Kim Kulish/Corbis Saba,
for The New York Times
Declan McCullagh enlisted
a few thousand associates
in a recent e-mail dispute.
15 April 2002
Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/15/technology/15SPAM.html
The New York Times
April 15, 2002
COMPRESSED DATA
By CHRIS GAITHER
It was a publicist's worst nightmare.
Fleishman-Hillard, a prominent public relations firm based in St. Louis, had to apologize last week to the editor of a large e-mail list after one of Fleishman's computer administrators angered some of the Internet's most vigilant defenders.
The trouble started when a Fleishman office manager in San Diego returned
from vacation and found nearly 80 messages from
Politech, an
e-mail list maintained by Declan McCullagh, the Washington bureau chief for
the Wired News Web site. Each day Politech circulates up to a dozen comments
and articles on electronic security, free speech and privacy to its 20,000
subscribers.
Kim Kulish/Corbis Saba,
for The New York TimesDeclan McCullagh enlisted
a few thousand associates
in a recent e-mail dispute.
The office manager had not subscribed, so she e-mailed a request to the list's server computer to remove her. When that did not work, she sent Mr. McCullagh an angry e-mail message and notified her department's computer expert.
As it happens, while on vacation the office manager was assigned the e-mail address of a former employee who had been an active member of the Politech list.
Not knowing that, the Fleishman computer administrator sent Mr. McCullagh a stern warning about unsolicited e-mail, and for emphasis added that he would consider it an honor and a privilege "to use all the technology tools available at making you go away."
Mr. McCullagh promptly circulated the Fleishman warning to the list's members. There ensued a 24-hour flurry of messages from journalists, professors and policy makers inveighing against Fleishman. Some respondents vowed to block all e-mail sent from Fleishman, which is owned by the Omnicom Group. Others noted the irony of the firm's motto: "Grassroots marketing — word-of-mouth makes the difference."
Mr. McCullagh said, "What Fleishman-Hillard unwittingly played into is the Internet's intolerance for people with power who are pompous."
List members sent the messages to a handful of Fleishman executives, whose e-mail pagers buzzed through the night, according to Michael Busselen, a senior vice president at Fleishman.
On Wednesday morning, Mr. Busselen called Mr. McCullagh to apologized. He explained the sequence of events and said the computer manager had not been authorized to speak for the company. He said he hoped the apology, which Mr. McCullagh accepted, would allow "everyone to return back to business as usual."