FC: Brad Templeton on Bush's TIPS program, spam, press credentials

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

[Some compiled submissions... Brad is a provocative and intelligent writer. 
Previous Politech message: http://www.politechbot.com/p-03768.html --Declan]

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Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 13:25:41 -0700
From: Brad Templeton <bt () templetons com>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Subject: Re: FC: Brad Templeton on DOJ "TIPS" informant plan: Operation 
TIPS-TIPS
Organization: http://www.templetons.com/brad

Declan, a lot of people sent mail about enjoying the idea of TIPS-TIPS, so
to spread the meme further, I made a web page for Operation TIPS-TIPS;


    http://www.all-the-other-names-were-taken.com/tipstips.html

Report suspected citizen informants here!

On a more serious note, to read an essay on why surveillance is bad for
freedom, called "A Watched Populace Never Boils," go to:

    http://www.templetons.com/brad/watched.html

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Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2002 13:19:31 -0700
From: Brad Templeton <brad () templetons com>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Cc: politech () politechbot com
Subject: Re: FC: A defense of David Scott Anderson and resume spamming

On Wed, Jul 10, 2002 at 12:15:56PM -0400, Declan McCullagh wrote:
> personally, i would not have reported him as a spammer, but deleted the
> mail. he is just trying to find a job. many, myself included use free addys
> as a privacy and protection measure. otoh, he over reacted to your


Job hunting provide an interesting bellweather test on the spam issue.

For example, many people seek to define spam as "UCE" and pass laws against
that, even though it's pretty easy to demonstrate that it is abuse of bulk
mail which is at the heart of the spam problem, since _*true*_ person to person
e-mails could never create a sufficient annoyance to be worthy of much
attention.

A classic E-mail I have received which is banned by such laws goes as
follows:

    "Hi. I've been following your company for some time now.  I am
    particularly interested in the work you have been doing on _X_ and
    _Y_ and your product _Z_ is I think the best designed in the field.
    For <various reasons> I think you're doing some of the best thinking
    in the area.  I don't see any open job reqs on your site that match
    my skills, but nonetheless I think you are the sort of company I would
    like to work for, and I have the following particular skills.  Might
    you be interested in interviewing me?"

Now these letters are not common, but I have gotten them and have interviewed
people who sent them.   There is no need to ban them but the anti-UCE zeal
(as opposed to anti-UBE) has led to it.

However, I must take the counter tack on the resume spammer, who is not
writing a personal E-mail of this sort, but just blasting mail to people
who are not even employers.

The argument above forgets one of the core issues at the soul of spam.
No one spammer is responsible for ruining E-mail.  It's like litter or
air pollution.  Together, the spammers are making our mailboxes useless.

Even if we get rid of the sociopath spammers, we can't allow an exception
for those down on their luck.  If every mother with a sick child were to
mail everybody they could, we would not be able to use our mailboxes.
And a mother with a sick child is much more in need than an out of work
programmer.   There are, unfortunately, a million worthy causes out there,
so you can't say, "spam is OK if it's for a worthy cause."

Those worthy causes have to find another channel to promote themselves,
one meant for many-to-one messaging.  E-mail is not it.

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Date: Sun, 2 Jun 2002 15:30:30 -0700
From: Brad Templeton <brad () templetons com>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Subject: Re: FC: Internet Society denies press credentials to online 
publication
Message-ID: <20020602153030.B26571 () main templetons com>
References: <5.1.1.6.0.20020602131818.01a08e98 () mail well com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i
In-Reply-To: <5.1.1.6.0.20020602131818.01a08e98 () mail well com>; from 
declan () well com on Sun, Jun 02, 2002 at 04:35:35PM -0400
Organization: http://www.templetons.com/brad
X-UIDL: b8c97a6daaa1710d89e73ea759cafe83


I doubt it.   Since the dawn of the net, this question has been boiling
under the surface.  When everybody can be a journalist, the question of
the privileges of the press is different from the questions of the freedom
of the press.

If anybody can be press, you can't give free press passes to events.  You
can't have everybody crossing the police line or sitting in the press box.

I won't pretend I didn't make use of the privileges of the press when I
was running an online newspaper.  But there will have to be some line.

It is important that we pay attention to that line, because many of the
privileges of the press are there to protect the freedom of the press.
In particular, they are the unelected representatives of the people who
go where all the people can't go to let the people know what's going on.
If everybody can't go in, somebody has to.

This problem has existed for a long time with pool reporting of military
actions, where even the big press can't all get access.

What's vital is that the government not be allowed to make the arbitrary
determination of who is and isn't press.  That means there need to be
some sort of objective test.

For a private society, though, the test is likely to be subjective.

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