[Air-l] Re: Dirty E-Politics: When will virus writers get righteous?

[Art McGee]

> I'm not talking about the DNC spamming me, but I wonder 
> why there aren't more fringe groups filling inboxes.
> 
> I am curious as to why these groups are not filling our 
> inboxes.

4 years ago, I used to spam about 100,000 people on a 
regular basis with radical political messages. The trick is, 
to them, it wasn't spam, although by today's definitions it 
would be. I used to get email from people on a regular basis 
that would say something to the effect of: "I don't know how 
you got my email address, but I'm glad you did! Thank you!" 
Others would tell me that the emails I sent were the *only* 
ones they would let through automatically, and the rest, 
even emails from family and friends, would be processed
by a spam filter.

Now obviously, what I was doing wasn't fringe in the sense 
of being crazy, because I was trying to reach enlightened 
people who I already knew were desperate for this type of 
information. I knew who my audience was and I knew how to 
find them, even if they didn't know I existed. I didn't need 
to ask their permission, I simply had to make my presence 
known and they were grateful that someone had rescued them 
from the inanity of standard cyber discourse.

Now, to address your question specifically, the answer is 
quite simple, those who are the most on the fringe and the 
most divorced from enlightenment reasoning have the least 
interest in saying anything to anyone other than those who 
are already a part of their incestuous ideological circle. 
Their methods of recruitment are not the tactics of mass 
struggle, in the way that activists throughout history have 
used them, but rather, they are more akin to cults, and the
tried and true method for cults is to pick people off one at 
a time, looking for those who are drifting aimlessly in life
and needing something to grab on to.

More importantly, I think the idea that fringe groups don't 
care what people think about them is fallacious. While they 
may not care about public image in the sphincter-obstructing 
way that professional politicians do, they have no interest 
in making themselves targets of the wrath of a large swath 
of the public or the government, which is what most 
certainly would happen if people started to find, for 
example, Neo-Nazi messages in their mailboxes on a regular 
basis. Brutish commerce about penis enlargement pills and 
other products is tolerated because it is somewhat comical 
and farcical, but the FBI, ATF, DEA, and other acronyms 
would start busting down literal and virtual doors if "Kill 
All Jews" spam was flooding the net. Even nutjobs aren't 
completely stupid.

Jehovah's Witnesses, who on the surface have been 
stereotyped as trying to recruit people "willy nilly," are 
not that interested in bringing a flood of random people 
into their church. They have stuck to old-style face-to-face 
contact, which is much more similar to grassroots organizing 
than many would want to admit. Also, being that they are 
Christians, I suspect that their ethical values would 
discourage them from spamming. They might be considered 
annoying to many people, but that doesn't mean that they'll 
do anything for attention.

Then there is the issue of economics and technical know-how. 
Spamming of the type that you see on the net regularly does 
require a certain amount of continuous capital investment, 
which for political groups is not recouped by sales to 
stupid people. Every dollar they spend on lawsuits, servers, 
staff, etc., would be money out of their normal operating 
costs. In addition, the technical information and industry 
contacts necessary to spam and not get almost completely
and permanently blocklisted from the net, including your 
legitimate non-spam access, is not something that is 
currently in reach of many of these groups. Even the 
Neo-Nazis have regular web sites like StormFront.org,
and you can bet that their site would be affected if spam 
started going out that had any connection to them. So, the 
return on investment for spam is not even worth it for these 
fringe groups.

To summarize, spam is basically counterproductive for 
political groups unless they have a known audience which can 
be unearthed with absolute certainty. This requires a depth 
of cultural understanding and communications skills which 
few of these groups have. I could do it because it is one of 
my strengths, but few of the truly fringe groups have the 
people or resources to play on this field.


Art McGee
Principal Consultant
Virtual Identity
Communications+Media+Technology
1-510-967-9381
artmcgee at cyberspace.org