According to this article SPAM (unsolicited bulk email) is a form of free speech and is therefore protected by the First Ammendment. This ruling means that infamous spammer Jeremy Jaynes will walk free, after recently being sentenced to 9 years for his spamming activities. It was estimated that Jaynes sent 10 million spam messages per day, earning him $750,000 per month, which added up to $24 million in total.
Archive for September, 2008
Wiretap!
After the largely forgotten scandal involving the U.S. government illegally wiretapping domestic phone calls, I think we all assumed that the U.S. was the biggest brother of the “free” world. However, this article in the Dutch news has burst my big brother bubble. This revelation has somewhat shattered my naive tendency to think Europe holds individual privacy in higher regard than than the stereotypical American FBI/CIA/NSA goons.
According to this article, the Dutch government taps more conversations per day than the U.S. reportedly taps in an entire year. Granted, these are just the numbers we know about, but the implications still contradict the stereotypical image of the privacy conscious European, to say the least. Of course, warrants are still needed to tap a phone in Holland, and the assumption is that these warrants are actually arranged before the tap begins. Yet, this article has shown me not to trust my assumptions, after all, the next article might reveal the opposite.
