Mr. Speaker, I want to focus on spam and its use in crime. Spam can be used to spread computer viruses, Trojan horses or other malicious software. The objective may be identity theft or even worse, for instance, advance-fee fraud and other kinds of commercial fraud transactions.
Some spam attempts to capitalize on human greed, while other attempts use the victim's inexperience with computer technology to trick them, for example, phishing.
In May 2007 one of the world's most prolific spammers, Robert Soloway, was arrested by U.S. authorities. He was described as one of the top ten spammers in the world. He was charged with 35 criminal counts, including mail fraud, wire fraud, email fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering.
We also have to take this issue seriously, not only in terms of the irritation and costs that are borne by consumers and Internet providers in our country in extra overhead, transaction costs and damage to computer and community channels, but we have to recognize that this has an important criminal element as well.
Could my hon. colleague talk about the need to control spam and the effect it may have in terms of being a tool to deal with fraud and other crimes in our country?