Social Security Number Protection Act of 2007

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 251) to amend the Communications Act of 1934 to prohibit manipulation of caller identification information, and for other purposes, as amended.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this bill which I offer today with an amendment under suspension of the rules. This is a consensus, noncontroversial bill, and it is sponsored by our colleague, Representative Eliot Engel from the State of New York. A similar bill, sponsored by full Energy and Commerce Ranking Member Joe Barton, passed the House in the last Congress unanimously.

I want to commend Telecommunications and the Internet Subcommittee Ranking Member Fred Upton for his work and cooperation on this measure, and I commend full committee Chairman John Dingell for his excellent efforts on this bill as well.

This legislation addresses issues regarding so-called ``caller ID spoofing.'' ``Spoofing'' is when a caller masks or changes the caller ID information of their call in a way that disguises the true origination number of the caller. In many instances, a call recipient may be subject to pretexting through spoofing, which can lead to fraud, personal ID theft, harassment or otherwise put the safety of the call recipient in danger.

On the other hand, lest we think that spoofing always has nefarious aims, we must recognize that there may be circumstances when a person's safety may be put in danger if their true and accurate call origination information is disclosed as well.

For instance, Members of Congress often have direct lines in their offices in order to ensure that such lines do not become generally public and, therefore, remain useful to us. It may be necessary to keep such direct numbers confidential and have the outgoing caller ID information indicate a different number at which offices can be reached for return calls; that gives the recipient a legitimate phone number to call back, but keeps confidential lines that must remain private.

There are many doctors, psychiatrists, lawyers and other professionals who would similarly like to keep direct confidential lines private in this way, who have no intention of misleading anyone.

In addition, there may be instances, for example, when a woman at a shelter seeks to reach her children, when spoofing is important to safeguard someone's safety. Moreover, informants to law enforcement tip lines or whistle blowers have additional reasons for why their calling information should remain private. We should not outlaw any of these practices, and I think the legislation needs some improvement and clarification in these areas.

What we seek in caller ID policy is balance. This has been the case since we held hearings in the Telecommunications Subcommittee in the early 1990s on caller ID, when we sought to take into account emerging caller ID technology in a way that also allowed callers to block their origination number on a per call or per line basis. Technology also allowed call recipients to refuse to receive calls by anyone who is blocking their caller ID information from going through.

This is much-needed legislation. I urge support by all Members of the House.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the sponsor of this legislation, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from California (Ms. Harman).

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on the bill under consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I would just conclude by thanking all of the Members, led by Mr. Engel; the very, very helpful comments from Ms. Harman in clarification of the intent of this legislation; Mr. Dingell, the chairman of the full committee; along with Mr. Barton, the ranking member, Mr. Upton and Mr. Stearns. This is a completely bipartisan piece of legislation, and we thank them for this cooperation. This is the way telecommunications legislation should be passed.

I would also like to commend the staff: Tim Powderly from the majority staff and Neil Fried and Courtney Reinhard from the Republican committee staff. I also want to thank Pete Goodloe and Gregg Rothschild from Mr. Dingell's staff; Cristina Batt from Mr. Engel's staff; and Colin Crowell on my staff, who has been doing this type of legislation for 17 years, going back to the beginning of the discussion of all of these caller ID-related issues.

And, finally, I would like to thank Johanna Shelton on her last bill on the House floor. Johanna has been incredibly competent, more than competent. She really brings the word ``excellence'' into congressional and legislative service. And this will be her last bill on the floor, and there is lamenting of a magnitude hard to fully measure on the Democratic side that her leaving is creating, although I understand her husband is not sharing that sentiment as she leaves her service here.

And it is that duality that we all have to deal with here in our congressional service. But for my part, there has been no more dedicated public servant that I have met in my time here in Congress, and we will miss her service, and we thank her for all of her great work.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I urge passage of this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I request such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 251, the Truth in Caller ID Act of 2007. I thank my good friend, Mr. Engel of New York, for his work here; also the ranking member, Joe Barton of Texas, for his leadership on this very important piece of legislation.

My colleagues, millions of Americans use caller ID in order to secure greater privacy for their families. Yet, as new technologies continue to be developed, caller ID spoofing, as brought out by the gentleman from Massachusetts, has become a problem for both consumers and businesses.

This bill protects consumers by prohibiting the deceptive manipulation of caller identification information, a practice which has been defined and is clearly delineated as ``spoofing,'' ``caller ID spoofing.''

Now, this occurs when a caller masquerades as someone else by falsifying a number that appears on the recipient's caller ID display. The most important point about this discussion is that caller ID spoofing can make a call appear to come from any phone number the caller wishes. The increasing use of VOIP, which is voice over Internet protocol, that we see in America and other Internet telephone services, has made it much easier for people to make any number appear on a caller ID system.

In addition, several Web sites have sprung up to provide caller ID spoofing services, eliminating the need for any special hardware to replicate this. Although these caller ID spoofing services promote themselves for use in prank calls or for simple entertainment purposes, and that's what they propose only, they say, such services can be easily accessed and used by criminals.

So Caller ID spoofing has emerged as a useful tool for identity thieves and other scam artists. In addition, my colleagues, many business functions, from credit card verification to automatic call routing, depend on caller ID for security purposes, which spoofing can render useless.

So this bill, H.R. 251, prohibits sending misleading or inaccurate caller ID information with the intent to defraud or cause harm. The Energy and Commerce Committee drafted the language in this bill so carefully that it will go after the bad actors but, at the same time, preserve the ability to manipulate the caller ID information for legitimate purposes, such as the protection for victims of domestic violence.

A woman is calling, let's say, from a shelter and she wants to protect her ID, or she doesn't want to disclose, get the phone number disclosed where she is.

A single mother at home, she should have the opportunity to block her phone number so people can't recognize that number and call her, harass her or even use it in a way to bring harm to her.

So my colleagues, this is an important piece of bipartisan consumer protection legislation. I urge all of you to support H.R. 251, the Truth in Caller ID Act.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I request such time as I may consume.

The gentleman from New York mentioned about the harbinger of things to come, and I think that's what we are all worried about, so I think this is a great first step forward.

Just recently, my subcommittee, the Commerce Consumer Protection and Trade, which Mr. Rush chairs and I'm ranking member of, we did a do- not-call reauthorization, which is H.R. 2601. We dropped that bill last week. We urge the conference committee to mark that up and get that forward. It's part of the process here to protect consumers.

In fact, in the committee that I serve, we've done a lot of Internet consumer protection, so I'm very wholeheartedly in support of this, and I encourage some other bills. In fact, the gentleman from Massachusetts' Social Security bill, H.R. 948, is an excellent bill; as well as the Data Security bill, H.R. 958. So I think these are the types of bills we need to protect consumers, and I very wholeheartedly support them.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman and my good friend from Massachusetts for recognizing me.

I'm very proud that this was the first bill that was reported from our Telecommunications Subcommittee this year. We had extensive hearings last year on the bill, and this bill is truly bipartisan.

I want to thank the ranking member, Mr. Barton, for working with me on this bill, as well as Chairman Dingell, Mr. Stearns and of course my friend, Ed Markey.

When people look at their caller ID, they have a right to believe and expect that the number that is there and the name of the person who is listed there is truly the number and the name of the person calling them. And I was shocked when I first heard that can you manipulate both the name and the number. In fact, there are Web sites, you only have to dial a Web site and pay a fee and you can manipulate the name, the number. And there's even technology where you can change the sound of a person's voice. So a 50-year-old male calling can sound like a 21-year- old female, and the name is different, and the phone number is different. That should not be.

Constituents thought they were receiving calls from congressional offices at one time, and these calls turned out to be far from appropriate.

Think of the mischief that can continue to happen. Unscrupulous people can trick unsuspecting victims to release personal information such as credit card numbers or Social Security numbers. It's easy for someone to pretend to be with Chase Manhattan or Citibank when you take a look and you see it says Chase Manhattan or Citibank and a number, and someone calls and says, well, we just need to verify your Social Security number with your account, and perhaps a senior citizen or someone else would feel that they could trust the caller ID and give personal information. This has to stop.

Having investigated this issue in great depth, I became convinced that what was happening was only a harbinger of things to come. There's a strong possibility that more and more

people will use this technology in political campaigns. Imagine calling someone at 2 o'clock in the morning and having the number of the opposite political campaign calling you to say vote for this candidate. So this is ridiculous.

You could have insulting, slanderous, racist, sexist calls, and people would think when they look at their caller ID that it's somebody else calling, not the person who is calling.

Both the gentleman from Massachusetts and the gentleman from Florida pointed out numerous instances. So this is truly a bipartisan piece of legislation, one that is needed, one that the American public is probably not aware that needs to be corrected. People just don't think that this can happen. They believe in what the caller ID says.

So I urge my colleagues to give this important legislation strong support. This is a good step towards protecting our Nation from this emerging technology. And again, the people who use this have to have the intent to defraud in order to come under this statute. So this protects everybody, as Mr. Markey pointed out.

There may be some instances, Mr. Stearns pointed out, where we would want to protect this technology, where we would not want to give the correct ID. This shows that if you have the intent to defraud, you can be prosecuted under this. So it strikes a fair balance. Those were the hearings that we had.

And, again, I urge my colleagues to support this bipartisan bill, and I'm pleased to be the sponsor of this legislation.

I want to assure the gentlewoman that this bill does not confer or authorize any new powers for any intelligence or law enforcement agency, nor does it prohibit any lawfully authorized investigative, protective or intelligence activity of a law enforcement agency of the United States, a State or a political subdivision of a State, or of an intelligence agency of the United States.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 251, the ``Truth in Caller ID Act of 2007,'' which I co-authored with my friend, Representative Engel from New York. This bill protects consumers by prohibiting the deceptive manipulation of caller identification information--a practice is known as caller ID ``spoofing.''

Caller ID technology is an invaluable tool. Millions of people rely daily on the caller identification information that appears when their phones ring. Unfortunately, criminals are using ``spoofing'' to perpetrate fraud. ``Spoofing'' occurs when a caller masquerades as someone else by falsifying the name or number that appears on the recipient's caller ID display. Those who answer the phone and see the number of a legitimate company or charity are far more likely to fall victim to an illegitimate request for money or personal information.

Even worse, the Internet has made ``spoofing'' easy. Numerous websites sell simple web interfaces to caller ID systems that allow criminals to appear to be calling from any number they choose. Some of these services boast that they do not maintain logs or provide any contact information of their customers. Some even offer voice scrambling services to enable a caller to sound like someone of the opposite sex.

H.R. 251 prohibits sending misleading or inaccurate caller ID information with the intent to defraud or cause harm. The bill is drafted so that it will go after bad actors, but at the same time preserve the ability to mask or block caller ID information for legitimate purposes.

This is an important piece of bipartisan consumer protection legislation.

I urge you to support H.R. 251, the ``Truth in Caller ID Act.''

Mr. Speaker, I'm very pleased to resume my service on the Telecom Subcommittee in this Congress.

I also rise in strong support of the Truth in Caller ID Act, which will prevent acts of identity theft and billions of dollars in consumer losses each year.

I would like to engage the bill's sponsor, Mr. Engel, in a brief colloquy to clarify the effect this bill has on other laws relating to national security and law enforcement. The relevant section reads: ``Nothing in this subsection shall be construed to authorize or prohibit any investigative, protective or intelligence activities performed in connection with official duties, and in accordance with all applicable laws, by a law enforcement agency of the United States, a State or a political subdivision of a State, or by an intelligence agency of the United States.''

I'd like to ask the author what the meaning of this language is.

I thank the gentleman for clarifying that. Lawfully authorized national security and law enforcement activities are critical in this era of terror. Legislation designed to improve our Nation's safety and security, like the Truth in Caller ID Act, should not inadvertently impair them, nor should it expand them. This carefully crafted bill, in my view, strikes the right balance. And I would like to commend the author, Mr. Engel, Mr. Barton, Mr. Dingell, Mr. Markey, and Mr. Upton for their diligent work. I urge my colleagues to support the legislation.

General Leave