US Close to Making Pretexting a Federal Crime

Just before the holiday recess, the US Senate outlawed the practice of "pretexting", that is, inducing telephone carriers to divulge the calling records of private individuals. Entitled the Law Enforcement and Phone Privacy Protection Act, the legislation provides maximum penalties of 10-year prison sentences and fines of $500,000. Earlier in 2006, the House of Representatives had enacted a similar bill (by a vote of 409 – 0), thus holding out the prospect of Congressional near unanimity on the topic and the likely signing into law of legislation by the President early in 2007. Pretexting is a topic that gained notoriety several months ago following the widely reported situation at Hewlett Packard Inc (HP) when senior executives apparently used this technique to spy on independent directors of the HP Board of Directors. For a news article from the IDG news service, visit: http://masl.to/?S1AE3256E For an update of Congressional legislative history, visit: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:h.r.04709 Summary by: The Editor