What's the trendiest way to protest government cybersnooping? Spam. That's the idea behind SuPerVillainizer, an automated "conspiracy" app that churns out emails peppered with words and phrases designed to trigger Switzerland's electronic surveillance system. SuPerVillainizer writes like a schizo terrorist channeling a Nigerian email scammer: "The deep throat we have inside the Mossad says they are planning to use the Windows NT backdoor on some Nasa.gov nodes," reads one message. "Finally, hijack submarine." Created by a group of artists and students, the Web-based project (www.supervillainizer.ch) is mostly a Swiss thing, but spammers worldwide are joining in. Wanna play? Log on, create a villain, and tell it how often to ping other villains. "The content entered into the mail generator is a reflection of the global political situation," says Annina Ruest, one of the project's creators. "We're expanding the definition of 'villain.'"
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