The Washington Post reports that the U.S. Senate has passed legislation that would allow law enforcement to go after a much larger percentage of modern online crime. Specifically, it will:

• remove the requirement that each affected individual must have suffered at least $5,000 in damages
  
• "make it a felony to install spyware or keystroke-monitoring programs on 10 or more computers regardless of the amount of damage caused"
  
• give identity theft victims the ability to seek restitution
  
• criminalize attempts to extort companies by threatening to publish stolen information
  

These provisions were added to an unrelated bill, the Former Vice President Protection Act, which must next be voted on by the House of Representatives before it becomes law.

CAUCE is very pleased that the Senate has taken this action to protect people living within the United States, and particularly support the provisions adding a private right of action against the criminals who prey upon all of us daily.

They say (whoever "they" are) that good things come in threes, and that certainly seems true for law enforcement against spammers this week.

In New York, Adam Vitale was sentenced to 30 months in prison and ordered to pay $183,000 in restitution for a week of spamming AOL back in 2005. He's also allegedly linked to advertisements for prostitution on craigslist, and is already in jail for even worse crimes.

In Illinois, an FTC settlement requires Spear Systems and company executives Bruce Parker and Lisa Kimsey to give up $29,000, stop making "false or unsubstantiated claims about health benefits" of their products, and bars them from violating CAN-SPAM ever again. Related litigation continues against defendants in Quebec and Australia; you may remember this gang as the hoodia spammers.

And finally, in Seattle, the Robert Soloway case continues. He pled guilty back in March to wire fraud, CAN SPAM fraud, and tax evasion, but not identity theft -- which was dismissed. Even so, he could be sentenced to up to 20 years, though that's reportedly unlikely. The difficulty for the judge appears to be that there isn't a lot of precedent for how long spammers should spend in jail. CAUCE would encourage Judge Marsha Pechman to look for precedents from other, non-internet-related fraud cases, multiply by the number of victims, and throw away the key.

But what makes the Soloway case particularly interesting is what else is being revealed. Soloway's business model was to sell advertising services, promising that all of his recipients had opted in -- even though none of them had, so it was 100% spam. This reportedly earned him over $1 million in a 3-year period, along with many extremely unhappy customers and nearly $18 million in judgements thus far.

So that's three more down, but many more to go.

(Note on the Soloway case: CAUCE President John Levine testified for the prosecution during both the trial and the sentencing.)

It is with regret that we note that CAUCE founder Scott Hazen Mueller has resigned his position as President of CAUCE North America. We are happy to note Scott will maintain his position on the iCAUCE (international CAUCE) board, as well as the CAUCE North America board in the position of Founder and Director, emeritus.

As well, while John Levine plans to move to England in the early fall, he has agreed to remain on the executive board and he will become President effective immediately.

Lastly, Dennis Dayman has graciously accepted the position of Secretary-Treasurer and was confirmed as such by unanimous vote.

Congratulations, Dennis, and thank you Scott for your years of service.