I love my job. I do what I love doing and I get paid a pretty decent amount to do it. Quite hard to complain. So I’m not going to. Instead I’ll relate how fun it is to be quoted (or mis) in news sources.

I’ve been interviewed by television and print reporters a couple of times in this job, however typically my boss fields those requests as everyone here apparently has a dim view on my ability to handle such situations. I think that’s only partly due to my relatively open manner of responding to questions and mostly due to the fact that we’ve yet to see a story with quotes from someone from our office without gaping misquotations and factual errors you could drive a truck through.

My boss was sick yesterday so I fielded a dangerous, yellow, reporter, and answered some of his questions about spam. The only reason I did so was because he wasn’t looking for anything University specific. That’s one thing I know not to touch with a 10 foot stick. Anything I say about security or spam and the University in general will be misunderstood, misquoted, taken out of context, and made to look like the university is either a spawning ground for spammers, uber-hackers and the like, or some other such ridiculous nonsense.

But one expert on the issue questions how effective the law would be.

Jordan Wiens, network security engineer for the University of Florida, said Nelson’s anti-spam proposal appears to be is a good step to deter those involved in unscrupulous activities, but likely would have limited effectiveness.

“It probably wouldn’t hurt, but at the same time, a lot of people sending spam out are not going to be troubled by this too much because they’re doing things like breaking into host sites in China and sending it out through there,” Wiens said.

“There is a certain slice of spam that might be affected by a new law, and it may help deters spammers from even starting.”

But, “since a lot of spam generates from overseas hosts, it’s not going to be the ultimate solution,” said Wiens, who also leads the university’s Network Incident Response Team.

And look, I even got a promotion! I’m now head the Network Incident Response Team. I’m a Member of the NetIRT as stated in my email sig (which must have been where the reporter somehow found that group name), but he decided I needed a promotion. I made sure to forward that on to my bosses so they can be aware of this as well and start paying me accordingly.

Posted by Jordan on Tuesday, May 13th, 2003 at 12:58 pm.