The Federal Trade Commission released a report yesterday on whether a system that would reward members of the public for tracking down spammers could help enforce the Can-Spam Act.
Based on experience in more than 60 spam cases, the report noted are three hurdles in anti-spam investigations: identifying and locating the spammer; developing sufficient evidence to prove the suspect is legally responsible for sending the spam; and obtaining a monetary award. If a reward system could be designed to generate information that helps clear those hurdles, it might improve the effectiveness of CAN-SPAM enforcement, according to the report.
Persons most likely to identify a spammer and provide “high value” evidence are personal or business associates of the spammers themselves, according to the report.
Potential whistleblowers would weigh the possibility of a reward against a number of considerations, noted the FTC, including the likelihood of information they submitted actually being used, and whether the use would result in a successful legal proceeding; whether they would lose their own income; whether they would incur personal legal liability for their own part in the scheme; whether they would lose their anonymity; and whether they would become a target of retaliation by the spammer.
Rewards in the range of $100,000 and in some cases as high as $250,000 might be needed to get such whistleblowers to come forward. But, the report stated, “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. Thus, the benefits of a reward system remain unclear.”
The FTC recommended that if Congress establishes a reward system, it should tie reward eligibility to imposition of a final court order, rather than to collection of civil penalties; fund reward payments through appropriations, rather than collected civil penalties; and restrict eligibility to insiders with high-value information.
Network
