Having problems with message search?
[Sorry that there was a delay of a few hours rather than about 10 minutes between the two messages. For some reason, Yahoo! sometimes but not always limits the number of email addresses I can send to in the same hour as an additional spam-prevention measure...]
As I pointed out in my previous message, some of my emails are being treated as spam. Judging from a message I've found on some discussion groups I joined yesterday (including "FreedomOfSpeechNow" - go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FreedomOfSpeechNow/messages/1), textual analysis of emails is used by various email programs to filter out particularly political messages. John Perna, the person who runs that discussion group, asserts that the US "Department of Homeland Security" is responsible.
[He
asserts that the word "censorship" is one of the words that can cause a program to filter out a message, so I deliberately didn't use it in my previous message.]
Perna found that some of his messages to discussion groups at Yahoo! are going into his own spam folder. I have noticed the same thing, but strangely when I have sent identical messages going to different collections of groups, some (usually most) are treated as spam and some are not. There may be some randomisation involved, or the headers of emails may be analysed as well as the contents.
It looks as though it is randomisation. I tried sending the third message in Perna's group, on "Who is blocking Dateline from showing an expose' on the FBI?" (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FreedomOfSpeechNow/message/3) between my two email addresses
at Yahoo! and Wanadoo (revolutionarysocialiststeve@... and busterblock@... respectively), and it was filtered out when going from Yahoo! to Wanadoo but it got through from Wanadoo to either and from Yahoo! to Yahoo!
Perna is, on the surface at least, a right-wing activist (judging by the contents of some of his messages and the fact that he sometimes calls himself "Patriot"). The discussion group I mentioned is moderated by him; he has to approve all emails that go to it. It seems somewhat hypocritical to set up a moderated group to complain about censorship! He will see this message on other groups he is on, so I might as well send it to his group and
test out which side Perna really is on.
This issue illustrates the fact that if the state censors fascists (not that I have any evidence that Perna is one, even if he is genuinely right-wing), it is likely that they will use the same mechanisms/laws to censor the left too.
Perna complains heavily about "CAPCHA" - the use of distorted images of codes consisting of letters and numbers to make it difficult for computer programs to send off huge numbers of emails pretending to be human beings. Those who have been irritated by spam (the most effective spammers I've come across have been those with email addresses of the form [firstname]-[surname][number]@something) may realise that the use of CAPCHA and textual analysis is essential to stop the spammers getting in too strong a position and spam overwhelming other emails to such an extent that email would cease to be a useful tool. What we should object
to is political keywords being checked for as well as those used in spam (e.g. those about porn).
Perna claims that he has sometimes found sending an email virtually impossible due to the use of CAPCHA, with it repeatedly and wrongly saying that he has deciphered the code incorrectly. I have never experienced that myself; when I send emails to a lot of addresses my Yahoo! email program asks me to decipher codes a few times and I don't get them wrong frequently enough to be assumed to be a computer. If any left-winger has experienced Perna's problem, then I'd like to hear about it; I think that it is my skill at reading the codes rather than less interesting messages that is saving me...
Incidentally, I don't think the textual analysis involved is limited to searching for keywords. Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques for understanding text in English (or another language) are developed well
enough for it to be practicable for programs to use in their filtering mechanisms. AI is one of my areas of expertise in my previous role as a researcher in computer science. [But I haven't done that sort of AI; I designed and implemented an AI/simulation language called SDML - see http://www.socialiststeve.me.uk/sdml.htm.]
I have suspected programs on the internet of reading emails to/from me and deciding whether to let them through for some time, due to suspicious behaviour especially with email addresses I have had located in the USA (e.g. getting no emails of any kind at all for ages and getting lots of spam at other times). If the technology is available, it would be naive to assume that the forces of big business are not using it to frustrate revolutionary socialists.
If you get your emails from me via a
discussion group, you may want to switch from reading the messages via email to the web (at http://groups.yahoo.com for those at Yahoo!). Alternatively, check your spam folder frequently. Obviously other people's emails which you would like to read could be affected as well as mine.
--
Steve Wallis (http://www.socialiststeve.me.uk).
Urgent/important emails: busterblock@....
My mailing list (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/manchesterism).
My revolutionary socialist band Galaxia (http://www.galaxiamusic.org; http://groups.yahoo.com/group/galaxiamusic).
Launch a general strike at the time of the next G8 summit (http://www.g8summitworldwidegeneralstrike.org).
Initiator of Revolutionary Platform of Respect (http://www.revolutionaryplatformofrespect.org).
Member of Glasgow Shettleston branch of the Scottish Socialist Party (http://www.scottishsocialistparty.org) and initiator of the Revolutionary Platform of the SSP (http://www.revolutionaryplatformofthessp.org).
Initiator of the Campaign for Democracy in the UK (http://www.democracycampaign.org.uk) and Campaign for Sanity in the NHS (http://www.health-service-sanity.org).
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