Bush campaign spam

[nigel99 151]

I heard an interesting article on BBC radio 4 over the weekend that people are suffering (in the UK) from SPAM from the vote for Bush campaign. The campaign have refused to answer requests to be removed from the list.

It seems that the can-spam legislation exempts politicians. UK laws only apply if the spammer is within Europe, and the Data-protection act only if a European entity passed on your details (irrelevant since the UK government breaks the data-protection laws every time we fly to the US by providing ALL of our credit card details etc to an unknown entity with no recourse). It seems the only option open to people is to file a court application under private nuisance laws in the UK in which case a policeman is expected to arrest the offender (in this case the lawyers believe it would be Bush)

(unfortunately I can't find a link to the article being on the radio and search engines produce more results than I have time for)

Experienced jumper - someone who has made mistakes more often than I have and lived.

[mr2mk1g 10]

That’s the kind of problem you’d set law students!

Private nuisance is not a criminal offence for which you can be arrested. You may sue the individual in the civil courts but your only remedies would be injunctive or in damages.

Public nuisance can be a criminal offence however. Here it could depend on just how many people are getting the e-mails, although the fact that they are each individually addressed may pose problems. I'm not aware of whether or not case law exists on if mail (snail or e) could fit into the public nuisance bracket although I suspect it could were the net cast widely enough.

The problem would be if you could show it was public nuisance (ie everyone's getting the mail) you would then have to show that you were inconvenienced more than anyone else... but you just showed that everyone was getting the mail. Difficult, but I’m sure circumstances could exist.

Normally a summons would be issued as opposed to simply the arrest of the perpetrator and only if the recipient were to fail to appear would the Court take the step of issuing a Bench Warrant for their arrest. Against whom they would issue the warrant I hesitate to even think. They would have to find a “controlling mind” which would probably be either the campaign manager or the candidate himself.

Constable Plod wouldn’t then be able to simply swan off to Capitol Hill and cuff the man though. Whilst the harm took place in the UK, Plod has no jurisdiction in the States and therefore no power of arrest. Thus extradition proceedings would have to be sought… those could take ages.

In general, I doubt there’s case law on how to deal with nuisance where the act was carried out overseas but caused harm in the UK. Nuisance tends to be a somewhat local act as it generally involved interference with your right to “enjoy your land”… it’s difficult to do that from far away.

No one ever said the law was simple.