Congress Told of Persistent Pretexting
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Someone impersonating journalist Christopher Byron called AT&T's customer service 46 times over 2 1/2  months until a company representative finally divulged details of his phone calls.
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Democrats and Republicans take up fight over wiretapping measure.
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Members of Congress vowed today to conduct investigative hearings -- and consider reining in parts of the Patriot Act -- following revelations of pervasive problems in the FBI's use of national security letters to secretly obtain telephone, e-mail and financial records in terrorism cases.
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A month after giving the Bush administration new latitude to conduct electronic surveillance on American soil, some in Congress are having second thoughts.
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The self-described &quot;conscious of Congress&quot; has always taken an interest in issues related to Africa . Well, this week a continuing scandal should get its attention.
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New bills introduced in Congress this week target the privacy fallout from data breaches as well as the problems of pretexting and spyware.
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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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Senator Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., is reportedly steering the secretive Senate Intelligence Committee to give retroactive immunity to telecoms that helped the government secretly spy on Americans. Coincidentally, contributions from Verizon and AT&T execs to him spiked in 2007.
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Disclosures of bid-rigging within the insurance industry may lead Congress to a &#39;&#39;Pandora&#39;s box&quot; of unethical conduct, a top investigator told Congress
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A key member of Congress disclosed yesterday that the CIA said in February 2003 that it planned to destroy videotapes of harsh interrogations after the agency's inspector general finished probing the episodes, an account that adds detail to recent CIA statements about the circumstances surrounding...
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(InfoWorld) - A U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee probing theÂ Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) pretexting case has issued more subpoenas to compel witness testimony at a Thursday hearing. The Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Energy and Commerce Committee issued subpoenas Wednesday for five people identified as "pretexters," data brokers who sometimes obtain access to confidential records under false pretenses. HP has been embroiled in a scandal over its hiring of private investigators who engaged in possibly illegal pretexting to investigate news leaks from HP's board to reporters. Served with subpoenas, according to the Subcommittee, are: Bryan Wagner, a private investigator from Littleton, Colorado; Charles Kelly, of the CAS Agency in Villa Rica, Georgia; Cassandra Selvage of Eye in the Sky Investigations, of Dade City, Florida; Darren Brost, of Austin, Texas; and Valerie Preston from InSearchOf Inc., of Cooper City, Florida. Wagner was identified in a Wednesday Wall Street Journal article as a suspect in the pretexting of phone records of HP directors, employees and journalists who cover the Palo Alto, California technology company. The Journal reported that Wagner told an investigator that he smashed his computer to pieces with a hammer, destroying data that was saved on it. The article also said that the destruction of the computer may hamper an investigation by California Attorney General Bill Lockyer's office into possible illegal activity by people at HP or by the private investigators HP hired. The five who were subpoenaed Wednesday have been added to a list of witnesses that also includes HP's Chief Executive Officer and President Mark Hurd and former board chairman Patricia Dunn, who resigned last Friday because of the scandal. While Dunn and Hurd have volunteered to appear, two other HP executives involved in the investigation were subpoenaed: senior counsel Kevin Hunsaker and Global Security Manager Anthony Gentilucci. Hunsaker "left the company" and Gentilucci "resigned" effective Tuesday, said HP spokesman Ryan Donovan. Also subpoenaed are Ron DeLia, operator of Security Outsourcing Solutions Inc., a Needham, Massachusetts, private investigations firm, and Joe Depante, owner of Action Research Group, of Melbourne, Florida. HP has acknowledged hiring both those firms in its leak investigation and that they used pretexting to track down personal phone records. Â
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George A. Keyworth II and his family were victims of repeated attempts to use pretexting to gain their cellphone records.
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Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson promised Congress on Tuesday he could turn his agency into a &quot;model for information security&quot; but said lawmakers will have to be patient.
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Google has responded to a U.S. congressman&#39;s series of questions about its privacy practices, with the company defending its use of consumer data.
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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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(InfoWorld) - Obtaining private records under false pretenses is bad, but some in the technology industry say it happens all the time and wonder whether new federal legislation will curb "pretexting." Pretexting came up in a discussion about tech industry legislation at the Tech Policy Forum Tuesday in San Jose, California. State charges are pending in San Jose against people charged inÂ the pretexting scandal at Hewlett-Packard (HP). Four people, including ousted HP Chairman Patricia Dunn,Â were charged in October 2006 for their part in a scheme to identify leaks to media by HP directors by obtaining their phone records and those of some reporters. Agents working on behalf of HP allegedly tricked phone companies into divulging people's phone records by pretending to be them. In the wake of the HP pretexting scandal, which promptedÂ a House subcommittee to call HP executives and others to testify, Congress passed federal legislation signed by President George Bush in JanuaryÂ outlawing pretexting. But a new bill has been introduced in the current session of Congress to direct the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to enforce the ban on pretexting. The FTC already enforces a ban on pretexting, but it is narrowly defined, said Mozelle Thompson, a consultant who once served as an FTC commissioner. "It only covers pretexting for the purpose of identity theft, and you have to show a direct harm to a consumer" because of it, Thompson said at the summit. Although some speakers at the summit criticized phone companies for not protecting call records well enough, another wondered how pretexting could be stopped. "This has been happening for years," said Shari Steele, president of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The latest bill, co-authored by Representatives Jay Inslee, a Washington Democrat, and Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, is a complement to the earlier pretexting ban. The FTC should enforce the pretexting ban because it has more expertise and interest in prosecuting identity theft cases than local prosecutors, a spokeswoman for Inslee said. The two introduced their bill in 2006, but it never came up for a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives.
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A congressional committee looking at corporate spying practices at Hewlett-Packard Co. already has found links between other large companies and researchers who used sketchy and possibly illegal investigation methods.