Coming back from holiday I found I had 694 unread emails and this time around I thought it might make a good test of my anti-spam software, mailwasher. Using Spamcop‘s blacklist and rules of its own it only missed 20 of the spam emails I received (2.8%) and it only mistakenly rejected four messages (.5%)

“US experts suggest 90% of internet users receive unsolicited e-mails and one in 10 is pornographic…” and some of the recipients are children (though there are no figures provided to indicate what proportion are.

Even Declan McCullagh, one of the old school digerati, can’t bring himself to support government regulation to tackle spammers. The spam issue is where the instinctive libertarianism of many American online veterans runs into its hardest test case.

Here in Europe we have started to bring in anti-spam laws covering our own countries. Declan complains that “…so much of the stuff comes from overseas. Eighteen months ago, two of five Internet providers receiving the most spam complaints were based outside the country.” In other words, three of five spammers are based in the US! Surely a little regulation to make things hot for these miscreants would be welcome. Even if it didn’t make the problem go away it might at least mean a would-be spammer would have to make their way to an increasingly small number of “rogue states” where spamming is still legal…

I just got back from what we were told (with characteristic enthusiasm) was possibly the world’s first official consultation meeting about a government backed e-democracy proposal – set up by Vox Politics.

Given the general apathy about the subject in the media and among the political elite in the UK, I wasn’t sure if there would be more than about ten people but in the event more than 50 people crowded into a small room within earshot of Big Ben and while neither the e-envoy nor the e-commerce minister showed as had been hoped, some good points were raised and experiences shared. I was glad of the opportunity to see Dan Jellinek, author of the very useful e-government bulletin, Bill Thompson, professional e-gadfly and a number of people I met through Haddock and have seen little of since including Tom Loosemore who is responsible for the commendable Fax your MP site, Matt “warchalking” Jones and Azeem Azhar.

I feel minded to write something at a bit more length about the discussion itself but I would prefer to do so for a newspaper, magazine or newsletter, and in any case it will take a little longer – if you are interested in commissioning something, get in touch…

Microsoft and, surprisingly, Intel among others have formed a group called “Initiative for Software Choice“, designed to ensure that governments don’t have a bias in favour of open source software. It is not clear what kind of awful crime it might be to prefer software that you can get for free to software from companies like Microsoft who hope to lock you in to a path where you have to pay them in effect a rental charge to use your computer’s software…

There are a number of good spam prevention solutions out there but unfortunately I couldn’t use any of them for a few of my accounts – many of them are for Outlook only at the moment and I prefer Eudora. Others require your ISP to sign up. But at last I found Mailwasher, which lets me check my POP3 email and “cleanse” it quickly and easily either by referring to one or more known spammer black lists (including ORDB and SpamCop) or by referring to rules I set up. I recently tested it against 96 spams and got two false positives (only listed as “possible” and “probable” spam) and three real spams let through. That’s good enough for me – especially as Mailwasher is free!

According to a BBC report:

“A survey has found that only 10% of politicians conduct a quarter or more of their correspondence via e-mail.

The vast majority still prefer to use post and many respond to electronic messages with a written letter the survey also showed.

Only one of the MPs questioned used e-mail for more than 75% of their correspondence.”

It turns out that all of them have email addresses now, but some have actually switched theirs off.

Sorry I am a bit late picking this up but British MPs are complaining that now that (some of them) have email addresses (that some of them have published), people are using them to contact them.

“Committee chairman Michael Fabricant told BBC News Online: “MPs welcome contact from their constituents.

“What we are concerned about is often the constituent emails are being blocked out because the mail box is being filled by unwanted emails.”

Some MPs claim they are receiving up to 500 messages a day, while others seem to have hourly contact with emailers.

The US Congress faces a similar “problem”.

Of course if government was more transparent so people realised just how powerless most of MPs are to effect real change on general issues, there would be less lobby group “spamming”…

Perhaps what we need is better signposting of the places where lobbying can be effective and the further opening of those forums to online debate.downloadable movies free adultfucking movies ebony freefalcon studios free moviesfree movie incest sampleslarge free movies pornorgasm free moviemovie free pussymovies handjob free Map

The government is trying hard to seem “au courant” by talking about uses for text messaging in government, for “court appearances, flood warnings, driving tests and hospital appointments”. Sadly, these examples aside, there just aren’t that many places where SMS services are useful for government services.
More advanced services based on location and with images as well as text I could see being useful for tourism, for example, but that sort of thing is a couple of years away from mainstream use…nipples extremeunderage nude dark bbstits largest evernude wwe babescock sucking underagehairy wife youngvaginas asian smallcreampie amataurclits huge hairyhairy pusygroup sex adult partiesafrican sex moviesadult blonde pornamateur free teens nudeporn cotent adult freeadult sex audio2 big porn be true 2games 1000 sex Mapconvert adp mp3mp3 convert adpconvert mp3 adp1920 music mp3acoustic guitar mp3critical acclaim a7x mp3critical a7x mp3 acclaimcritical acclaim a7x mp3 Map

They can be, of course, but one UK local councillor is already claiming that postal votes are for sale in his area for just £30. Future e-votes could be as well.

Voting that takes place in front of neutral scrutineers is not perfect but at least in a polling booth you can ensure your vote is free. If someone stands over you and watches you put your vote in an envelope then marches you to a post box or stands over you while you access a “secure” e-voting website there is no way to tell if you have been coerced or bribed.

The VoxPolitics blog has more on this and other e-goverment issues.