The Kong-Fu Frog Execution – The End?
by Gil Rosen

With deep anger I read about the continued attacks of spammers on the blue security website AFTER they shut down their anti-spamming business. It turns out that the spammers didn’t even want to give them a chance to post a farewell message.

On the 10th of May I wrote a post about the essence behind the fight of Blue Security (A.K.A – the Kong Fu Frog) against spammers. My basic rational drew an analogy from the cold war era – the Second Strike Doctrine. When the Soviet Union and the United States both realized no side could win a nuclear war (no matter if one side started an all out attack) the initial attack didn’t take place in the first place. This lead to the stale mate we all know as the cold war (or peace).

Blue Security gave me, the humble / little / powerless email user, the power to strike back. The rational was that spammers would leave me alone.

I received some interesting feedback arguing that while this might be true, it is not the business of a corporations to create a business model based on vigilantism, that ‘an eye to an eye’ philosophy is not the ‘right way’ to deal with spam, some more personal comments regarding the CEO’s ego and more (see comments to post).

I do believe there were (sad to say were and not are ) some issues that were worth discussing and perhaps changing in how Blue Security operated. People like Martin Hannigan that commented to my post made some valid points that are worth discussing. For me that is not the main point though. Let’s face it, the shut down of Blue Security is a point blank extermination of a completely legitemante business by organized spammers.

So which is the lesser evil – A corporation using vigilantism as a business model or de-facto threats and all out war of illegal spammers that lead to an inevitable shut down of Blue Security? I think the former. Since my brother is involved with Blue Security I did hold these discussions with him (the legitimacy of evangelism) and following my post I did have an exchange of ideas about what is right or wrong with Martin and others. None were held with a gun to our heads. That is the way things should be.

Are the oil industry, pharma industry, fast food industry, tobacco industry sin free? ONE BIG NO. Are we shutting them down? – NO. We use legislation, public opinion or in short due process to navigate through complex matters. When a criminal brings about to the shutdown of a legitimate business – it’s a big problem. It’s even a bigger problem since the crime took place in broad day light with millions of witnesses and the villains walk away slowly, unharmed, even strengthened and with a smile on their face – does “banana republic” sound like an appropriate description?

So what now? We can argue, philosophize but the spam will continue to hit and cost millions or even trillions of dollars in damages. Corporations invest heavily in anti spam solutions, people are employed for ‘defensive’ positions instead of ‘productive’ positions, I and so do most people spend time checking for ‘false positive’ etc.

This is what I believe we should do - The active and capable community members of the blue security community should strike back. Lets open an open source “Kong Fu Frog” platform – a peer to peer platform using similar technologies as Blue against spammers. I am not a technology expert but I do believe it can be done. A former small, unthreatening corporation that was executed in broad day light will replaced by an open , non-profit community (perhaps this is how it should have been done in the first place). This just might bring to millions of users world wide the ‘second strike’ balance. I am sure spammers will hate it, but so what?, I hate spam!

Any volunteers?

Gil Rosen
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