Date: 2007-03-21
Speaker: TIM MURPHY (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Pennsylvania

Mr. Speaker. I thank the chairman and my good friend. the gentleman from Virginia . for his work on this important bill. We worked together on it. On behalf of H.R. 740. I would like to urge all of my colleagues to vote for this. The previous version. which I introduced last session and was passed unanimously in the 109th Congress as H.R. 5304. was the Preventing Harassment Through Outbound Number Enforcement Act. or the PHONE Act. or the PHONE bill at that time. Chairman ScOTT and Ranking Member FORBES and others from the Judiciary Committee have taken a good bill and made it better. Identity theft has become an increasingly critical problem for consumers. The Federal Trade Commission revealed that last year about 10 million individuals were victims of identity theft in all 50 States. The disastrous implications for identity theft includes damaged credit. financial ruin. and the effects can tear apart families and ruin businesses. Congress has repeatedly acted to try and prevent identity theft. But. unfortunately. with new technologies. as soon as we outlaw one version. somebody comes up with a way around that. and once again harasses and harms citizens of this Nation. One of these technologies used by thieves is the practice of call spoofing or caller ID fraud presenteil on Web sites as just an innocent game one can use. or perhaps use it to make sales calls. but they mask their identity and alter their outbound caller ID in order to mislead the call recipient. Some may call it a way to maintain caller privacy. but it is nothing less than fraud. I believe Congress must enact a law to penalize caller ID fraud perpetrators. This bill is particularly necessary to protect *American families. the elderly. and businesses because illegally using another persons phone number could have limitless. unlawful applications. It doesnt take much in the imagination to understand how dangerous this practice is and how it is being used now. . For example. a criminal could try to obtain personal financial information from individuals by using a banks phone number. A person could harass a former wife or husband who has otherwise tried to block the calls from the exspouses phone line. A pedophile could stalk children by stealing his schools phone number or the phone number of a friend of the child. A sexual predator could use a doctors office phone number to gather records about someone. A terrorist could make threats from a government phone number. and the list goes on. The criminal use of caller identity theft. however. is not just a possibility. Here are some realworld examples of how caller ID fraud is occurring. In 2005. a SWAT team surrounded an empty building in New Brunswick. New Jersey. after police received a call from a woman who said she was being held hostage in an apartment. [ 1815 She was not in an apartment. The woman had intentionally used a false caller ID. Imagine what might have happened if that was a site where people might have been coming out of the building and police might have thought that that person. was a potential threat. I might add that one of the things that these caller ID fraud sites use is they also will allow you to disguise your voice and switch it from a male voice or female voice or vice versa to further fool the person on the other end. There also have been incidents where people have used stolen credit card numbers and posed as a person who owned the credit card to illegally wire money to someone else. Another case occurred where people claim they were the county courthouse. calling people. claiming that they had missed jury duty. and tried to use that situation then to have the people give them credit card numbers to pay a fine for something that had not even occurred. For these reasons. I introduced this bill in the 109th Congress as the PHONE Act. to punish those who engage in the intentional practice of misleading others through caller ID fraud. Violators of this bill will be subject to penalties up to 5 years in prison and fines of $250.000 for these crimes. However. it also allows up to 1 year in prison for those who use this as a mechanism of harassing. All those folks who are still using this system. be aware that this will be made illegal. We expect the Senate to pass this. and all the elderly and small businesses and families across the Nation who find themselves as victims of this. be aware that when the call you have today shows up on your caller ID. it may not be who they say they are. Please. we need to make sure that until this bill is passed. people are still vigilant of that. protect their identity and never release a credit card number or other personal information. no matter what that caller ID number says. unless you are absolutely sure the person who you are talking to is who they are. Again. I am pleased to work with the Judiciary Committee Subcommittee chairman on Crime. Terrorism and Homeland Security. Chairman Bobby Scott. who has reintroduced this bill. This bill. H.R. 740. adds the important criminal and financial penalties to those who prey on the identity of others. This legislation will not stop crime. it will not prevent identity theft. but it will protect lives and protect others and close this loophole for identity theft once and for all. I urge my colleagues to vote for tlis important bill.