The US Federal Election Commission approved a Google plan on Thursday to let campaign emails bypass Gmail spam filters. The FEC's advisory opinion adopted in a 4-1 vote said Gmail's pilot program is permissible under the Federal Election Campaign Act and FEC regulations "and would not result in the making of a prohibited in-kind contribution."
The way I see it is, any e-mail being received by you, which you did not solicit, is spam to you, no matter whether it is a president, the CEO of the golf club, or whoever. Yet again, it seems that politicians (the world over) consider themselves above the laws they created.
In many countries, my own included, there needs to be opt out messages for e-mails and SMS text messages, which if not honoured, become a criminal offence.
But let's watch this one play out, as I suspect more and more users of free services are beginning to realise they have become the product, but that they also have other options, even though change can be very painful (try updating 100+ e-mail address details across your banks, insurance company, medical, etc).
See
US approves Google plan to let political emails bypass Gmail spam filter#
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Plan came after GOP complaints, but FEC says it doesn't violate ban on contributions.
