Aussie environmentalists accused of spamming

Conservation lobby group the NSW National Parks Association (NPA) is fuming that its address has been blacklisted by the spam filter of the office of the NSW Premier, Morris Iemma.

The group's executive officer Andrew Cox accused the Government of "infringing on the public's ability to participate in the democratic process using email".

The NPA had arranged a web form on its site that allowed people to send an email to Iemma, 20 of his Cabinet Ministers, five Independents and four Green parliamentary members, supporting the NPA's position on administrative changes to the environment ministry. Most of the letters were based around a generic letter template.

After getting 1700 generic letters, the government wrote to the NPA saying that it was breaking spamming laws and threatened to call the coppers.

Cox says that the spam laws only apply to "commercial electronic messages" and the NPA is a non-profit organisation. So 1700 identical letters telling a member to pull his finger out is not spam, where as a letter offering to stiffen a member's resolve is.

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