Latest Spam Scam Is Political
from the of-course-it-is... dept
Spammers and scammers are known for their use of recent news events to reel in more suckers, so it's no surprise to read that some scammers are spamming people about the US Presidential election, telling them that they're taking a poll and to call a specific 1-900 number to vote. The number, of course, is a premium rate number that charges $2 to the user's phone bill. Not a huge amount, but for doing not very much, it could certainly add up. The supposed "pollsters" appear to be working out of the Czech Republic, so it seems a bit unlikely that they're really out to help with the polls. Though, it must be said that the callers are told they're going to be charged $2. They're just not told who's actually behind this and what they plan to do with (a) the vote sand (b) the money. Amusingly, the BBC article notes that while such emails are illegal in the UK, they're perfectly legal in the US, thanks to our spam legalization law, CAN SPAM. Of course, there are other laws this might be breaking, but the details aren't entirely clear from the article.
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Our strange system
If we have to have a people's jury system, it seems to me that in a democracy, people should have the freedom to forego any such obligations. Instead, we have a system that forces people to become jurors against their will. I was once forcibly summoned to court, and filled out the juror's forms, and said I don't want to do this, but they demanded I come anyway. Luckily, I happened to be leaving the country for the summer at the time, so I didn't go to the trial.
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