When Peter Sand first announced his presence in the net-abuse.email newsgroup two weeks ago, he caught a lot of flak from regular users. They were convinced he was a nefarious spam mole out to track their addresses and twist the information to his advantage.
But within a few posts, the director of the Pennsylvania attorney general's recently created Information Technology and Law division had persuaded the anti-spam hoards to trust he was on their side.
"I had to convince people that I wasn't in there trying to scam them," Sand says. "It was really interesting. The people in those newsgroups are generally very knowledgeable and talented and they were all using that talent to investigate me. Usually, it's the other way around."
Still in the initial stages of fact finding, Sand entered the newsgroup to solicit spam horror stories. On 19 May, he posted to the group asking people to "please help this office better understand ... by detailing the ways in which it has caused you harm." Two weeks later, he says he has seen enough to consider the complaints "a significant issue," and perhaps begin to move on them.
"I never would have been able to compile this research without being online," he says. "What's nice about the medium is that I've actually been able to talk directly to people who are affected. That's much different than a traditional investigative environment."
Perhaps most important, says Sand, is that he's been able to have a reasoned back and forth with the king of spam, Cyber Promotions' Sanford Wallace.
While Sand won't say that his research has focused on Wallace's Philadelphia-based company, he does acknowledge that the largest number of the vigorous complaints he's received have been about Cyber Promotions. Sand also says that the most important benefit of his conversations with Wallace - unaffectionately known as $pamford in the anti-spam community - are probably psychological rather than legal. "I can approach him online without putting him quite so much on the defensive," he says.
Whatever its target, Sand's investigation comes as the nationwide spam wars are heating up. In the past month, Senator Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Representative Chris Smith (R-New Jersey) each introduced bills to deal with junk email. Senator Robert Toricelli (D-New Jersey) is expected to introduce a third bill any day, MSNBC reports.
Sand's investigation will progress to its second stage this week when he meets with the head of the Pennsylvania attorney general's Consumer Protection Division to decide how to proceed on the matter. But while he is keeping an eye cocked toward federal legislation, he also says his investigation will proceed independently. "Certainly the arguments around the three bills will help us conceptualize how we approach the issue of spam legally, but whether we use new laws or existing ones, we'll go after spam one way or another."
Sand hopes to bring the affected parties to the table to negotiate some settlement - perhaps a legal agreement relying on a technical fix such as labeling, which would allow users to block receipt of unwanted junk. Still, he remains willing to go into "law enforcement mode" if spammers remain adamant about their junk mail rights. "It's causing substantial injury. It's not an issue we're going to drop."
