Why public email needs police
Found on IT World on Saturday, 30 July 2011
It sounds counterintuitive to involve the government in anything that has to do with the Internet, but instilling trust means stopping the fraudster email problem.
If they could agree on a third-party service that could be the receptacle on a 24/7 basis for rapid account suspension, the 419 Fraud problem might dwindle down to a trickle quickly.
A fast shutdown process, however, thwarts the predators, and protects the innocents that we let use the Internet, despite its enormous potential for fraud.
This will fail at so many levels that I don't know where to start. First, it would require that every single e-mail provider gives access to its mailsystem to a central authority. Not just Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo, but also John Doe who runs his private mailserver. That will never happen. It would mean that one can, from a single point, disable every mail account on the Internet. Seeing how many "secure" government agencies get hacked, this just calls for an attack. Next, who would be in control? The USA of course, I guess. Again, there's no way that the other nations will let that happen. The US police already works for the entertainment industry to illegaly suspend domain names; imagine they could block so-called pirates from using email. Then this is just screaming for abuse. Don't like your competitor? Send complains and get his email blocked. In short, this is one of the most retarded suggestions I've read for quite some time.