Congress passes 'pretexting' phone records bill
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. Congress has wrapped up its work for the year by passing a bill that would make it illegal to obtain a person's phone records without permission. The Senate late Friday passed the Law Enforcement and Phone Privacy Protection Act, spurred in part by revelations in September that Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) investigators had used deceptive means to gain access to phone records of reporters and company board members. The bill, sponsored by Representative Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, would make illegal the act of pretexting -- tricking phone companies into giving up private records by pretending to be a customer. The bill, which passed by voice vote in the Senate, allows prison sentences of up to 10 years and fines of up to US$500,000 for deceiving phone companies into handing over records such as phone logs. The bill, which now awaits President George Bush's signature before it becomes law, also outlaws the sale of phone records and adds penalties for people who obtain phone records as a way to help commit a violent crime. Privacy advocates have worried that criminals are using phone records obtained through pretexting to stalk potential victims. Smith praised the Senate for passing the legislation. "This data fraud can adversely affect Americans' lives," he said in a statement. "A careful study of these records may reveal details of our medical or financial life. It may even identify our occupation or physical location â a serious concern for undercover police officers and victims of stalking or domestic violence." Members of Congress began raising concerns about the sale of phone records a year ago, after the Electronic Privacy Information Center in mid-2005 filed a federal complaint about dozens of Internet-based companies selling phone records for less than $100. The issue gained traction late this year after HP officials revealed that investigators there had used pretexting to gain access to board members' and reporters' phone records in an effort to find which board members were leaking details of meetings. After members of Congress lectured HP officials about the use of pretexting in a September hearing, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer in October filed felony charges against former HP Chairman Patricia Dunn, a former HP legal counsel and three private investigators. Last week,Â HP agreed to a $14.5 million settlement in the California civil lawsuit related to the company's spying scandal. The civil suit made the same allegations that the state made in its criminal filing in October against the HP executives and investigators. Trade group USTelecom, representing large telecom carriers, praised the Senate for passing the pretexting bill. The legislation will "reinforce the efforts of telecom carriers to ensure that customer records remain secure," Walter McCormick Jr., president and chief executive of USTelecom, said in a statement. Â
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee looking into theÂ Hewlett-Packard Co. boardroom spying scandalÂ has added a second day of hearings and issued subpoenas for some witnesses. The Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee is holding hearings on Thursday, Sept. 28, and now Friday the 29th on pretexting, the practice of obtaining private phone records under false pretenses from phone companies. On the second day of hearings, the subcommittee has invited executives of the major wireless phone carriers to testify as well as the chairmen of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), according to a subcommittee news release Monday. Several people connected with the HP scandal have already accepted invitations to testify before the subcommittee on Thursday. HP has admitted that outside investigators it hired earlier this year to find the source of news leaks from the HP board engaged in pretexting to access their phone records. It is a decision HP now regrets, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mark Hurd said at a news conference Friday at the technology company's headquarters in Palo Alto, California. The committee issued subpoeanas compelling three witnesses to testify in regards to the HP scandal: HP senior counsel Kevin Hunsaker; HP Global Security Manager Anthony Gentilucci; and Ron DeLia, operator of Security Outsourcing Solutions Inc. (SOS), a Boston-based private investigations firm hired by HP. Hunsaker and Gentillucci worked closely with SOS to investigate the leaks, including use of pretexting, according to a report released Friday by an attorney hired by Hurd to investigate HP's investigation of the leaks. Congress has before it legislation to make pretexting a federal crime. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has a bill on his desk to make pretexting a state crime, but Attorney General Bill Lockyer says state criminal charges could still be filed against those involved in the HP scandal under existing state law. The CEOs of U.S. Cellular Corp., Alltel Communications Inc., Cingular Wireless LLC, Sprint Nextel Corp., Verizon Wireless Inc. and T-Mobile USA Inc. have been asked to appear at the second day of hearings. The subcommittee said in a news release that the hearings are part of a seven-month inquiry it's been conducting into data brokers and the questionable practice of pretexting.
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The Texas House of Representatives approved a bill to allow local courthouse clerks to disclose &#8220;in the ordinary course of business&#8221; Social Security numbers contained in public records maintained by their offices.
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SAN FRANCISCO - The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill Tuesday that could allow criminal charges to be brought against individuals who participate in file-swapping Web sites or networks.
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Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed into a law a bill that will ban the practice of pretexting in the state beginning on Jan. 1.
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(InfoWorld) - Legislation that would allow the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to seek civil penalties against businesses that obtain personal data under false pretenses may soon get a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives. The full House could vote on Prevention of Fraudulent Access to Phone Records Act as soon as late Friday or Saturday, Representative Joe Barton, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said Friday. Barton, a Texas Republican, asked the House leadership to move forward with the bill afterÂ lawmakers ripped into Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) officials ThursdayÂ for allowing the practice during an investigation into board leaks. HP President and Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd and former HP Chairwoman Patricia Dunn both testified Thursday that they did not know the details of how the leak investigation was conducted. The pretexting legislation has been stalled since the House Energy and Commerce Committee unanimously approved it in March. The bill would allow the FTC to seek civil penalties against so-called pretexters, those who masquerade as a customer to gain access to phone records or other personal information. Representatives of five mobile phone service carriers raised no objections to the bill during Friday's hearing. Lawmakers questioned if more businesses than HP have used pretexting or other questionable investigatory methods. "How do we, and how does corporate America, break this ethos that, if someone thinks that illegal or unethical activity ... is acceptable, everybody else in a corporation goes along with it?" said Representative Diana DeGette, a Colorado Democrat. DeGette will explore ways to add new requirements to the Sarbanes-Oxley financial reporting law, she said. Christopher Bryon, a columnist for the New York Post, told lawmakers Friday that he was a victim of pretexting four years ago, long before the HP investigation came to light. A facial recognition software company hired a pretexter to gain access to his sources after he wrote a column about the company, Bryon said. Pretexting appears to be a widespread practice among U.S. businesses, Bryon said. "This is not something I wanted my family to grow up with ... wondering if your mail is being read, if your phone is tapped, if there's a bug in your bedroom," he said. The FTC has filed five lawsuits against alleged pretexters, but the agency lacks the legal authority to seek civil damages, said Joel Winston, associate director of privacy and identity protection at the FTC. The FTC sought to recover pretexting-related profits in those cases, but additional civil penalties would give the agency an additional tool to use against identity thieves, he said. A second pretexting bill, the Telephone Records and Privacy Protection Act, has passed the House, but the measure is hung up in the Senate over disagreements over the best approach. The House bill would make pretexting a crime, with a penalty of up to 10 years in prison. Congress is scheduled to adjourn by early next week until after the Nov. 7 general election. Congress may come back into session late in the year to address unfinished business.
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U.S. lawmakers on Thursday plan to  shine a spotlight on Hewlett-Packard Co.'s  snooping  into the telephone records of some board members and  journalists, a practice that Congress may soon ban.
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Lawmakers on House and Senate intelligence committees say that while the National Security Agency has amassed a huge database of Americans&#039; calling records, cooperation with the NSA by telephone companies was not as widespread as USA Today initially reported, the newspaper said Friday.
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Top executives of Verizon   Communications VZ.N, Sprint Nextel Corp. S.N, Cingular and   T-Mobile USA have been invited to testify Friday at a U.S.   House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing into the use of   deceptive measures to obtain personal information, known as   pretexting, the panel said on Monday.
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The House approved a bill Thursday that would grant legal status to President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program with new restrictions. Republicans called it a test before the election of whether Democrats want to fight or "coddle" terrorists.
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Legislation that would make it   illegal to obtain and sell consumers' telephone records could   come to a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday,   said Rep. Joe Barton, one of the measure's authors.
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Congress guaranteed the flow of Internet aid to schools and libraries and provided federal funds to upgrade emergency 911 services for calls from mobile phones in a communications bill approved Wednesday and sent to the president for his signature.
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States with restrictions or bans on recorded political phone calls:
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WASHINGTON - Representatives of wireless telephone carriers planning a telephone directory service told a U.S. Senate committee Tuesday that legislation to protect their customers' privacy isn't needed, because their plan already does.
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The U.S. Congress has wrapped up its work for the year by passing a bill that would make it illegal to obtain a person's phone records without permission.
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Calling video voyeurism the new frontier of stalking, the House on Tuesday approved legislation to make it a crime to secretly photograph or videotape people, often for lascivious purposes.
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(InfoWorld) - On the heels of a similarÂ suit filed Thursday by Verizon Wireless Inc., Cingular Wireless LLC on Friday suedÂ private investigators used by Hewlett-Packard Co. to obtain phone records of a CNET News.com journalist. Cingular filed suit in a U.S. District Court in Atlanta against Charles Kelly and CAS Agency Inc. alleging they used pretexting -- or pretending to be someone else to obtain phone records -- to get information from Cingular about customer Dawn Kamamoto, a CNET journalist that HP was investigating. Cingular also named "John Does 1-100" and "XYZ Corps. 1-100" in the suit to accommodate other private investigators that may not have been named who also were involved in obtaining information from Cingular, said company spokesman Mark Siegel. "Sometimes it's hard to identify who is in these companies and who runs them," he said "We [used those terms] to accommodate for the vagueness of the industry." During Congressional hearings Thursday about HP's investigation of journalists -- including Kamamoto and writers from the Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek -- Kelly and CAS Agency were identified as investigators that HP used to obtain phone records information through pretexting, Siegel said. The defendants called customer service agents posing as Kamamoto to obtain her personal information, and also gained unauthorized access to her online account information, Cingular alleged in its filing. They then sold that information to HP. HP executives, including Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd, testified before the House Energy and Commerce Congressional Committee on Thursday about an investigation of journalists that took place in 2005 and earlier this year in an attempt to find out who at HP was leaking sensitive information to the press. The scandal has already forced Patricia Dunn to resign as HP's chairman and sparked investigations by the California attorney general and the U.S. House of Representatives. On Thursday, Verizon Wireless filed suit in New Jersey against investigators who used pretexting to obtain information about an HP director and that director's spouse, and then sold that information to HP. In its suit, Cingular is asking that a judge require the defendants to pay punitive damages to the company and be permanently restricted from: contacting Cingular for any reason, obtaining information about Cingular customers and advertising that they can obtain phone records from wireless companies about their subscribers. Cingular is also asking for the return of any information obtained about Cingular customers to the company. Cingular's Siegel said this is not the first time his company has filed suit against companies that have used pretexting to obtain customer information. "They call themselves data brokers -- we call them data burglars," he said. The company currently has several cases pending against other investigators who have used pretexting, which is not technically illegal, although Cingular believes it should be, Siegel added.