. Imagine, a 1B with a career .402 SLG mark.

    Wow, what an opportunity!

    Those who sold us this line of garbage will shamelessly point to Padilla, but he qualifies as one of the biggest surprises of the last decade. He came here as a relief pitcher of unknown origin or age, and then failed miserably in that role. If Padilla came into a game with a runner on 1B and one out everyone came to know that the guy at 1B would cross the plate before that inning was over.

    Now "The Fatman" and his posse have dogged Rolen since early last year, using every "opportunity" that they could create to strongly suggest that Rolen should be traded while knowing that no one in the Phan base (what's left of it) wanted this. It has gotten so bad that Sam Donnellon recently suggested that Rolen was responsible for the low attendance figures!

    Hey, did you expect him to blame Jim Buck Jr? This pansy has never written "Jim Buck Jr." in any of his columns, not one.

    The crew at the "news"papers are clearly nervous. I've not seen such a shuffling of names on articles about the Phillies before. Still, no matter what the name attached to the article the line is still the same. Not one of them has ever heard of Jim Buck Jr. and it's Wade and the players who are to blame. Ownership is always absent and innocent as far as the Inquirer and Daily News are concerned. Heck, Rich Hoffman is even willing to go on TV and shout at "the little people" about how poor Jim Buck Jr. (excuse me "The Buck Brothers") has no money. Of course, he never explains how a billionaire could not have money.

    Nor does anyone

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