Truth In Caller ID Act Of 2010

Floor Speech

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Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I rise in strong support of this bill. As the chairman of the Telecommunications Subcommittee has indicated, this has passed twice before. We are coming here hoping that the Senate will take it up and pass it. It is a very good bill. The gentleman from New York has offered this bill.

The bill is called the Truth in Caller ID Act, and obviously it's going to pass overwhelmingly today.

Millions of Americans use caller ID to secure greater privacy for their families. Yet as new technologies continue to be developed, a very simple deceptive practice called ``caller ID spoofing'' has simply become a growing problem for consumers and also for businesses. Caller ID spoofing occurs when a caller masquerades as someone else by falsifying the number that appears on the recipient's caller ID display. Now, you say, is this difficult? No, it isn't. Caller ID spoofing can make a caller appear to come from any phone number the caller so desires.

Unfortunately, under current FCC regulations, there is no requirement that all callers transmit accurate caller ID information. In fact, there is nothing that prohibits a deceptive manipulation of caller ID. This bill will go a long way in stemming the tide of caller ID spoofing by making it illegal to transmit misleading or inaccurate caller ID information while providing reasonable exemptions for law enforcement activities.

Madam Speaker, the increasing use of Internet telephone services has made it easier for people to make any number, any number, appear as a caller ID. In addition, several Web sites have sprung up to provide caller ID spoofing services, eliminating the need for any special hardware. So think of that. Entrepreneurship of these spoofers now has sprung to such a point that they can provide it on their Web sites. Although these caller ID spoofing services promote themselves for use in prank calls or for entertainment purposes only, these services can be easily accessed and used by criminals.

Caller ID spoofing has emerged as a useful tool for identifying thieves and other scam artists. In addition, many business functions, from credit card verfication to automatic call routing, simply depend on caller ID for security purposes, which spoofing can render useless. So, Madam Speaker, these nefarious actions are the target of this bill.

As you can see, this is a serious issue with far-reaching ramifications and implications for both consumers and for all businesses. This is an important bill, and I urge its passage.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Let me just comment a little bit further. The gentleman from New York mentioned some specific examples. There is another example that is used in political campaigns he perhaps knows about where people can use spoofing to call different homes in robo phone banking that calls and go around the congressional district as a fake and wake people up at 2 or 3 in the morning and people think this is coming from someone who it is not, and this has happened on both sides of the aisle. So this would prevent that. So I think it hits a little closer to home when you talk about it in those terms.

The other point that has been a concern is why has this bill not passed? I think the question has always been some kind of legal questions, whether there is liability involved for the phone company or anyone that transmits this information to a consumer or constituent through this illegal act of spoofing. And we are able to change that language, through bipartisanship, both sides, to try and make it--for example, if a phone company, not knowing, and how would they know, transmits the information, are they going to be liable for this, to be sued? Well, we worked it out that their not knowing, then they should not be liable for this. So I think that's important that this bill now has language that represents bipartisanship agreement so that the passage of this bill should be assured, I think, this time. So this should be the third and last time we're doing this. And in the end, I think it will be good for Americans to understand that this is an illegal activity and we want to stop it.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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