Congress Pretends To Ban Spam, While Spamming Itself

from the ahh,-lovely-loopholes dept

It's no secret that Congress has a nasty habit of passing laws that include an exemption for themselves (which really should make you wonder). It's no surprise, of course, that the recently passed "CAN SPAM" law includes so many loopholes that many people (including us) think it's more a blueprint on how to spam, rather than a law forbidding spam. Among the loopholes is one that makes it perfectly legal for Congressional representatives to send spam, and, man, are they taking advantage of that. Apparently, many members of Congress are buying up email lists to spam possible constituents to get them to "sign up" for special email lists. While those email lists are opt-in, the fact that they're getting the word out via spam seems particularly bad. They claim that since they get more people opting-in than opting-out that people don't mind. That ignores the fact that most people won't opt-out, but will simply trash the email. This just adds more evidence to show how little many of our Congressional representatives actually understands what they're talking about when it comes to technology issues.

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