The U.S. government should be prepared to spend freely if it decides to encourage "bounty hunters" to track down e-mail spammers, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said Thursday.
Rewards of up to $250,000 will be needed to encourage people to turn over friends or associates who send out millions of deceptive e-mail pitches in violation of the law, the FTC said. And that cash will have to come out of the federal budget, rather than settlements collected from spammers, the FTC said.
While millions of Internet users may be annoyed by spam, only a handful of insiders are likely to have enough information to form the basis of a case, the agency said.
"The commission does not believe that the vast majority of consumers who are now forwarding 300,000 pieces of spam daily to the FTC spam database are likely to be a good source for such information," the FTC said in a report to Congress.
Lawmakers asked the FTC to assess whether the government should encourage "cybersleuths" to help track down marketers who break the law by sending out deceptive pitches for herbal Viagra, pornography or other forms of spam.
California Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren and other advocates have said such an approach would encourage technologically savvy citizens to help government investigators track down illicit marketers who often hide behind a trail of false online identities.
The FTC didn't say whether it thought such a system was a good idea, but outlined conditions needed to make it work.
To encourage insiders to come forward, they should be granted immunity and given the reward even if the FTC doesn't collect fines from the guilty party, the agency said. Even then, insiders might prove unwilling to cooperate as the FTC cannot grant immunity, the report said.
"To the extent an insider has 'unclean hands' and faces potential legal liability, it is questionable whether such a person would be willing to assume the significant personal risk of coming forward," the report said.
New Jersey Democratic Sen. Jon Corzine praised the report and said it would serve as a sound basis for a bounty-hunter program.
"There is no single magic bullet in the battle against spam. But we've made so little progress to date that we can't afford to leave any reasonable approach untried," Corzine said in a statement.
Source:
CNet News
