Panel to question wireless firms about pretexting
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The U.S. House Energy and Commerce  Committee will ask wireless company executives and the head of  the Federal Communications Commission to testify Friday on the  use of deceptive measures to obtain personal information, known  as pretexting, the panel said on Monday.
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Experts will rate potential severity of business security threats.
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Potential jurors for the trial of former WorldCom Inc. chief Bernard Ebbers were asked Wednesday whether they had financial ties to the company and what they had read in the media about the case.
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The Securities and Exchange Board of India will examine the legal aspects of alleged insider and unfair trading practices in Reliance Industries&#39; scrip in the wake of RIL vice-chairman and managing director Anil Ambani&#39;s comments before the company&#39;s
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Wireless companies are under pressure to police the services they carry amid mounting concern that today's increasingly versatile cell phones can be gateways to a lot more than football highlights and pop videos.
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A proposal for a wireless phone directory raises concerns in Congress.
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Cable-modem service provider Comcast said Wednesday that it would welcome a U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC)&#160;investigation into its broadband traffic management practices.FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, speaking at the&#160;Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas&#160;on Tuesday, said the commission would investigate&#160;complaints that Comcast was blocking some peer-to-peer (P-to-P) traffic. An Associated Press investigation published in October found that Comcast was slowing traffic connected through the popular BitTorrent file-sharing program.A Comcast spokeswoman said Wednesday that the company had not yet received information requests from the FCC. Comcast, in a statement, also defended its practice of sometimes slowing P-to-P traffic during peak traffic times.&quot;We look forward to responding to any FCC inquiries regarding our broadband network management,&quot; David Cohen, Comcast&#39;s executive vice president, said in the statement. &quot;We believe our practices are in accordance with the FCC&#39;s policy statement on the Internet where the commission clearly recognized that reasonable network management is necessary for the good of all customers.&quot;Comcast will work with the FCC to better inform customers about broadband network management, the statement said. &quot;Comcast does not, has not, and will not block any Web sites or online applications, including peer-to-peer services,&quot; Cohen said.Martin also said the FCC would look into complaints that Verizon Wireless and other wireless carriers were blocking access to text-messaging on their networks. In September,&#160;Verizon Wireless denied Naral Pro-Choice America, an abortion rights group, access&#160;when the group asked to allow Verizon customers to sign up for its text-messaging alerts.&#160;Verizon reversed the decision a day later.A Verizon Wireless spokeswoman didn&#39;t immediately respond to a request for comments on Martin&#39;s CES speech.In December, eight consumer and public-interest groups -- including Public Knowledge, the Consumer Federation of America and Consumers Union -- filed a complaint with the FCC, saying mobile phone providers should not be able to block text messages from political groups and advertisers.Public Knowledge and Free Press, both critical of provider traffic blocking, praised Martin&#39;s CES statements. Public Knowledge is pleased that the FCC is &quot;willing to stand by their principles to protect American consumers,&quot; the group said in a statement. &quot;We look forward to FCC proceedings that will determine what are legitimate uses of power by telecom companies, and which are not.&quot;
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The telecoms watchdog Ofcom is considering how to regulate firms that let you make calls via the net.
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Despite dismay from telecom firms and the Department of Justice, lawmakers on Capitol Hill appear ready to once again put their weight behind laws designed to crack down on pretexting.
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has asked a federal court to make two Florida companies stop telephone pretexting and to pay back victims of the practice. One of the companies, Action Research Group, has been linked in press reports to last year'sÂ Hewlett-Packard pretexting scandal, which led to theÂ resignation of HP Chairman Patricia DunnÂ last September. The second company, Eye in the Sky Investigations, has "performed services" for Action Research Group, the complaint said. Eye in the Sky also was called to testify before a congressional investigation into the matter. In a complaint filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Orlando, the FTC claims that the practice of pretexting violates the U.S. Telecommunications Act of 1996. Telephone pretexting is illegal in some states, but Thursday's complaint seeks to clarify where the FTC stands on the practice. "Selling the records constitutes an invasion of privacy that could endanger the health and safety of consumers," the FTC said in a statement released Thursday. It is also a violation of federal law, the statement says. HP's top executives became embroiled in a pretexting scandal late last year. While trying to clamp down on a boardroom leak dating back to 2005, HP hired private investigators who obtained telephone records of company employees and journalists by falsely representing themselves as account holders or telephone company employees. The scandal at HP also led to the resignation of Ann Baskins, formerly HP's senior vice president and general counsel, and Kevin Hunsaker, the company's senior legal counsel. On Thursday, an HP spokesman said he welcomed the FTC's move. "HP is opposed to pretexting and has expressly called for the practice to be made illegal," said HP's Ryan Donovan. "We support the FTC's efforts to permanently halt telephone record pretexting." All five FTC commissioners voted to authorize the complaint, the FTC said.
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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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(InfoWorld) - Two U.S. representatives have introduced a law that would give the U.S. Federal Trade Commission the authority to investigate and prosecute imposters who gain access to other people's private telephone records. The bill, introduced Wednesday by Representatives Jay Inslee, a Washington Democrat, and Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, comes in addition to a bill signed into law by President George Bush in January criminalizing the phone records scheme known as pretexting. The new pretexting bill is important because the FTC has more expertise and interest in prosecuting identity theft cases than many local prosecutors, a spokeswoman for Inslee said. Ken Springer, the founder and president of Corporate Resolutions, a private investigations firm, applauded the pretexting legislation. State prosecutors have been targeting similar tactics to get personal bank records for about 10 years, and reputable private investigations firms haven't used pretexting for many years, he said. "You've got to play by the rules," said Springer, a former special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. "It's not a grey area. You can't use it." Although corporate customers may demand that private investigators use all means necessary, Springer tells clients they should consider that the details of their investigations could wind up in the media. "The risk-reward [balance] is something they should consider," he said. After a pretexting scandal at Hewlett-Packard in late 2006, "corporate America got the message," he said. Still, the new pretexting bill can give customers faith that their records are protected, he said. Inslee and Blackburn introduced a similar bill in January 2006, but it didn't come up for a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives. Their Consumer Telephone Records Protection Act would make it illegal for anyone to knowingly obtain confidential phone records by making false or fraudulent statements to a telephone company or to knowingly sell or receive confidential phone records knowing such information was obtained fraudulently. The bill would also require telephone companies to notify customers when their phone records fall into the wrong hands. In January, Bush signed a law making pretexting illegal, punishable with up to 10 years in prison and fines. Fines and prison sentences would increase if the violations involve more than 50 telephone customers. Congress began investigating pretexting in early 2006 after media reports and a complaint from privacy advocacy group the Electronic Privacy Information Center showed that several companies were selling private phone records online for less than $100. Then in September, HP revealed that investigators it hired had used pretexting to try to discover the source of board leaks.Â California prosecutors charged former HP board Chairwoman Patricia Dunn, former HP legal counsel Kevin Hunsaker, and three investigators with feloniesÂ late last year.
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New rules will force wireless telecommunications companies to disclose serious network outages, but the public won't have access to the information for fear that terrorists may read it. By Ryan Singel.
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NEW YORK -- Although the boardroom scandal at Hewlett-Packard Co. made the practice more widely known, buying phone records or other personal information obtained by ``pretext" calls appears to have been common in the business world.
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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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Wireless devices are being used to perform background checks at Boston's airport.
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Legislators, regulators and the phone industry are all considering ways to clamp down on unauthorized releases of phone records like those in the Hewlett-Packard case.