Spam is silenced, but where are the feds?

25.11.2008

Creative Internet was exceptionally brazen about its activities and that type of raid is unlikely to happen again, said Spamhaus' Cox. "You can't prove those sort of cases to a sufficient level to get it to a grand jury," he said. ISPs are almost always given a pass when this type of activity is discovered on their network because they can plausibly deny that they knew anything about it.

The FTC would like to change that, however. In April, the FTC asked Congress for changes to the FTC Act that would allow it to pursue those who aided and abetted in fraud, which would allow it to go targets such as bad actor ISPs who have helped fraudulent businesses.

Congress has already granted the FTC a similar authority to go after brokers who knowingly provide lists to telemarkerters, said Steven Wernikoff, a staff attorney with the FTC. "It's hard to see why people who facilitate fraud via the Internet should get a pass," he said.

The structure of cybercrime operations has morphed in recent years and will need to be prosecuted more like long-running Mafia investigations than one-off actions against individual spammers, observers say.

"Ultimately, the problem is that we're still in the process of building a mature cybercrime enforcement process," said Jon Praed, a founding partner of Internet Law Group, who has litigated against spammers on behalf of major companies such as Verizon Online and AOL. "Criminal prosecutions require a lot of resources and prosecutors are unlikely to go after someone unless they know they're going to get a conviction."