Not sure how I missed this one, but last Tuesday the hotly contested governor of Washington state signed into an aggressive law against spyware.

An anonymous reader submits “Today, the Governor of Washington signs a a bill outlawing spyware (bill history) which imposes penalties of $100,000 per violation. Spyware is broadly defined. It includes everything from changing a browser’s bookmarks or homepage settings, “Opening multiple, sequential, stand-alone advertisements in the owner or operator’s internet browser”, keystroke-logging, taking over control of the computer, modify its security settings, and even “Falsely representing that computer software has been disabled.”

This is more than a slap on the wrist and I would support any sort of financial penalty against spyware vendors who waste all of our time with their BS, but I’ll wait for some actual convictions to see if this does anything. I have a sinking feeling that this is something that looks good on paper but won’t have any actual teeth when being applied across the internet. Hope I’m wrong.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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