http://news.com.com/2100-1023-975473.html Public access to FTC hurt by spam lists By Declan McCullagh November 26, 2002, 5:22 PM PT When Josh Tinnin tried to send e-mail to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission this month, he received an unwelcome surprise: He couldn't. Tinnin's message to the FTC bounced back because the agency subscribes to a blacklisting service designed to limit the amount of spam making its way into the agency's in-boxes. SBC Pacific Bell, Tinnin's Internet service provider, appeared on the blacklist as a haven for senders of junk e-mail. "I didn't know that the government was using blacklists," said Tinnin, who lives in Fremont, Calif. "That was surprising." Businesses and individual Internet users have turned to blacklists to try to stanch the steadily increasing flow of bulk e-mail. But the FTC appears to be the first federal agency to adopt the often-buggy lists, and some legal experts say the practice raises novel issues and may violate Americans' First Amendment right to "petition the government." FTC spokeswoman Claudia Farrell said the commission began filtering its incoming mail in August "as an ongoing effort to protect agency computing resources and productivity of agency staff." [...] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ Recent CNET News.com articles: http://news.search.com/search?q=declan -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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