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[FYI] (Fwd) FC: City of Battle Creek wants to imprison an anti-spam activist




------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent:      	Thu, 21 Mar 2002 11:49:00 -0500
From:           	Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
To:             	politech@politechbot.com
Subject:        	FC: City of Battle Creek wants to imprison an anti-spam activist
Send reply to:  	declan@well.com



http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,51218,00.html

   Spam Showdown at Battle Creek
   By Declan McCullagh (declan@wired.com)

   2:00 a.m. March 21, 2002 PST
   WASHINGTON -- The small city of Battle Creek, Michigan, wants to
   lock up an anti-spam activist who it believes crashed its mail
   server.

   Never mind that the town government was using a buggy version of
   the Lotus Domino e-mail server, and that newer releases have fixed
   the problem. And never mind that anti-spammers may have been
   conducting a routine scan for possible sources of bulk e-mail.

   Battle Creek, a town of 54,000 best known as the headquarters of
   the Kellogg's cereal company, is on the warpath.

   Robert Drewry, a Battle Creek detective, said on Wednesday he was
   hoping to file felony charges of computer intrusion against the
   person at the Orbz anti-spam service who contacted the Domino
   server, and caused e-mail to crash for 24 hours. "If we can
   identify the person responsible, yes, we will prosecute," Drewry
   said.

   This new Battle of Battle Creek -- the first one in 1824 pitted
   local Indians against surveyors -- began when an Orbz computer
   allegedly connected to the town's mail server to see if it might be
   an anti-spammer bugaboo: A relay point for bulk e-mailers.

   It wasn't. But it was running an old Lotus Domino version, and what
   would normally have been a routine test by Orbz allegedly caused
   the server to mail-bomb itself into a tizzy.

   Cindy Hale, a systems administrator for the town, said she was the
   one who had to deal with the crash.

   "We had to get with our Cisco expert and get into our firewall and
   make some changes in there and make some changes to our (Lotus)
   server to not accept any mail from Orbz," Hale said.

   Then Hale did what has incited a feeding frenzy this week in the
   online communities devoted to canning spam: She called the cops. "I
   just called our police department and asked if they wanted to
   investigate any further and there we are," Hale said.

   [...]



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