The American Mind

I must be a glutton for punishment. I’m again posting on Rep. Ron Paul and risking that his swarm of internet supporters pile onto this humble weblog. But when the material is this good I can’t help myself. The latest is a group of academics discovering “a new spam campaign dedicated to proclaiming him victorious in the debate and extolling his virtues as the future president.” That candidate is Ron Paul:

[Gary] Warner says, “We’ve seen many previous emails reported as spam from other campaigns or parties, but when we’ve investigated them, they all were sent from the legitimate parties.” The important distinction between the new emails and previous emails, Warner says, is the fraudulent nature of the message. Legitimate messages tell who they are from, and provide a means of “unsubscribing” from future messages from the same source.

According to the CAN-SPAM Act, the primary law under which unwanted email can be prosecuted in the US, one of the factors that makes a message spam is deceptive sending practices. In the messages reviewed at UAB, emails were received from Brazil, El Salvador, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, and Nigeria already this morning. In each case it was clear that the computer sending the message did not belong to the person who was listed in the “From” address. Such as a Houston resident, whose email was sent from a computer in Italy, or a Silicon Valley computer worker, whose email was sent from Korea.

“Messages such as these harm the online eco-system by casting doubt on the veracity of other online communications”, Warner said.

As far as I know political campaigns do not have to abide by CAN-SPAM (the Thompson campaign does so anyways), but independent groups do.

Brian at Liberty Pundit is not surprised at the discovery. It matches what we’ve seen on the internet the past few months:

Seriously, though, it’s a given that these people troll the internet for the mere mention of the man’s name. And once they find anything remotely anti-Ron Paul, they go to work. They do spam internet polls, they do spam comment sections, and they certainly spam our emails. So it’s not a surprise to me if they are doing this, not in the least.

Don Surber wishes Paul would publicly disassociate himself from such supporters. He won’t do that because they’re driving his attention machine.

“‘Ron Paul Spammers‘ Targeted by UAB Spam Team”

Disclaimer: I work for Friends of Fred Thompson, Inc.