Spam and privacy

[Mark Musone]

I guess I'll take a shot too....:^)

I agree to what you are saying to a point...

However, I think that connecting privacy and anonymous email is quite a
stretch. In most cases, the privacy argument is used in the sense of
having the right for people to NOT bother you... no that you can do
things anonymously..

No different than if you buy a house, there are public records. That’s
one of the precepts of buying a house. You cannot buy a house
anonymously. However, you do have the right to put up a no trespassing
sign and to not have people bother you...

So in reality with the spam argument, the privacy issue is really on the
receiver's end, and not the senders end. 

As Joe mentioned, it's also about accountability...no different than
free speech does not give you the right to yell "fire" in a movie
theatre.

Theres also a big probability of not necessarially disallowing
unverified email, but instead allowing recipients the ability to not
accept messages that are not verified (heh..not too different from the
do not call list :%) ). 

One last thing that I don’t want to cause a big stir up is that there
really is no right to privacy in the constitution...it's talks about the
government NOT being allowed to do certain things, like search and
seizure..etc..people often extend this general idea to believe that by
stating what the government _cannot_ do, this implies that theres an
inherent right to privacy..which is I guess for the courts to decide :^)

-Mark





-----Original Message-----
From: owner-nflug at nflug.org [mailto:owner-nflug at nflug.org] On Behalf Of
Asheville Joe
Sent: Friday, June 27, 2003 6:12 PM
To: NFLUG
Subject: Spam and privacy

Spam is a hassle to everybody, but I'm wondering if the problem will be 
used as an excuse to eliminate another aspect of privacy - anonymous
email.
I may be reading this too broadly, but Billy's remarks (along with 
Palladium, etc.) make me a little sensitive on this issue.

> http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/execmail/2003/06-24antispam-print.asp


I have had occasion to send comments or opinions to controversial sites 
which I did not want traceabe back to me.  I have used anonymous 
emailers to do this. (I'm sure there's a way to do this in Linux, but 
technical issues are not the point here.)  I think it's important to 
maintain this ability as part of free speech and because it enables 
people who stick their necks out to get feedback from those who have 
something to say, but are unwilling to take the associated risk of 
public disclosure of their identities.

What do you think?

Joe


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