Stop the spam from StopRailNow and ZeroShibai

by billso on Sunday, 15 June 2008

Malia Zimmerman and her fellow travelers Cliff Slater and Charley’s Taxi president Dale Evans are busy promoting the construction of more roads and elevated HOV lanes on their remarkably ugly web sites, as well as the abysmally designed honolulutraffic.com. The Hawaii Reporter has been emailing single image messages for an anti-rail group and a sister web site, ZeroShibai.com.

‘Let the people decide’ not to receive spam

But there’s no unsubscribe or opt-out link in email messages or on their web sites. In 2008, that’s not just ignorant - it may be illegal. So much for respecting the privacy of Internet users. Malia seems more concerned about her First Amendment protection from civil lawsuits than respecting user privacy.

Another petition site, Let Honolulu Vote, has similar problems with design and privacy.

Perhaps StopRailNow could spend some of the money they are spending on full-page advertisements in the Honolulu Advertiser, Star-Bulletin and MidWeek on an email management service like SafeSubscribe.

I did send an unsubscribe request to info@stoprailnow.com on 9 May 2008. It’s a very simple message that folows the standard pattern for unsubscribing:

$billso\'s unsubscribe request to stoprailnow.org$

I haven’t received a message from them since. But I didn’t receive any acknowledgment of my request, either. I remember the days when the Hawaii Reporter’s web server was kept in a bedroom.

Laws, technology and expectations have changed since then.

Related posts and pages on billso.com

Honolulu mass transit
8 June 2008: Why Honolulu needs rail
20 April 2008: Honolulu newspapers to City Council: Enough already!
17 April 2008: Back on track
15 April 2008: Council members discuss mass transit research
2 April 2008: Still on track?
20 March 2008: Like a fifth wheel
6 February 2008: Hawaii has highest car ownership costs in the USA
19 June 2007: City council, planners still arguing over mass transit routes, modes

Tagged as: email, Honolulu, Oahu, privacy, rail, transit

billso

[insert witty response here]
gregory

white guys in hawaii, have been causing trouble for more than a hundred years
billso

I do press students to cite their sources, and I'm also glad you are reading with a critical eye! Kudos to you.
Daniel Peters

If going to college has taught me anything, it's to be skeptical of facts that are stated without any citation.

After my trip back in time to the early 90's to check out honolulutraffic[dot]com, i had a glance at the stoprailnow[dot]com site and was particularly intrigued by the fact that their "Why not rail?" page had many strong facts with nary a statistic or footnote to back it up.
The site claims that rail is noisy; I invite them to try to watch a movie at my apartment on punchbowl where Harley Davidsons and fat-mufflered civics are abound and then tell me that rail is louder than traffic.

Another fun tidbit from stoprailnow claims that rail will be tall and unsightly, complete with a little picture of a none-too suave looking train of some sort. Their "Better Options" page then suggests that an elevated expressway is better. The picture shows a staggeringly tall road. Contradictory?

The way I see it, there is only so much more room to make roads. Building more roads will make things smoother for a certain period of time and it will only get people to buy more cars. Gas prices rising will not curtail this as much as it will simply change the type of cars that people buy. http://www.autoblog.com/2008/06/03/by-the-numbe...

In the end, I just want to know where stoprailnow is getting its facts. "Most Oahu residents oppose this project." It's stated on the front page. I see no source. No source, no weight. That's the way I see it.