A bill passed by a U.S. Senate committee looks set to ban the sale of telephone records. If the law is adopted, the Federal Communications Commission would be able to impose hefty fines for the sale of other people’s records, as well as create a GLBA-type law for telecommunications, which will also entail huge fines for violators.
The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee is pushing the bill to protect the private data of telephone subscribers. The main purpose of the legislation is to outlaw the practice of posing as a telephone or mobile phone customer to obtain phone records, commonly known as pretexting.
The bill, a revised version of the Protecting Consumer Phone Records Act, also requires voice carriers – including wireline, mobile and VOIP providers – to notify customers when someone has gained access to their phone records without authorization. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will also have to create phone-record regulations similar to those protecting financial information under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, passed by Congress in 1999.
The bill will also allow the FCC to impose fines on companies selling private phone records. Lawsuits against individuals who illegally obtain or sell phone records will also be permitted, with a penalty of $11,000 per record, up to a maximum fine of $11 million.
The fact that the FCC will create regulatory norms means that fines will be imposed not only for violations of the law but also for violations of FCC rules. The latter will entail fines of $30,000 for each violation, with a cap of $3 million for continuing violations.
“American legislators have taken a tough approach towards privacy. It highlights yet again how acute the problem of protecting sensitive information is in the U.S. I’m certain that multi-million dollar fines will quickly cool the fervor of those selling telephone records, no doubt leading to the closure of several dozen electronic stores currently trading over the Internet," says Denis Zenkin, marketing director at InfoWatch.
Source: ComputerWorld
