Barton Pledges to Foil the Sale of Cell Phone Records

Statement

U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, announced plans today to introduce legislation to foil the business of selling private cell phone records and to encourage cell phone companies to better protect their customers' privacy:

"News reports over the last week have exposed a seamy and dangerous intrusion into the privacy of anyone who uses a cell phone. The discovery started with an urgent warning from the Chicago Police Department to its undercover officers, and now we all understand that it is possible to purchase a person's cell phone records over the Internet for about a hundred dollars.

"Both the FBI and news reporters found that they could buy monthly blocs of records detailing every call made to or from a particular phone number. All they needed was enough money and the number they wanted researched.

"It appears that dozens of online services offer to sell lists of individual cell phone calls.

"The method by which these records are usually obtained from wireless companies is called 'pretexting.' That is, someone simply impersonates a cell phone owner and asks for access to personal files.

"Pretexting to get financial records already is illegal, but it is not illegal to use this means to obtain call records. I mean to make it very illegal. It is also possible because telephone companies may not be doing enough to protect consumer privacy, and I will make it clear that companies owe their customers a duty to privacy and need to devise new ways to foil pretexters.

"The protection of an individual's personal information is a high priority with me. While businesses have legitimate reasons to compile and keep the data that define our lives, they have a responsibility to safeguard it as if it were their own. We have spent months in this committee examining the security of consumer information. Each time we look, we find some new way in which honest commerce has been perverted by a crook or an accident because information was not secure. Now we find out that a vibrant market exists for the knowledge of who talked to whom, and when.

"It seems to me that the most sensible action we can take quickly to thwart the buyers and sellers of personal phone records is to make pretexting illegal. I will introduce legislation to accomplish that, and my bill will substantially increase the penalties if telephone companies release consumer telephone records without the permission of the consumer.

"The principle behind all this is simple and straightforward: Our private lives belong to us, not to either the telephone company or the con artists."

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