bucy wrote:
] ] Internet users fed up with the seemingly endless flow of
] ] spam should pin their hopes on a technological solutions
] ] rather than legislative ones, a top U.S. regulator said
] ] this week.

When government officials say "its a software problem" I tend to think of hardware vendors. This article was very short winded. There was no detailed explanation of exactly what problems the FTC has in prosecuting this stuff. Its hard to tell if its the article that sucks, or if the FTC statement was intentionally vauge.

Anonymnity is not the problem. The company whose product is advertised should bear full liability. No one is advertising your product without your knowledge.

Bust one company and the amount of illegal spam will drop dramatically. Sending spam out will mean sending out millions of messages that say "send the police here."

] Like I keep saying, most spam is already illegal under the
] fraud statutes. New laws absolutely will not help, especially
] considering that a huge volume of spam comes from overseas --
] pac rim, eastern europe, etc.

I agree with your first conclusion. Most of the spam I get seems to be coming from compromised machines/open relays and has forged headers. Its not just fraud, is computer fraud and abuse. However, my friend Cyan has spent a lot more time then I have looking at this stuff and has told me that statistically most spam is not sent out using those methods.

Either way, I can see the potential for legal fixes, for example, in the case of spam that is not fraudulently sent, but which you cannot unsubscribe from, and also in the case of open relays. (Someone could easily argue that running an open relay is giving permission to email senders, and reference toad.com as an example. Legislation needs to clarify that.)

However, no amount of legislation is going to have an impact if there is no enforcement, and I agree that there is NO enforcement, and this is a huge part of the problem.

However, overseas should not be seen as an inpenetrable barrier. Its merely a reality of the changing nature of government. As it becomes easier to commit "petty" crimes across international lines, it will become more important for law enforcement to develop the capability to respond to "petty" crimes across international lines. This means getting rid of the old chain of command, where huge beaurocratic barriers existed to international cooperation between local police forces. These barriers existed because of the expense and political issues involved. Those issues don't exist in the modern world. You can pick up a phone and call Korea for less then 25 cents a minute. Local police in Korea ought to be in communication with local police in the United States. Directly.

I think that is what will happen over time. I don't think that spam will spurn it. I think that more serious crimes will... Ultimately, however, law enforcement must become a distributed, many to many system, where the people on the ground are empowered, and can work seamlessly with collegues from other countries, just as the military is currently reorganizing. Its only a matter of when.