Date: 2009-12-15
Speaker: TIM MURPHY (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Pennsylvania

Madam Speaker. I rise to speak about H.R. 1110. the PHONE Act. which stands for Preventing Harassment through Outbound Number Enforcement. It will be voted on tomorrow. This bill addresses the growing and serious problems of caller ID fraud that allows the caller to hide their true identity to obtain personal information for use in identity theft and scams. Answering your phone is like answering your door. youre letting someone into your home and you need to know that whoever that person says they are is true. Caller ID was originally designed to give you that information so you could decide to answer your phone and have the confidence that you were not taking a call that is unwanted. unsafe. or unknown. That is why I worked across the aisle with Representative BOBBY SCOTT in introducing H.R. 1110. which was first introduced in the 109th Congress. Representative SCOTT took the lead in the 110th Congress. and now we are again working together in the 111th Congress to pass this very important bill. I thank Representative SCOTT for his leadership and teamwork in passing this public safety bill. The legislation is aimed at preventing and prohibiting caller ID spoofing. Spoofing is made available with Internet services that will provide false numbers and even disguise your voice so you can easily fool the person on the other end of the phone. Criminals coax victims into giving up sensitive personal information by making it appear that a call is coming from a legitimate institution. such as a bank. doctors office. government office. or even a family member. Misleading caller ID information also allows the spoofer to cause a victim to accept a call they would otherwise avoid. leading to harassment. Even more serious potential dangers exist. A pedophile could stalk a child by stealing a school phone number or the phone number of a friend or child. A sexual predator could use a doctors office phone number to call their victim. The problems with caller ID spoofing are very real. Let me give you a few examples. There are cases where criminals using stolen credit card numbers call a service such as Western Union. They program the caller ID to appear to originate from the cardholders home and use the credit card number to order cash transfers. Seniors have been misled into believing they missed jury duty. It appeared the local courthouse was calling and victims were asked for Social Security numbers to prevent prosecution. The calls seemed legitimate because the telephone number of the local courthouse showed up on caller ID. In another example. a SWAT team surrounded a building after it appeared a call came from within stating that a woman was being held hostage when. in fact. the call was coming from another location. The SWAT team showed up expecting to face an armed perpetrator. Luckily. no one was hurt in this one instance. but one can easily imagine what could have happened if an unsuspecting bystander happened to be at that location. a series of misunderstandings could have ended up in tragedy. Unfortunately. this process called "swatting" has occurred dozens of times. And just this month. there have been two serious cases of caller ID fraud in the news. In Columbia. Maryland. a teenager was arrested for making terrorist phone calls to his former school. calling in a bomb scare and telling school officials there was a student on campus with a gun. The teen used spoofing to make the phone number appear to be coming from Texas. Fortunately. the police were able to subpoena the phone records and arrest the teen. In Brooklyn. New York. a woman used caller ID fraud to exact revenge on her husband and his pregnant girlfriends newborn baby. She illegally obtained a prescription that would induce labor early and called the girlfriend. using spoofing. to make it appear that her obstetrician was calling. The woman. thinking she was under doctors orders. took the medication and the baby was delivered 2 months premature. Police were able to track down the woman when she tried to deliver a poisonous mixture to the hospital disguised as milk. allegedly intending to kill the baby. The police arrested the woman. avoiding a devastating. tragic. and potentially fatal outcome that originated by using caller ID fraud. This could have been avoided if the caller had not used a fraudulent caller ID or if the police could have tracked down the perpetrator sooner. This bill will make the act of caller ID fraud a felony. and criminals could see fines of up to $250.000 and jail time up to 5 years if convicted of using caller ID fraud in perpetrating another crime. I urge all my colleagues to pass this PHONE Act. H.R. 1110. because criminals must know they cannot use this technology loophole to escape the law and cause further harm to our citizens.