Senate panel approves jail for spammers

WASHINGTON--Internet "spammers" who flood e-mail inboxes with deceptive pitches could face up to five years in jail under a bill approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday.

The "Criminal Spam Act of 2003" joins several other anti-spam measures advancing through Congress. Lawmakers had hoped to pass an anti-spam bill into law this year, but that looks increasingly unlikely as both chambers hope to adjourn in little more than a week.

The bill takes aim at a variety of popular spammer techniques in an effort to stamp out deceptive commercial e-mail.

Like another bill passed by the Senate Commerce Committee this summer, the Criminal Spam Act targets commercial e-mailers who falsify return addresses or otherwise try to obscure their identities. The two efforts could be combined before the Senate votes on the issue, lawmakers said earlier this year.

"The time has come to curb the growth of spam on all fronts through aggressive civil and criminal enforcement actions, as well as innovative technological solutions," said Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, who sponsored the bill along with Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy.

Spam, or unsolicited bulk e-mail, now accounts for nearly half of all e-mail traffic, according to several estimates. Two out of three spam messages contain false information of some sort, the Federal Trade Commission said earlier this year.

The bill would make it a crime to route e-mail through another person's computer or e-mail address, a favorite spammer tactic.

Spammers who "harvest" e-mail addresses from Web sites or send out messages to millions of randomly generated addresses in so-called "dictionary attacks" would face jail time as well.

Repeat offenders could face up to five years in jail.

Efforts to pass an anti-spam bill in the House of Representatives have been stalled as lawmakers try to forge a compromise between several competing bills.

Source(http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-508...ag=zdnnfd.main)

Nice,

I do not suppose that I would have the opportunity of choosing their cell mates :D

Cheers

The mind boggles. Unless the US House and Senate suddenly have international authority, I don't see where this is going to do any good. I haven't seen any spam for a couple years now that has originated anywhere in the US.

Well, "real" good, anyway. The congresspeople can always use this as a re-election campaign pitch to the clueless.

I am afraid that Rapier is right. Legislation is national, but the problem is international.

I think it might be easier to get accord on "unauthorised use of bandwidth" where other machines are exploited to relay the spam? I guess that is "resource theft", invasion of privacy, hacking or whatever?

Or perhaps privacy/data protection.....................you have 12 million e-mail addresses................why?...................have you registered your possession of these data?

I guess that like Rapier.......I'll believe it when I see the convictions :) At the moment it just looks like a political declaration of good intent.


Just my £0.02

Cheers

Quote:

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And like negging really offends me, infact it makes me wanna post more and more and more until you can take no more of this.

MsMittens this ain't gonna end.
You gonna have to try and block me from reentering this place, if you ever wannna stop me from attacking your character.
Im not gonna stop and your never gonna stop being a fake so im nearly like you.

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Is there even a reason for this semingly un-provoked attack, all your doing is attacking the forum and not MsMittens her self as she is not online / no t responding.

I'm sure we can permanantly ban you!

There's always the curise missle solution to the international spam problem. (jk)

It's good the US gov't would take a stance, even if it won't mean much. But, I am surprised they actually would call it the "Criminal Spam Act of 2003". Spam is a wholesome, hearty meat-flavored food substitute with a rich history rooted in sodium and aluminum cans. Maybe the "Unsolicited Commercial Email Act" would be better..

l00p

I'm sure Bush will push for something saying sending Spam E-mail is a form of Terrorism :D. Atleast it's a small step in the right direction, I got to the point where I quit deleting spam e-mail from my AOL Inbox, and now there's almost 400 of them, in 1 month!