Give us the power to can spam, says ICO

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has said it needs more power and resources to deal with spammers.

Speaking at today's Westminster eForum on spams and scams in London, David Evans, senior guidance and promotion manager for the ICO, admitted the government was failing to stop spammers.

If [spam] were on my email personal address, it would not be much of an issue. But for business to business, this is a really big problem.

-- David Evans, senior guidance and promotion manager, ICO

Evans said: "The biggest source of spam is the US. Much as investigations teams would love to go and arrest people there, we don't have the power or resources. We would like the power to act but we would like the resources to use these powers."

Evans added that the ICO, which is part of the Department of Trade and Industry, was forced to prioritise cases in favour of investigating phishing scams before general spam.

"Often we have to concentrate on phishing rather than spam, which is an annoyance but it just means you have to delete it," he said. "If [spam] were on my email personal address, it would not be much of an issue. But for business to business, this is a really big problem."

Jeremy Beale, head of the eBusiness Group for the CBI, said companies still see spam as an IT issue rather than a business problem: "Partnership is the name of the game between public and private sector. The private sector has been getting its act together but it needs to do more on the technical side.

"The government needs to do more as well. Richard Thomas [the information commissioner] has not been given the powers he needs to deal with [spam]. I would like to know why."