Friday, March 14, 2008

SpamCop reports Declan as a spammer

On Wednesday Declan received an email from Bravenet, the web host of our website Network of those Abused by Church, replying to his email of 8 March in respect of their suspension of the NAC website earlier that morning (see previous blog). They state: "We apologize for the delay. Unfortunately this suspension is due to spam as reported via SpamCop. As per our Terms of Service Rules and Regulations (http://www.bravenet.com/global/terms.php), we do not allow any unsolicited email in association with our site or services. Please cease all such activity and reply here indicating that you have done so and understand these terms for your account to be reviewed for restoration."

It turns out that on 6 March, the day after Declan received an email from the Home Office denying that a warrant to intercept his communications exists, SpamCop received a complaint from a scientist to the effect that Declan’s email to him was a spam. SpamCop promptly drew up a report (http://www.spamcop.net/w3m?i=z2902444514z2f7c18eb545d54a637fa97c4ff4bb206z) and sent it not only to Bravenet (which suspended NAC) but to GoPetition (which hosts Declan's petition to the UN) and Google (which hosts this blog and Declan’s mail account).

A click to "Learn more about what to report and what not to report to SpamCop" yields the following information:

Spam is bulk email. If someone writes to an individual personally, one-on-one, to ask a question or inquire about a post made to a newsgroup or website, then that is not spam, even if it contains commercial or marketing content. However, email containing the recipient's name is not always legitimate. For example, if someone writes a personalized message, but fails to address any subject which is specific or relevant to the recipient ("Kelly, get the lowest prices on prescription drugs!" is an example), it is safe to assume the message is spam. (Emphasis added)

Since a complainant must provide SpamCop with a copy of the offending email, it should have been pretty straightforward to determine that an email with the subject "NAC: Petition to the UN on hESC research", addressed to a particular scientist and inviting him/her to sign a petition to the United Nations in support of human cloning for therapeutic purposes, was not spam; especially if it is evident from the email that the petition itself is being signed by distinguished scientists and academics from around the world. Nonetheless, this morning Declan received the following from SpamCop: "It appears that the issue is that some of the people you're sending mail to don't believe that it's solicited by them, and they don't wish to receive it, so they have reported it as spam." I wonder if the “Academic Freedom Petition, an initiative of the Discovery Institute to urge the adoption of policies by the US's academic institutions “to ensure teacher and student academic freedom to discuss the scientific strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian evolution”, has to surmount similar obstacles. It seems that SpamCop intends to neither review their report nor have it withdrawn.

Last night we reckoned that we could well have been 24 hours away from losing everything (despite that “GoPetition - Petitions FAQ” states: “You should email as many relevant people as you can”) and had to go to an internet café – the Tower Hamlets Council's Idea Store Whitechapel, where we do all our emailing, imposed a 3-hour limit on free computer use on both our membership cards on 29 January – and email SpamCop (see below), Bravenet, Google Legal and GoPetition Legal with a letter earlier in the day to Home Secretary Jacqueline Smith. (Declan also thought it would be wiser if I didn't beg in the train station this morning: I am under threat of arrest, and the last time I was issued with a ticket, on 26 February, PC 9191 called me "a piece of shit" before his partner informed me I would be arrested if I came back.)

We have decided that when we get off the streets, the NAC website will not be uploaded again. Instead, NAC will concentrate exclusively on Declan’s petition to the UN. I intend to create a new website with a campaign to support this petition and have my eyes on “Make Trade Fair” by Oxfam and the video page of “Stop Heathrow Expansion” by Greenpeace UK.

As we had to spend all our money in the internet café last night and I didn’t beg this morning, I am afraid Declan is going to be pretty hungry this weekend. As usual, on Thursday and Friday I kept the grated cheese sandwich that the nuns at the Dellow Centre of the Sisters of Mercy Providence Row Charity give the homeless "for later" – although since Tuesday the grated cheese has been removed.

Grated cheese is just the latest to be withdrawn though: the voluntary hairdresser who used to attend on Wednesdays hasn’t turned up for months (Declan and I wear a cap permanently now); the hair clipper that the homeless had been using to do their own hair (and which Declan was not very happy using because it never came with disinfectant spray) has also disappeared; on Tuesday I was told by the nun in charge of clothes that she didn’t have any men’s jeans (Declan’s jeans are immensely big for him and are in a bit of a state) or runners for me (mine have holes), and to get two pairs of socks Declan had to show her that the heels of his socks had holes; toiletries that used to be put out, especially for the women, are nowhere to been seen; and a shower in the women’s washroom has now to be pretty quick to avoid a shock - it doesn’t matter if you are the first in line or not.

As I reported in my blog of 23 February “Police threaten to evict us from the porch”, a look at Providence Row's annual report of 2006/07 doesn’t provide any clues, but contains three pages of supporters: charities, societies, churches, companies, livery companies, religious organisations, trusts, statutory funders (London Borough of Tower Hamlets, London Councils and The Corporation of London) and the Duke of Norfolk (to whom Declan reported the withdrawal of his use of a landline phone) as Patron.

This is Declan's (ineffective) email last night to SpamCop:

Subject: SpamCop report

Dear Sir/Madam

I refer to your spam report regarding my website http://www.nac1.bravehost.com.

Please find below a copy of my email of today's date to the British Home Secretary, Ms Jacqueline Smith, regarding interception of communications. Since 22 October 2007, I have been contacting through personalised email distinguished scientists and academics to invite them to sign my petition to the United Nations entitled "Consideration at the United Nations of a Declaration on Human Cloning for Therapeutic Reasons" at [withheld].

I would be much obliged if you would please review this matter as soon as possible, as http://www.nac1.bravehost.com is associated with the aforementioned petition, which to date has been signed by 478 scientists, including 22 Nobel prizewinners.

Please would you acknowledge receipt.

Yours sincerely
Declan Heavey

dheavey@gmail.com
http://www.nac1.bravehost.com
http://network-of-those-abused-by-church.blogspot.com

-----------------------------------------

Subject: Interception of communications

Dear Ms Smith

I refer further to my email to you of 29 February in your capacity as Home Secretary whose personal approval is required for an interception of communications warrant in the interests of national security, preventing or detecting serious crime, or safeguarding the economic well-being of the United Kingdom.

As I explained in my email of 29 February, since 22 October 2007 I have been contacting through Google Mail distinguished scientists and academics to invite them to sign my petition to the United Nations entitled "Consideration at the United Nations of a Declaration on Human Cloning for Therapeutic Reasons", calling for the establishment of a reasonable timetable for a UN declaration that would draw a distinction between reproductive and therapeutic cloning while specifically leaving it to UN member states to decide for themselves on therapeutic cloning within a regulation framework. To date, this petition has been signed by 478 scientists, including 22 Nobel prizewinners.

On 6 March I drew to your attention the following: (1) in the last week of December, two emails from scientists, asking me to add their name to the aforementioned petition, were filtered to my Spam mailbox; (2) on 6 February, I was informed by a signatory that an email I had sent him had not been received, despite Google Mail's record of it having been successfully transmitted; (3) on 8 February, I received two Out of Office AutoReplys with "[SUSPECT SPAM]" in the subject; (4) on 27 February, I was informed by a signatory that my email to him earlier that afternoon had been "filtered to a Spam mailbox"; (5) from 28 to 29 February inclusive, over 30 automatically generated delivery status notifications (confirming failure or delay to transmit) were filtered to my Spam mailbox; and (6) on 28 February, I received an email from a scientist, in response to my latest invitation to him to sign the petition, informing me that he was "sure" he said he was happy to have his name added to the list of signatories. (The first email I sent from my Google Mail account is dated 9 April 2005.)

I reconfirm receipt of your email of reply of 5 March, reference T4721/8, signed by AS Cooper of the Office of Security and Counter Terrorism, stating in respect of an interception of communications warrant: "I do not think that the pattern of your e-mail problems means that you are being intercepted". As I previously mentioned in my email of 8 March, my website Network of those Abused by Church is hosted with Bravenet, which suspended the site on 8 March, replying to me on 12 March as follows:


We apologize for the delay. Unfortunately this suspension is due to spam as reported via SpamCop. As per our Terms of Service Rules and Regulations, we do not allow any unsolicited email in association with our site or services. Please cease all such activity and reply here indicating that you have done so and understand these terms for your account to be reviewed for restoration.


Please find attached a copy of the email from Bravenet of 12 March containing headers of the email received by SpamCop on 6 March, the day after the aforementioned email of reply from you. I also attach a snapshot of my Spam mailbox containing 95 automatically generated delivery status notifications from 6 to 12 March inclusive. (Since 2 March, 223 automatically generated delivery status notifications have been filtered to my Spam mailbox.)

I should again point out that on 26 January, while I had no access to a computer, all emails sent to me after 12 August 2007 were moved to the Trash and 300 draft documents, which included the names and email addresses of over 2,500 scientists, were deleted for good.

Please would you acknowledge receipt.

Yours sincerely
Declan Heavey