Why the internet needs Spamhaus
OUT-LAW Radio, 21/09/2006
The man whose blacklists keep email out of your inbox talks to
OUT-LAW Radio. Spamhaus founder Steve Linford talks about why he
founded Spamhaus and what would happen if his lists didn't exist.
Plus: Irish barrister TJ McIntyre talks about trying to have the
EU's Data Retention Directive repealed.
A text transcription follows.
This transcript is for anyone with a hearing impairment or who
for any other reason cannot listen to the MP3 audio file.
The following is the text spoken by OUT-LAW journalist Matthew
Magee.
Hello and welcome to OUT-LAW Radio, the weekly podcast that
keeps you up-to-date on all the twists and turns in the world of
technology law.
Every week we bring you the latest news and in-depth features
that help you to make sense of the ever-changing laws that govern
technology today.
My name is Matthew Magee, and coming up on this week's show we
talk to the man who says he keeps the world's email working by
keeping spammers at bay, Steve Linford, founder of Spamhaus.
We also hear from an Irish lawyer who hopes to bring all of
Europe's data retention laws crashing down.
But first, the news
- gambling executives arrested in France had previously filed a
case against France with the European Commission
- terrorism is no excuse for privacy breaches, says European Data
Supervisor
- US Attorney General calls for data retention laws
- Tesco loses right to Trademark
Bwin interactive, the company whose chief executives were
arrested in France last week, had previously filed a formal
complaint to the European Commission claiming that France's
gambling laws conflicted with the EC Treaty.
Bwin made the complaint in March to the European Commission,
company spokeswoman Karin Klein told OUT-LAW. The complaint claims
that France's gambling monopoly breaches Article 49 of the EC
Treaty which enshrines the freedom to provide cross border
services
Terrorism and organised crime should not be used as excuses for
passing laws which undermine people's privacy and data protection
rights, according to the European Data Protection Supervisor.
Existing laws do not need changed, he said.
Supervisor Peter Hustinx said that it is a misconception that
protection of privacy and personal data holds back the fight
against terrorism and organised crime and that current legislation
is sufficient for law enforcement purposes.
The US Attorney General has asked Senators to pass a data
retention law that would force telcos and internet service
providers to keep records of US citizens phone, email and surfing
activity. Alberto Gonzales told a Senate panel that such a law
would help to prosecute child pornographers.
Tesco has lost the right to a Europe-wide trade mark on the word
'metro'. The trade mark right for Europe has now passed to German
retailer MIP Metro because Tesco did not submit a set of papers to
the EI Trade Mark Authority.
Lee Curtis is a trade mark attorney with Pinsent Masons, the law
firm behind OUT-LAW.
Curtis: "This decision is quite tough on
Tesco because they obviously did have the prior UK registration,
but they just got caught by a technicality".
That was this week's OUT-LAW News.
What would you do if a court in Illinois awarded a Judgment of
$11.8 million against you? Phone your lawyer? Get out your
chequebook and ask about an instalment plan? Or maybe just sob in
the corner. If you are Steve Linford you do what you always do: add
it to the pile and carry on regardless.
Linford is, by his own account, the man who keeps email going.
Without his non-profit organisation Spamhaus and its offenders'
list of spammers the world's email would grind to a halt he
says.
Spamhaus keeps a huge list of IP addresses which are used for
spamming. Most major internet service providers subscribe and are
able to block this spam without you ever knowing it.
This makes Linford some pretty angry enemies. One just won that
$11.8 million Judgment against Spamhaus. For Linford it is just the
latest it a long line of suits.
SL : "It's one of the ever present law suits we have got
against us. The spammers are constantly filing law suits
against Spamhaus and never in the UK where we are based, but always
in American Courts. The spammer files in his local Court, part
of the filing says Spamhaus is a US business, doing business in
this State, the Judge doesn't question it and he says well where
are Spamhaus, why didn't they turn up to defend themselves?
They couldn't be bothered, ok so the Judgement – they owe you $2
million, and this sort of thing goes on and on. Because we
get this from all over the World, we don't defend ourselves in
foreign Courts, we tell them all – if you want to sue us, come to
Britain.
MM: And no-body ever has?
SL: No, none of them ever has, because Britain has loser
pays."
If Linford's phone line seems a little crackly there is a good
reason. After years running Spamhaus from a houseboat on the Thames
in London, Linford recently moved to an island in the South
Atlantic from where he runs the entire operation. Spamhaus is
manned by volunteers, it is free to use, its inception was
motivated by being extremely annoyed and it operates as a
non-profit.
In contrast to whizz-bang commercial software or ham-fisted
government attempts to stop spamming it seems such an unusual way
to solve such a pressing problem: I asked Linford how big it now
is, and how it all started.
"We have about 650 million users and they
all use the system for free. It was initially all funded by myself
and by a previous company that I ran, that was a company called
Ultra Design which was simply a small internet service provider
that in the mid-90s got absolutely flooded by spam and I decided to
do something about, so for many many years I simply just funded
Spamhaus myself."
Spam is a serious problem. IT security companies often estimate
it at about 75% of the world's 30 billion a day messages, though
Linford puts it at 90%. Research firm Ferris said that spam costs
the world's business $50 billion a year. Linford makes some pretty
grand claims for his small organisation. Without it, he says, email
simply wouldn't work.
"Spam is over 90% of all email traffic on
the internet, so the sheer volume of spam is massive and the only
thing is that internet users don't normally notice because the vast
majority of internet networks and service providers use our service
so most users don't notice that they're not receiving very much
spam. If we were to turn our service off one day the spam levels
would literally bring the internet email system down."
All of this activity makes Linford some pretty vicious enemies.
Alongside the growing bundle of multi-million dollar judgments
against him – incidentally he has no idea how much is registered
against Spamhaus worldwide – Linford has to deal with less
legitimate attacks.
"We're the most attacked entity on the
internet. The only thing standing between getting their spam into
the user mailboxes is us. In 2003 the spammers released a series of
viruses specifically just to attack us, and all the millions of
machines were all then hammering our website to bring it down."
Linford is not striving to build a multi-billion pound business
empire. Motivated originally by simple frustration he now has
technical attacks, legal Judgments and presumably some pretty
unpleasant emails to deal with every day. Without a big pay day
looming, what is it that keeps him, and Spamhaus, going?
"The thing that drives Spamhaus is that
there is no-body else able to do it. Governments have been
extremely slow to follow up with anti-spam legislation which has
created this huge problem. Email is such an important
communications system that it needs to be used without a constant
flood of junk arriving in your mailbox every day."
So the next time you get an email offering you inappropriate
medical procedures just think of all the ones that didn't reach you
that day, thanks to one man far away in the South Atlantic
ocean.
Irish data retention challenge
"If you imagine a world where somebody
walked behind you and logged everywhere you went, everyone you
talked to, every letter you sent and every telephone call you made,
you wouldn't be very happy. Yet we already have that in place in
the virtual world by virtue of Data Retention laws."
That was TJ McIntyre, an Irish barrister whose pressure group
Digital Rights Ireland has just launched a legal challenge to Data
Retention laws in Ireland. He is hoping to take the case to the
European Court of Justice where he wants the EU's data retention
directive wiped out.
Data retention laws are a controversial recent development. They
force telecoms companies to retain records of all a user's phone,
email and internet activity that can be accessed, under Court
Order, by the Police. A vital anti-crime tool, say Police
authorities, and anyone would agree. So what exactly are the
dangers, I asked McIntyre:
"I think there are two real risks, one of
them that the state might mis-use the information. We have
seen cases in Ireland where the Police Force, the Guarda have been
found to have engaged in framing innocent people for murder, cases
where they have been illegally accessing telephone conversations
for political purposes, and we are obviously worried that this
could happen here as well. But there is also private sector risk –
this information is going to be held in databases spread out
amongst different telcos, different internet service providers and
there is a real risk that one crooked insider in any of these
organisations, and it only takes one crooked insider that can
access these huge databases, and sell the information to possible
tabloid newspapers, private sectors or anybody, criminals, people
who would like to engage in identity fraud or anybody who has an
interest in knowing who you are and what you are doing".
McIntyre argues that the Irish law is unconstitutional. More, he
claims that the European Directive runs counter to the European
Convention on human rights. He wants to stop data retention laws
across Europe.
"If we are successful, it will strike down
the data retention directive and that will invalidate a lot of data
retention laws across Europe. If won't necessarily mean that
national laws will be affected, but we are hoping that there will
be a knock-on effect clearly a ruling on the human rights issues
would be very persuasive for National Courts as well."
With Governments across Europe keen for greater powers in the
aftermath of terrorist attacks in Madrid and London, McIntyre has a
big job ahead of him, but in a fight that could change the law
across the continent he is sure of his ground.
"It is very common, the argument here, which
is that people have nothing to fear and if you have nothing to hide
you have nothing to fear, and I suppose there is two responses to
that, one is well if I have nothing to hide, then why are you
monitoring me? Why are you not monitoring those people who have
something to hide? And the second response is of course that
everyone has a right to privacy and the right to privacy is more
than just something to hide, it is the right to carry on your
business without state interference and without the world knowing
what you are doing."
That's all we have time for this week, thanks for listening.
Why not get in touch with OUT-LAW Radio? Do you have a legal
problem you would like us to discuss on air? Do you know of a
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Make sure you tune in next week; for now, goodbye
OUT-LAW Radio was produced and presented by Matthew
Magee for international law firm Pinsent Masons.
