Re: surge in spam email (fwd)

[David Charlap <david.charlap () marconi com>]

"Derek J. Balling" wrote:
> I dunno,... using your list as a guide, I don't find a lot that US
> legislators can do... last I heard, .au, .pl, .de, .pt, .uk, .sg,
> .tw, .fr, .nz, and .es are all outside of the "long arm o' the law".
> I didn't take the time to see how many of the [IP] and .(com|net|org)
> entries were actually in the US or were themselves foreign, but the
> top 6 entries in your list would "laugh at those silly American
> laws". That puts the majority of spam out of the reach of the law,
> making the law a useless waste of time. This is definitely an area
> that self-governance (ORBS, MAPS, et al, choose YOUR personal
> favorite... "let's not argue over who killed who") is best.

Keep in mind that the spam usually doesn't originate from the relay site
your computer is receiving it from.

Judging from the "send your money here" addresses and phone numbers that
I usually find in the spam, the people sending the spam (or the people
contracting to have the spam sent) are mostly in the US.

With a proper set of laws on the books, law enforcement could simply
read the content of the spam to get a phone number, address or PO box,
and prosecute whoever owns it.  The fact that they abused a foreign
server in the process shouldn't change anything.

-- David