Date: 2007-03-21
Speaker: LINDA T. SANCHEZ (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Cali

fornia. Mr. Speaker. I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise in strong support of H.R. 740. the Preventing Harassment Through Outbound Number Enforcement (PHONE) Act of 2007. I would like to thank Chairman CONYERS for his leadership in moving this bill through the committee process and to the floor on a bipartisan basis. and also commend Mr. SCOTT and the leadership and assistance of the full committee Ranking Member SMITH and subcommittee Ranking Member FORBES. along with that of the chief sponsor of spoofing legislation in the last Congress. TIM MURPHY. in developing and moving this bill to the floor. H.R. 740 is aimed at the practice that has come to be known as spoofing. To some. that name might conjure up harmless pranks. but spoofing is very serious. Spoofing occurs when a caller uses caller ID information to hide the callers true identity in order to commit fraud or some other abusive act. One of the witnesses at the hearing on the predecessor bill last Congress was Phil Kiko. the Judiciary Committees chief counsel at the time. He had been a victim of caller ID spoofing when his home phone number was left falsely as the caller ID on numerous calls. Phil and his family were understandably irritated at the numerous calls from people mistakenly calling him back. and it could have been much worse. Spoofing is also often used to commit identity theft. Call recipients sometimes are tricked into divulging personal and private information under the mistaken belief that the call is legitimate. For example. the AARP *has reported cases in which people received calls claiming falsely that they had missed jury duty. They were told that to avoid prosecution they needed to provide their Social Security number and other personal information. The caller ID information that appeared on their phones was from the local courthouse. so they assumed that the caller was telling the truth. H.R. 740 is intended to help protect consumers from harassment. identity theft and other privacy intrusions. Recently. the technology needed to spoof has become readily available either through the purchase of Internet telephone equipment or through Web sites specifically set up to spoof. For example. Voice over Internet Protocol equipment can easily be configured to populate the caller ID field with information of the users.choosing. Some of the technology can block any back technology. such as Star 69. In addition. the bill contains a forfeiture provision allowing for the forfeiture of equipment used and proceeds gained by criminals in call spoofing. Finally. section 3 of the bill has a provision which adds call spoofing to the list of unlawful activities associated with money laundering. Existing law provides that comparable crimes. such as violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. constitutes specified unlawful activities for the purpose of the money laundering statute. Not all use of fake caller ID information is considered spoofing. When you receive a call from a U.S. House ofRepresentatives number on an outside line. for example. the number that appears on your caller ID is a fictitious number to protect the security of House Members and staff. False caller ID information is also used legitimately for certain law enforcement purposes and by some businesses as well. and these nonmalicious users are not prohibited by the bill. The bill we were considering last Congress would have made even this nonabusive fake caller ID use illegal. That bill also failed to make a distinction in penalties for spoofing that does not involve fraud or gain. such as the Phil Kiko case. Further. comments from the Department of Justice were not available when last years bill was being developed. This is why I opposed the bill last year. though I was in support of the concept of the bill. We. have constructed a bill that makes fraudulent commercial use of caller ID information a felony. with fines and imprisonment of up to 5 years. This commercial motive would require the use of false caller ID information. that is. caller ID information that is not your own. The bill also makes abusive use of caller ID information without fraudulent commercial motives a misdemeanor. such as the Phil Kiko situation. Finally. the bill exempts use of nonabusive fake ID information. The Subcommittee on Crime. Terrorism and Homeland Security held a hearing and markup on the bill in February and reported it favorably to the full committee. At the subcommittee hearing. the DOJ provided testimony and recommendations which we did not have a chance to fully consider by the time of full committee markup. Ranking Member FORBES and Mr. SCOTT agreed to work together on considering those recommendations in a continuation of the fully bipartisan effort under which this bill had been developed. After meeting with representatives of DOJ. they have revised.the bill as reported out of committee to clarify the offense and punishment language in the bill. The change makes clear that felony penalties are reserved for egregious violations -committed with intent to wrongfully obtain anything of value. They also made other technical changes to the bill for its introduction on the floor. H.R. 740 is important and helpful legislation for preventing identity theft and other abuses of phone technologies. Accordingly. I urge my colleagues to support the bill. Mr. Speaker. I reserve the balance of my time. ] 1800