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Spam Government The Courts Your Rights Online News

FBI Plans Spammer Smackdown 238

Posted by michael from the enlarge-your-jail-sentence-now dept.
An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet News reports: '...the FBI told Congress on Thursday that it has 'identified over 100 significant spammers' so far and is targeting 50 of the most noxious for potential prosecution later this year.' and that '...an 'initiative is being projected for later this year in which it is anticipated that criminal and civil actions under the Can-Spam Act of 2003 will be included.'"
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FBI Plans Spammer Smackdown More

FBI Plans Spammer Smackdown

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  • Same old... (Score:5, Funny)

    by bendelo ( 737558 ) * on Friday May 21, 2004 @07:51AM (#9213901)
    Your post advocates a

    ( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based (*) vigilante

    approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

    ( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
    ( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
    (*) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
    (*) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
    (*) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
    ( ) Users of email will not put up with it
    ( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
    ( ) The police will not put up with it
    (*) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
    ( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
    ( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
    ( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
    ( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

    Specifically, your plan fails to account for

    ( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
    (*) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
    (*) Open relays in foreign countries
    ( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
    (*) Asshats
    (*) Jurisdictional problems
    ( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
    ( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
    ( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
    ( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
    ( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
    (*) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
    ( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
    (*) Extreme profitability of spam
    ( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
    ( ) Technically illiterate politicians
    (*) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
    (*) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
    ( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
    ( ) Outlook

    and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

    (*) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
    been shown practical
    ( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
    ( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
    ( ) Blacklists suck
    ( ) Whitelists suck
    (*) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
    ( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
    (*) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
    ( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
    ( ) Sending email should be free
    ( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
    ( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
    (*) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
    ( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
    ( ) I don't want the government reading my email
    (*) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

    Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

    (*) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
    ( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
    ( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
    house down!

    • Cut it out already (Score:5, Insightful)

      by johannesg ( 664142 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @08:52AM (#9214469)
      This article invariably gets posted whenever someone proposes a solution to spam. Has it ever occurred to you that a single solution is not going to work, but that it _will_ be possible to reduce the problem by taking a number of (in themselves incomplete) measures? And that it is necessary to take such steps, in order to reach a sufficiently acceptable solution?

      By shooting down everything that looks like a beginning to a solution, you are defending the spammers and postponing the date when our inboxes will once again be _ours_.

      Some comments on the items you selected:

      > (*) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money

      You won't know until you try, do you?

      > (*) It is defenseless against brute force attacks

      Maybe, but we still get to see the 50 most obnoxious spammers go through a courtcase and hopefully jail time or major fines. That is good enough for me.

      > (*) Requires too much cooperation from spammers

      Eh? Once the FBI figures out where they live, all they need to do is be home when they knock on his door. And then hopefully resist arrest in some extreme manner.

      > (*) Open relays in foreign countries

      Any spammer based in the US is vulnerable, though. Start with those, then think about how to get the rest. I'm sure some method will make itself apparent.

      > (*) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical

      That's because people like you shoot them down before they are ever tried.

      • It is a bad law - not because it won't do any good (infact I think it will do some good), but because it could have done a lot more good. It is also a bad law because it essentially turns some what was a gray area into a completely legal area instead of doing what the rest of the world is doing and outlawing spam entirely.

        The good thing about the law is that it should make it easier to filter the spam, and in an effort to save bandwidth it can be filtered as it is delivered (MTA can detect that it's spam
        • It is a bad law - not because it won't do any good (infact I think it will do some good), but because it could have done a lot more good. It is also a bad law because it essentially turns some what was a gray area into a completely legal area instead of doing what the rest of the world is doing and outlawing spam entirely.

          What "rest of the world"? Please provide us with some specific examples of how "the rest of the world" is outlawing spam. When you use a phrase like that, you'd better mean more than o
      • If the do live outside the U.S. there might be an alternative enforcement strategy. A few guys in camo can "quietly" pick them up at their home and deliver them to a certain prison facility in Bagdad. Although normal persons/prisoners should never be treated the way they were in Bagdad, I don't think even the most liberal amoung us would worry about the spammers.

  • Skeptical (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ralphb ( 15998 ) * on Friday May 21, 2004 @07:52AM (#9213908) Homepage
    I'll believe that this stupid law is having a positive effect when I start getting less spam. Hasn't happened yet.

    • Re:Skeptical (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Otter ( 3800 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @08:14AM (#9214087) Journal
      Geez, and people wonder why the government is prone to grandstanding and empty gestures, or to policies written for them by lobbyists. They pass a sensible, cautious law, monitor violations and prepare to bring legal action against violators. And all they get is complaints that the magic anti-spam fairies haven't been deployed yet.

      Basically, what the crowd here seems to want is that:

      • Spammers should be summarily shot.
      • To accomplish that, Internet anonymity should be eliminated for spammers, while not affecting the rest of us.
      • Any such policy must apply to the entire world. Instantly.
      • Oh, and if anyone can think of a way by which a single spam might slip through, a proposal is obviously worthless and the person who proposed it is a techno-illiterate simpleton.

      And then you wonder why the legislators and regulators don't listen to nerds.

      • Re:Skeptical (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Daniel Dvorkin ( 106857 ) * on Friday May 21, 2004 @09:21AM (#9214762) Homepage Journal
        Spammers should be summarily shot.

        As satisfying as that might be (public executions, please!) I don't think anyone really wants such a law. However, they should face substantial penalties; I don't think a few years in prison and multimillion-dollar fines and/or lawsuit liability are unreasonable for the worst of the "spam kings."

        To accomplish that, Internet anonymity should be eliminated for spammers, while not affecting the rest of us.

        Spammers, as individuals, have the same right to anonymity as everyone else. But anyone who is trying to sell me something wants me to give them money at some point along the line. That requires that they reveal their identity. And if the spammers are acting as contractors for someone else who is selling something -- type "bulk e-mail service" into Google and see how many hits you get -- then it is not unreasonable to require that they, too, reveal who they are.

        Any such policy must apply to the entire world. Instantly.

        Would that it could be so! But the next best thing would be to make having an effective spam policy a condition of international trade treaties, and again, I don't think that's an unreasonable requirement.

        Oh, and if anyone can think of a way by which a single spam might slip through, a proposal is obviously worthless and the person who proposed it is a techno-illiterate simpleton.

        Many anti-spam proposals are techno-illiterate, and it's fair to point that out when such proposals are made. Others, like CAN-SPAM, are the result of legislative sell-outs to entrenched corporate interests. I don't think anyone realistically expects ever to see a solution that eliminates every single spam. But it would be nice to see one that achieves a 90%, or even 75%, or hell, even 50% reduction in the volume we see now -- and certainly we don't want to see "solutions" that actually give spammers more freedom to spam under certain circumstances, as CAN-SPAM does.

        CAN-SPAM is not a "sensible, cautious law." It is a very nearly toothless law. If it puts one or two spam kings out of business, well, good. But it's not what we need to make a measurable difference in the total amount of spam now clogging the Net.

        • Re:Skeptical (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Otter ( 3800 )
          With all due respect, both you and edp are missing my point. Of course you could draft an anti-spam law that you'd like much better -- I could draft one that I'd like much better. But both of us would wind up getting the same reaction from the geek chorus: "In case this moron doesn't know, there are other countries in the world!" "Oh, like all the spammers are suddenly going to become law-abiding!" "This law has been in effect for a month and there are still spammers!" -- and, needless to say, "What we REAL

      • Re:Skeptical (Score:3, Insightful)

        by pyros ( 61399 )
        Geez, and people wonder why the government is prone to grandstanding and empty gestures, or to policies written for them by lobbyists. They pass a sensible, cautious law, monitor violations and prepare to bring legal action against violators. And all they get is complaints that the magic anti-spam fairies haven't been deployed yet.

        The CAN-SPAM Act was largely written by the Direct Marketing Association.

        • The CAN-SPAM Act was largely written by the Direct Marketing Association.

          Why do you think it has the name it does? It means that the spammers CAN SPAM you with impunity.

      • Re:Skeptical (Score:4, Interesting)

        by edp ( 171151 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @09:27AM (#9214828) Homepage
        "Basically, what the crowd here seems to want is that:"

        That is utter rubbish. It is ad hominem and is not consistent with comments I have generally observed in Slashdot.

        "Spammers should be summarily shot."

        Redress should be quick and effective, like the ability of recipients of unlawful telephone calls to sue in small claims court.

        "To accomplish that, Internet anonymity should be eliminated for spammers, while not affecting the rest of us."

        Anonymity should be preserved in web browsing, participating in discussion fora where the owners desire that, sending email where the recipients desires to allow sender anonymity, and in other communications where all parties consent to such arrangements. Anonymity should not be allowed in sending email if the recipient does not desire that.

        "Oh, and if anyone can think of a way by which a single spam might slip through, a proposal is obviously worthless and the person who proposed it is a techno-illiterate simpleton."

        The flaws of the CAN-SPAM act are many orders of magnitude greater than letting a single spam slip through. The CAN-SPAM legitimized spam that was illegal before, by overriding state laws. It provided no effective redress. It did not outlaw much, perhaps most, of the spam that people do not want, even within US jurisdiction.

      • Nerds? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 )
        Maybe I get the whole geek vs nerds thing mixed up again but one of them knows that what you say is true. We know there is no magic bullet and that it will take multiple solutions all put together to have an effect.

        Not everyone who posts on /. is however a geek/nerd. A fairly large amount is just angsty teen boys who think they are leet because they changed the color theme of the windows on their dell.

        You can tell the parent post is not a nerd or a geek. Nerd/geeks don't get endless amounts of SPAM. We us

        • Re:Nerds? (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Otter ( 3800 )
          You can tell the parent post is not a nerd or a geek. Nerd/geeks don't get endless amounts of SPAM. We use disposable email addresses to limit the number of spam lists we are on, don't give out our email address to just every "free porn" site out there and use filters to stop the rest. That does not make us spam free but if you spend more then 1 minute deleting spam you are doing something wrong. Computers work FOR you, not you for the computer.

          I'm quite happy with a mix of procmail (throwing out .cn and .

        • All those who are diluged under spam fall into the luser group.

          I have several public addresses on my website, in WhoIs, etc, which have been there for years. I refuse to kill them off because once everyone starts hiding their email addresses, the spammers have effectively killed off email as a useful tool.

          I get 400-500 spams a day, plus bounces where spammers fake my domain when they send their spam.

          It takes me very little time to deal with it - as you say, computers work for us.

          And you have the

      • OK, how about an additional complaint that Ashcroft will be doing something about spam only at the end of this year, just in time for the election? Sure, that's cynical, but not as cynical as his boss, Karl Rove, Bush's soviet-style "political director". Rove is the gatekeeper on all policies and decisions in the White House, subordinating every BushCo policy to their highest priority: reelection. And Rove built his career on his rise with the Direct Marketing Association, whose members fill your postal mai
      • Spammers should be summarily shot.

        Finally! A sensible solution! You, sir, are a genius! Can you get me an action plan on this by the end of the day? Don't forget the cover sheet!

    • Re:Skeptical (Score:4, Insightful)

      by not_a_product_id ( 604278 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @08:59AM (#9214538) Journal
      The most effective option would be if NOBODY EVER BOUGHT ANYTHING OF THESE SCUMBAGS! Sadly that's not going to happen - the government could pass a law against stupidity but enforcement is always the tricky part. ;-)

    • Re:Skeptical (Score:5, Interesting)

      by anticypher ( 48312 ) <anticypher@@@gmail...com> on Friday May 21, 2004 @09:35AM (#9214915) Homepage
      The appearance of a law does nothing until there is enforcement action backing it up.

      This is what I've been waiting for, positive action by a law enforcement agency against the worst criminal spammers. The pathetically few lawsuits by US States Attorneys General against a few spammers hasn't made much of a dent in the levels of spam. But I'm convinced that a handful of US based spammers account for 60% or more of all spam today.

      When the NY Attorney General, Elliot Spitzer, launched his attack against Opt-in Real Big, that flow dwindled to almost nothing. Since then, Richter has either sold off his spam lists, or just no longer up front admits to being ORB. The spams against some honeypot accounts that for the last year were exclusively getting ORB spam have started getting spam from a dozen different groups recently, all using chinese, comcast or wanadodo hijacked machines. At least for a few months there was a perceptible decrease in some spam.

      Knowing the FBI, they will make a few headline grabbing busts, complete with news agencies being tipped off in advance so camera crews will be on hand to film the heavily armed agents swarming a trailer park in south Florida. With any luck, the spammers will make sudden, hostile moves towards something in their waistbands, resulting in a "lethal and appropriate" response from the LEOs. I would pay for a copy of that video.

      The FBI may also be using these busts as a way of seizing computers which may hold leads to virus/worm writers who then sell botnets to spammers. The spammers machines may also hold leads to dozens of other criminal activities, which may impact US national security. Even if the spammers lose all their electronics until after the trial, they will still be offline. Especially if their bail conditions include a ban from using any computer or communication device.

      The Federal prosecutors will lump dozens or hundreds of charges against the spammers, knowing they will eventually plea-bargain down to a few charges which will get them only a few years in prison. There will be much press coverage, and many other amateur spammers will decide for less risky fields of criminal enterprise. This action will never eliminate all spam, but it will put a big dent in it.

      It will be interesting to see what level of participation the spam hunting community provides to the FBI. Although the FBI may go it alone, there are a lot of us with a strong technical background willing to put in some hours to provide forensic evidence which can hold up in court.

      the AC

  • One can wish (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mpost4 ( 115369 ) * on Friday May 21, 2004 @07:53AM (#9213919) Homepage Journal
    I wish this would have an inpact on spam. And I hope these spammers get the max sentence the law allows for, but I don't think this will even put a dent in the amount of spam that is slowing the net down.

    • . . .spam that is slowing the net down.

      Yeah... that net thing is really slow.

    • So, how do we pressecute people in China. and we can't prossecute them. [slashdot.org]

      • Re:China (Score:5, Informative)

        by DaHat ( 247651 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @08:17AM (#9214114)
        Remember the title of the article you linked to?

        71% of Spam Servers are Located in China

        Just because the servers are there doesn't mean the are being used by locals.

        It is very likely that a good % of those Viagra spams we all so love may be sent from a Chinese server, but it is nearly as likely that they are being initially sent from the US in the first place.

    • Re:One can wish (Score:4, Interesting)

      by leerpm ( 570963 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @08:19AM (#9214131)
      According to some sources, there is really just a core group of about 200 people responsible for most of the spam. If even half of those people are thrown in jail, it will have a major effect on spam. And most of the remaining ones will get out of the business, simply out of fear of going to jail. It is true that spam is a money making business for some, but the level of profits would have be a lot higher to make it worthwhile for someone to take on a real increased risk of spending time in a federal prison.

      Of course there will be some that set up shop in other countries, but they would have to physically move there to be beyond the reach of authorities here. I am willing to bet, most spammers are not willing to give up the good lifestyle that is provided for them in the US (or other Western developed countries), and will simply get out of the spam business and find other employment. Or maybe spam will simply get outsourced to India..

      • Re:One can wish (Score:2, Insightful)

        by MethylPhreak ( 197698 )
        Does anyone here see a striking parallel to the international drug trade? Basically, people believed the same b.s. about the tough drug laws stopping the drug trade "because after half of the drug kingpins are sent to prison, the other half will get out of the business immediately to avoid prosecution." Yet, here we are, 2004, and we still have a flourishing drug trade on the black market.

        Spam is no different. As long as there is a way to make EASY MONEY, it does not matter how illegal it is, someone wi

        • Re:One can wish (Score:3, Interesting)

          by leerpm ( 570963 )
          There is one big difference. There is a lot more money involved in the drug trade. It is one thing to risk jail time, when you can rake in the cash by the billions. But it becomes a different story when you are only able to make a few million. Yes, there will always be somebody, but if you destroy the economic incentive enough for the majority then you will have made a major breakthru in the battle against spam.

        • Re:One can wish (Score:4, Informative)

          by JuggleGeek ( 665620 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @03:21PM (#9219756)
          Spam is no different.

          Yes, it is. A lot of people *want* drugs, just like a lot of people *wanted* alcohol back during prohibition. Outlawing something that is popular with large numbers of people is quite difficult.

          People do not want spam. A few people want to send spam to everyone else - but the recipients don't want it. Even the spammers don't want their own email boxes full of junk.

  • How will I get my p3n1s enlarged?
    • How will I get my p3n1s enlarged?

      And you think that's bad? Look, my business partner in Nigeria, Mr. Adewale Johnson, read the above Slashdot article and got scared. I haven't heard a word from him since the article was posted. It's a bummer actually because I had just sent him $10K to pay for his lawyer's fees, and I was waiting for his confirmation that he wired me the $20M.

      Personal message: Dr. Johnson, don't be scared by Slashdot, the article doesn't apply to you, only crooks. Please talk to me, I aw

  • I got scammed by all the spams.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by brxndxn ( 461473 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @07:59AM (#9213968)
    Good! My penis never got any larger. Horny wives never had sex with me. My prescriptions for Xanax never arrived. My cheap version of Windows XP wouldn't activate. My home loans never came through. Michelle's page made just for me had 900,000 visits and I'm beginning to think she is cheating on me...

    They're all scammers - a bunch of spamming scammers they are!!

  • Great (Score:5, Insightful)

    by digitalgimpus ( 468277 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @07:59AM (#9213975) Homepage
    Spam has made email so rediculus it's amazing.

    The FBI went crazy when someone crashed eTrade, Yahoo, etc. with a DoS attack...

    But the world's email has been under a DoS attack for some time, while they stand idle.

    Strange isn't it? Yahoo's website goes under heavy load, and it's criminal. Yahoo's mail goes under heavy load... and it's not.

    • Actually, that's about the only valid reason that I could see for the US Postal Service to get involved in E-mail Delivery. They would sent out there own postal inspectors because mail fraud, mailing porn, and mailing false ads. across state lines is usually illegal or atleast against Postal Regs.

      I wouldn't want a Federal Agency monitoring all e-mail accounts and mail sent. I wouldn't mind one though keeping track of and verifing network administrators with valid US e-mail servers. Actually, it would just

    • Re:Great (Score:3, Informative)

      by akaina ( 472254 ) *
      That's mostly because junk mail has a punitive cost, whereas DoS on a web server costs real-time customer transactions.

      The FBI only gets involved when they have solid evidence that there is a loss of over $50,000 (or a number very near that).

    • Re:Great (Score:3, Insightful)

      by StormyMonday ( 163372 )
      Yuppers.

      For a long time now, spam has looked less like marketing and more like a denial of service attack.

      The Feds claim to be concerned with "cyberterrorism". It's happening and it's right under their noses.
    • But the world's email has been under a DoS attack for some time, while they stand idle.

      They're not the worlds policemen.

    • Until just receantly. America is a legal by default nation, that's what the spirit of Ammendment 10 of the Constitution is. Unless a law has been passed against something, it's legal. Hence why ecasty was legal for awhile. It had to be categorized as a controlled substance before it could be illegal.

      So SPAM itself wasn't illegal. Some (many) of the things spammers did were illegal, but quite hard to prosecute, like fraud. Yes, it was illegal to advertise you are selling something you are not but it's much

  • Yes but (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Roland Piquepaille ( 780675 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @08:02AM (#9213990)
    the FBI told Congress on Thursday that it has 'identified over 100 significant spammers

    That's very nice, but the fact remains that 90% of all spam originates from countries that are out of the FBI's jurisdiction. What are they going to do about it?

    It nothing else, American spammers will just move their operations abroad. The FBI knows this very well, so I reckon they're just making noise and spewing hot air in an effort to look like they're on top of the problem, when really they're not.

    • Re:Yes but (Score:3, Insightful)

      by djeaux ( 620938 )
      It nothing else, American spammers will just move their operations abroad.

      How many American spammers are going to move themselves to China? It's one thing to move the criminal operations overseas, but unless the criminal relocates his own worthless carcass, the fibbies can still go after him. The FBI loves to make cases by "following the money."

      It's not just a matter of "outsourcing" the spamming operation overseas. The spammer will have to move to Lower Slobovia, too.

    • Re:Yes but (Score:5, Insightful)

      by meringuoid ( 568297 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @08:12AM (#9214062)
      That's very nice, but the fact remains that 90% of all spam originates from countries that are out of the FBI's jurisdiction. What are they going to do about it?

      90% of spam is sent from servers outside the FBI's jurisdiction. That doesn't mean it originated there: it's sent by Americans who are offering products in America to an American market and expecting to be paid in American dollars to an American bank.

      Unless the spammer is prepared personally to move overseas, sooner or later the matter comes into the FBI's jurisdiction.

      And since when does being in a foreign country mean you can flout US law? Dmitri and Jon found that out to their cost. Criminals beware: you can no longer hide behind the figleaf of foreign national sovereignty!

      • "Unless the spammer is prepared personally to move overseas, sooner or later the matter comes into the FBI's jurisdiction."

        And that is the point... Let Ralsky and his gang of criminals have to choose:

        1. Live in the USA and work for a living

        2. Live in China or some third world Krapistan

        At some point, spam enters US jurisdiction:

        The advertiser
        The spam gang

        If either of those parties are in the US, it doesn't matter where the server is.

    • Re:Yes but (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rekoil ( 168689 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @08:13AM (#9214074)
      Actually, more and more spam is originating from various 0wned Windows boxen sitting on broadband lines right here in the US.

      I think what you meant to say is that 90% of the websites advertised in spam emails today are offshore.

      However, just because the servers are offshore does not mean that the spammers are foreign. If you follow the money like spamhaus.org [spamhaus.org] does, you'll see that the large majority of the world's largest spammers are, in fact, based in the US [spamhaus.org]. They simply host their servers in China.

      In short, most American spammers have already moved their operations abroad. But as long as the spammers themselves are still here, they are very much subject to prosecution. It just takes more work to track them down. :)
    • ...it's also been shown that many of the actual spam SENDERS are in the US and Europe. They are simply using servers that are OUTSIDE of the US to send spam.

      There was a story about this yesterday. [slashdot.org]

    • At a guess: since the spammers are advertising for 'services' and 'products' available in the US, they will follow the money.

      That the spam is actually being sent from China may be irrelevant. It would not be the first time that the US passed a law which also covered offences committed outside their boundaries.
    • > That's very nice, but the fact remains that 90% of
      > all spam originates from countries that are out of
      > the FBI's jurisdiction. What are they going to do
      > about it?

      How about:
      - define spammers as terrorists
      - propose a free trade agreement with countries housing spammers
      - make adoption of US terrorist laws a condition of accepting the free trade agreement ...the rest is left to the reader's imagination
    • That's very nice, but the fact remains that 90% of all spam originates from countries that are out of the FBI's jurisdiction. What are they going to do about it?

      An UAV armed with missles, God willing.

  • Get the Feds out... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WordODD ( 706788 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @08:06AM (#9214023)
    Before CANSPAM some states like California were actually making some (little) progess with their own state laws. Now that we have the Federally sponsered CANSPAM act these most of these previous laws have been rendered useless/void and a lot of them were tougher on spammers then CANSPAM is. The Feds have enough to deal with already and, it would be in their best interests to let the states handle it themselves.
  • The best way to stop spam would be if people stopped buying viagra and porn from the companies that send out the spam.

    That way the spammers would stop making money and would stop sending spam.

    Under capitalist principles, the spammers are doing the right thing. We need to make it unprofitable for them.

    (Also, I think the spammers should start sending poems, jokes and stuff out. That way people would start reading their spam and be more susceptible to the offers).

  • Let me guess... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @08:10AM (#9214049) Homepage
    ...this will be the kind where they round up a little ring of spammers/fraudsters, get big headlines and call this "a devastating blow to spammers everywhere" and that they've "destroyed the backbone of the spam community".

    You certainly see it happen when it comes to warez, kiddie porn, drugs, organized crime etc. (without comparison otherwise). Strangely enough, a year later they have to make another "devastating blow" that'll once again "break them".

    So I wouldn't turn off the spam filters just yet, I'm sure there's dozens of idiots willing and waiting to take their place. Of course it's doubleplusgood that they're trying, just don't expect them to "end" this any more than they end any other problem...

    Kjella
    • I'm sure it won't end it, I mean no matter how illegal you make someting and how horrible the punishment, there will always be an idiot that will try it once and a while. However I do think it can make a significant dent. The reason why cracking down on drugs is so ineffective is the huge demand. People want drugs, and are willing to go to great lenghts to get them. Not the same case with SPAM. Very, very few people want SPAM, some are just suckered in to buying from them.

      The reason it is so prevalant isn'

  • In Other News (Score:5, Funny)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @08:12AM (#9214066) Homepage Journal
    Scott Richter suddenly becomes unavailable to debate SpamCop's Julian Haight.

  • Follow the money (Score:2, Insightful)

    by NoSuchGuy ( 308510 )
    The FBI should follow the money:

    - Who profits from sale?
    - Who sells products (=pills) to spam outlets?
    - Is the spam send via own mailserver or hijacked proxies, worm infected PCs...

    My Server = my Rules!

  • How to filter better - a modest proposal (Score:4, Insightful)

    by infolib ( 618234 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @08:14AM (#9214084)
    A lot of the spam I get is "We detected a virus in your mail" when in fact the sender of the infected mail just spoofed my address.

    It would probably be better if the AntiVirus companies didn't send such "warnings" at all, but if they want to, they should standardize on including a header such as X-virus-warning-bounce. Then the rest of us could just filter them out. It would save some of my precious mental bandwidth.
    • But then it would be more easy to filter them out. Why do you think spammers go through so much trouble trying to defeat spam filters? I am not sure the antivirus companies see the advantage in your proposal (unless they are forced to it)

      Recently, I even got a "we detected a virus in your email" message with a spoofed FROM: header so that it appeared it had been sent by my own ISP, while a closer inspection of the Received: headers revealed that was not the case.

    • I run a medium size mail server (>10000 users). My problem isn't the 'your message contained a virus messages'. I can train spam filters to put those in the bit bucket.

      Its the "Your receipient doesn't exist" messages that are also noise from the viruses that are the problems. I can't filter those without filtering out legitimate undeliverable messages.

      I wish more mail servers would do what we do. Check for viruses. If there is a virus discard. THEN check to see if the recipient exists. If you ch
  • Here are simple, uncomplicated techniques [slashdot.org] to stop a lot of spam and keep the existing system intact.
  • The CAN-SPAM Act 2003 [spamlaws.com] states a maximum imprisonment term of 5 years for relevant offenders.

    Soldiers who abuse prisoners receive a maximum penalty of 1 year in prison.

    If the law reflects community standards at all, it is obvious that spamming is considered to be significantly more noxious and intolerable. Although I'm not sure who the Americans would want to see locked away more. Spammers or abusers of human rights?

  • Do they only go after 50 out of every 100 drugs smugglers, terrorists, etc?

    I'm not in the USA (but 99% of the spam I get is for things priced in US$), but can't you force them legally to do the job properly?

    Maybe file a freedom of information request to get the other 50 names and adresses?
  • I'm not trying to be a troll, really I'm not...

    but doesn't the FBI have enough to do already? I mean, I hate SPAM like everyone else (100/day AFTER filtering) but I'd rather have the FBI catch murderers, terrorist, spies, etc etc. I waste a lot of time cleaning my inbox, but I'd rather have the Feds catching violent criminals (cause you know we don't have enough of those here in the U.S.!) instead of relying on hospitals to keep me alive. [cnn.com]

    • First of all, murders would often be an issue for local law enforcement. Serials killers perhaps an FBI issue, but otherwise it would be the jurisdiction of the local PD.

      Terrorists... if you look at all the steps taken to "combat terrorism," I'd rather they backed off a bit on their current focus before I end up with SWAT in my living room. Proactive steps against terrorist attacks would be good, but the "war against terror" is more like a witch-hunt with an agendy for implenting draconian laws.

      Spies. I

  • A spammer's whinge (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bigbadwlf ( 304883 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @08:34AM (#9214280)
    "When we mail under the new law, the major ISPs focus on our From: addresses, Subject: lines, our company information, and our disclaimers on the bottom of the e-mail as well as our IP address. They use this information to block our e-mails," Scelson said.

    That's the whole point - many customers pay for that service.
    • He says that if people continue to block him, he'll start spamming again. [yahoo.com] My question: when did he ever stop?

      The usual evidence of Rule #1 (spammers always lie):
      Scelson, who said he had to move his family and business after receiving threats last year, said he was trying to play by the rules.

      Didn't he file for bankruptcy in March 2003 or so? He moved out because he couldn't pay the mortgage. Remember that the next time the Spam King du jour brags about his Huge Enormous Spam Palace.

  • How spam is affecting me. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by suso ( 153703 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @08:50AM (#9214452) Journal
    Personally, it's not a big problem for me, I filter out most of my spam. Or delete the ones that don't get filtered.

    But as for my internet services business, it makes it hard because all the customers are getting slammed with spam and I'm always trying to do things to rememdy that, instead of working on better stuff like a nicer user control panel, better backup features, adding virtual IMAP accounts, etc.

    We had the same problem at the ISP I used to work at. 50% of the sysadmins jobs where to deal with spam related problems.

    So there is a measurable loss of money and productivity as a result of spam.

  • us spam (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cstream_chris ( 776009 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @09:02AM (#9214560)
    You're all silly. Over 55% of the world's spam originates in the US with the closest 2nd being Canada at 6.8%. See Sophos Dirty Dozen at: http://www.sophos.com/spaminfo/articles/dirtydozen .html Additionally, over 90% of the world's spam comes from just 200 well known spammers (w/ Alan Ralsky being #1). See ROKSO (Registry of Known Spam Operations): http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/index.lasso Anyway, it's good the US is finally going after some of these people since individuals are no longer allowed to sue spammers under the Can Spam Act (aka "You Can Spam Act")
  • FBI should go after those who advertise in the spam. not only spammers.
    Most of them are scam artists anyway. no one would pay Allan Ralsky to send all this $hit.
  • Wake me when it's the U.S. Army handling the spammer smackdown.

    And as an upside, Bush's (flawed) policies would help "solve" the whole international jurisdiction problem that spam has.

    - Neil Wehneman

  • one solution I never see mentioned (Score:3, Interesting)

    by zogger ( 617870 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @10:34AM (#9215769) Homepage Journal
    and that is a large, non commercial email system. All the members sign up, pay a fee of some sort of adequate folding money for an email account, something high enough to make it practical to have an account, and impractical enough for spammers to use it. It's like a built from scratch giant whitelist. Any infractions, you are out. Something like the proposed google email system, that big I mean, but zero commercial traffic, none, not for any reason. The fees go to pay for the servers and bandwith, etc of the org that runs it. It would be viral in the sense that you as joe emailer tell your friends/whomever you normally conduct non commercial email with "here's my new address, it's restricted. The company doesn't allow commercial email at all, in fact, zero mail gets inside the system from outside the system. the email must orginate and terminate totally inside the system of registered users.. You can email me at this addy,after you register yourself, but don't CC to people outside, no spam or ads are allowed,you have to do your best on keeping your own computer clean, you assume responsbility for that, and this is how you can contact me now if you want to, your choice".

    Then stick with it.

    The main problem with email is it's so easy to have unlimited emails, so easy to create them. If an email addy was actually worth as much as say your snail mail addy or your phone number, it wouldn't be quite as bad. I don't think it would ever get perfect, but I bet it could eliminate the bulk of the bad stuff. What would an email addy that good be worth per year? I guess that's a variable, perhaps a downpayment, then a bandwith charge over a certain amount of traffic in and out of your box.

    And no, I really don't have any technical details of how to go about it, outside my area of expertise. Maybe it's impossible, I don't know, but it seems like it *should* be possible. And there's nothing stopping anyone from keeping their "old" style email in addition, but at least it would be one account you know was mostly rid of spam and viruses and whatnot right from the git-go..
  • If they have identified these people and have some evidence, why are they waiting to act until "later next year?" The longer they're on the loose, the more chance they will have to move their operations overseas, earn money to hire better lawyers, etc. And, of course, the more spam they will inflict on us and the more it will cost *us*.

    I say arrest them as soon as the prosecuting attorney is happy with the case.a judge will sign a warrant. Why wait?

  • Since the FTC [ftc.gov] (not the FBI) is the US government body that gets most UCE/spam complaints [ftc.gov], (FBI seems interested only in some types of fraud [ifccfbi.gov] -- and then only if there are victims, not just attempts) I'll be curious to see if the two bodies are able to cooperate enough for the FBI to actually make use of the FTC's data, of which ther must by now be a mind-blowingly huge amount.
  • Here's what the article's all about: CAN-SPAM Act Congressional Testimony [fbi.gov] of Assistant Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Jana Monroe before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, May 20, 2004

    Steve Linford of spamhaus [spamhaus.org] calls the overview of Project SLAM-Spam "required reading for all spammers." [google.com]

  • Instant results aren't promised (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ra5pu7in ( 603513 ) <ra5pu7inNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday May 21, 2004 @11:40AM (#9216851) Journal
    Good grief. No law suddenly causes all violators to stop their behavior. Laws against monopolies didn't make businesses suddenly see the error of their ways and break up. Laws against racism and segregation haven't ended prejudice. The laws are merely tools allowing some authoritative body to take action against the worst offenders (and sometimes the lesser offenders).

    Take laws against racism and segregation. Until the military came along and forced some schools to accept non-white students, they would have gone right on ignoring the law. It took 1) someone reporting the violation, 2) someone investigating the violation, 3) someone enforcing the punishment for the violation, and 4) someone making it know through action that violations would not be acceptable.

    The FBI is investigating and getting ready to go after spammers. They have not yet enforced the punishments, but they have the authority to confiscate possessions bought with the proceeds or used in spamming (much as the IRS does for tax evaders), so losing homes and cars and computers should begin to make it less profitable to spam. Until enough spammers lose a lot, the word won't spread that spamming doesn't pay. That doesn't make the law useless - it just means it hasn't had time to make much impact yet. The degree of the impact will depend on the continued enforcement (though I believe the ratio of FBI agents to spammers is a lot better than speeders to cops).

    Of course, this won't stop all spammers. There will be the diehard group (likely with mafia-style connections) who go so deep underground that they are hard to find.

    BTW, spammers by their very business, want to have someone able to find them -- their "customers". (Hey, perhaps we should go after the users instead of the dealers -- slap a $250 fine on any person who buys from spam. Soon, with no one responding to their offers, spammers would go out of business. Yeah, I know this wouldn't really work.)

  • Don't expect much. - the DMA is involved. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Friday May 21, 2004 @12:26PM (#9217638) Homepage
    The FBI now claims to be "investigating spam". But they've contracted with the Direct Marketing association for support, the project has been going on since at least August 2003, and they're vague about what resources are actually being devoted to the project.

    The "Notable early accomplishments" read very strangely. They seem to have been drafted for maximum deniability. "Developed ten primary subject packets developed and for referral to Law Enforcement" "We are already planning meetings to ensure that this initiative is on track, and to further define the scope and packaging of this activity are being planned." Doesn't sound like a major roundup of criminals is in the works.

    The FBI doesn't actually produce many arrests per hour expended. The FBI's Baltimore-based child porno operation produces about 1.6 arrests per agent year. They have 200 agents on that operation, or about 2% of their agent staff. (The FBI isn't that big. There are only about 12,000 agents. The NYPD is four times as large.) So to shut down 100 spammers per year, they'd probably have to devote about 75 agents to the operation, which is a big bite for them.

    The DMA involvement is part of the problem. The DMA carefully crafted the CAN-SPAM act to make it expensive to enforce. The California law (which CAN-SPAM invalidated) was nice and simple - advertise using spam, go to jail. It's easy to find and arrest the advertisers, who collect the money. CAN-SPAM requires finding the actual spammers, which is much harder. With the DMA working closely with the FBI, they can direct the FBI away from "responsible e-mail marketers", as the DMA puts it. They may also receive FBI cooperation in lobbying against stronger anti-spam legislation in future.

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