Truth in Caller ID Act of 2010

I thank the gentleman for yielding to me.

Mr. Speaker, I stand today in strong support of my legislation, the Truth in Caller ID Act. But before I begin, I want to first thank my friend and the lead Republican on the Energy and Commerce Committee, Ranking Member Joe Barton. I also want to thank the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Henry Waxman, as well as the staff for being so accommodating in getting this bill to the floor today. And I want to thank my friend Mr. Boucher, who has helped in bringing this bill to the floor, and my friend and classmate Mr. Stearns, who quite correctly said this is about as bipartisan a piece of legislation as you can get. This legislation has been developed in an extremely bipartisan manner, and I want to thank and commend everybody who worked on it.

I introduced this bill, Mr. Speaker, because we needed an immediate change in our laws to help prevent identity theft, to crack down on fraudulent phone calls, and to protect legitimate uses of caller ID technology. I first found out about this just simply by reading an article; and when I realized that this is actually something that could be done, I was flabbergasted. I went over to Mr. Barton, who at the time was the chair of the full committee, and I said, Joe, something really needs to be done about this and would you work with me on it? And he said he would and he agreed and everybody agrees. And the House has passed this bill time and time again, and we hope we can get it passed in both Houses and get it signed.

Last year, the facts are stark, over 6,000 people were victimized by credit card fraud and identity theft. Criminals stole over $15 million from banks and ruined the credit of thousands of victims. They were able to perpetrate this fraud in some instances by using caller ID spoofing. This disturbing fact about spoofing is not just that it's legal but how easy it is to carry out. Criminals use a tool called a ``spoof

card'' to change their outgoing caller ID and even to disguise their voices. Now, if you see a caller ID and you see it has a phone number, most people think that it's ironclad that that's the actual phone number that's calling them when in truth it's not. This technology even allows people to disguise their voice in order to trick banks into giving them access to their victims' accounts. So a man can do that and have his voice change into a woman's voice and vice versa.

So it's absolutely deceptive, absolutely scary, and dangerous; and this tool is available to anyone with access to a Web browser. So it's just ridiculous. The technology has gotten so far ahead of us, we need to have these kinds of laws to simply catch up.

Now, no one can dispute that this legislation is necessary. Last year, a person in New York called a pregnant woman whom she viewed as her romantic rival. Spoofing the phone number of the woman's pharmacist, she tricked the woman into taking a drug used to cause an abortion. I use it because it's one of the horrible examples; and there are many, many more horrible examples of how this is used.

And just think about it. Someone could be tricked into giving up personal medical information. Someone could be tricked to giving up banking information. If someone hears that it is their doctor calling and they take a look at the number and they see it's their doctor's number, they would give out personal information, credit card information, even Social Security identification.

So caller ID fraud has even been used to prank call the constituents of a Member of this body with the caller ID readout saying it came from that Member's office. Just imagine if people committed this fraud in the days leading up to a close election. You can call and you can say you are from one candidate's camp when you are really from the other candidate's camp. And when someone looks down at the phone number, they see it's from candidate A and they think it's legitimate, and it's really from candidate B. So imagine what kind of trouble can happen, what kind of mischief can be done. So this really, again, needs to be curtailed.

So, as everyone has said, in response to this problem, Mr. Barton and I have introduced the Truth in Caller ID Act. Simply, this bill outlaws the deceptive use of caller ID spoofing technology if the intention of the caller is to deceive and harm the recipient of the call.

And let me say we developed that intention through hearings we had in the Energy and Commerce Committee because we want it to be legitimate. There are legitimate times where a number may have to be scrambled. We certainly do it here on Capitol Hill to protect Members and others and staff from having personal phone numbers being given out or private phone numbers being given out. So there is no intent to do that. That is why we say it outlaws the deceptive use of caller ID spoofing technology if the intention of a caller is to deceive and harm the recipient of a call. And, again, through the hearings we have had, we have refined this bill; and that's why it has such strong bipartisan support.

Let say this bill does not change the rules for legitimate uses of a technology. For example, a domestic abuse shelter will still be able to change their number on caller ID to protect the occupants of the shelter, and I also gave the example about what we do here in Congress.

So I am pleased that this bill passed the House in the 109th and 110th Congresses, and I look forward to its passage again today. I strongly urge my colleagues to support the Truth in Caller ID Act and outlaw this type of fraud once and for all.

Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the

bill (S. 30) to amend the Communications Act of 1934 to prohibit manipulation of caller identification information.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material in the Record.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

(Mr. BOUCHER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Madam Speaker, today we consider S. 30, the Truth in Caller ID Act. It is the Senate companion to House legislation that was introduced on a bipartisan basis by our colleagues, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel) and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton), ranking Republican member of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

The bill directs the FCC to adopt the regulations prohibiting caller ID spoofing in which a caller falsifies the original caller ID information during the transmission of a call with the intent to defraud, to cause harm, or wrongfully to obtain anything of value. The bill makes anyone who knowingly and willingly engages in caller ID spoofing eligible for criminal fines.

Spoofing has been possible for many years, but generally required expensive

equipment in order to change the outgoing call information. But with the growth of voice over Internet protocol usage, spoofing has become easier and considerably less expensive, and a number of Web sites are now offering spoofing services. Consequently, those who want to deceive others by manipulating caller ID can now do so with relative ease.

Spoofing threatens a number of business applications, including credit card verifications and automatic call routing, because these systems rely on the telephone number as identified by the caller ID system as one piece of their verification and authentication process. It is also commonly used in the commission of frauds of various kinds.

At other times, spoofing may be used to protect individuals. For example, domestic violence shelters sometimes use spoofing to mask the identity of the caller for protective purposes.

By prohibiting the use of caller ID spoofing only where the intent is to defraud, to cause harm, or wrongfully obtain anything of value, this measure addresses the nefarious uses of the technology while continuing to allow legitimate uses such as use in shelters for the victims of domestic violence.

In the rulemaking that the FCC will conduct pursuant to new subsection 227(e)(3) of the Communications Act, the committee anticipates that the commission will consider imposing obligations on entities that provide caller ID spoofing services to the public. The widespread availability of caller ID spoofing services presents a significant potential for abuse and hinders law enforcement's ability to investigate crime.

The prohibition in this bill on the use of those services with the intent to defraud, cause harm, or wrongfully obtain anything of value could be of limited value if entities continue to provide those services without making any effort to verify their users' ownership of the phone number that is being substituted.

With our action today, this measure will be forwarded to the President for his signature. I want to thank and commend our colleagues, Mr. Engel and also Mr. Barton, for their commitment to the matter. And I want to commend Senator Nelson of Florida and all Members who, on a bipartisan basis, have contributed to and supported the legislation now before the House.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel), the chief sponsor of the House companion measure.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time, and I do so to thank my colleagues, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton) and my friend, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Stearns) for their kind remarks. I want to thank them for the collaboration and the friendship over the years.

Mr. Stearns and I have participated together in developing the ideas, developing the legislation, and bringing through the Communications Subcommittee all of the bills that that subcommittee acted on legislatively in this 2-year session of Congress. I appreciate so much the good ideas Mr. Stearns shared, his work with me to ensure that all of our legislation had a bipartisan foundation, and I think what we were able to do was a better product by virtue of the fact that we worked together. It has been a privilege over the years to have the opportunity to work with him. He is an outstanding legislator.

I want to commend him for the fine work that he has done, and mostly thank him for the friendship and the partnership that he and I have enjoyed together. And I want to say thank you to my friend (Mr. Barton) with whom I was privileged to work on the Energy Subcommittee when he was chairman and I was the ranking member. During the time he chaired the full committee, I had the privilege of participating with him on a whole range of undertakings, and I admire very much the leadership that he has provided as chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee and more recently as the ranking member.

So, thank you, gentlemen, for those kind remarks. I am humbled by them. And I appreciate your taking very much the occasion of our debate on this legislation to make those comments.

Madam Speaker, I have no further requests for time, I urge support of the legislation currently pending, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

I rise in support of S. 30, the Truth in Caller ID Act of 2009, which addresses an issue that Mr. Barton and Mr. Engel and the Energy and Commerce Committee have been working on since the 109th Congress. In fact, back in April of this year, the House passed our version, H.R. 1258. The legislation protects consumers by prohibiting the deceptive practice of manipulating caller ID information, a practice known as caller ID spoofing.

Everyone is now familiar with the caller ID product that provides to a consumer the name and number of who is placing an incoming call. Madam Speaker, unfortunately, caller ID spoofing is yet another tool available to criminals to hijack the identity of consumers.

As with other scams, the Internet is making caller ID spoofing even easier today. There are Web sites that offer subscribers, for a nominal fee, a simple Web interface to caller ID spoofing systems that lets them appear to be calling from any number they so choose. Some of these Web services have boasted that they do not maintain logs and fail to provide any contact information. Some even offer voice scrambling services to further the deception of the consumer.

The FCC has investigated this spoofing problem, but currently there is no prohibition against manipulating caller ID information with the intent to harm others. Today's bill remedies this problem.

This bill specifically prohibits knowingly sending misleading or inaccurate caller ID information with the intent to defraud, cause harm, or wrongfully obtain anything of value. Deception with intent is our target. We drafted and amended the language carefully to ensure that we only prohibit those practices intending to do harm.

There are sometimes legitimate reasons why someone may need to manipulate caller ID. For example, domestic violence shelters often alter their caller ID information to simply protect the safety of victims of violence. Furthermore, a wide array of legitimate uses of caller ID management technologies exists today, and this bill protects those legitimate business practices.

For example, caller ID management services provide a local presence for teleservices and collection companies. These calling services companies are regulated by the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission, which require commercial callers to project a caller ID that can be called back. This bill is not intended to target lawful practices protecting people from harm or serving a legitimate business interest.

My colleagues, this is a good piece of bipartisan consumer protection legislation. And while I normally hesitate to take the Senate's work product without some kind of amendment on our side, I want to thank my friends on both sides of the Capitol, on both sides of the aisle here in the House of Representatives, including the many chairmen over the years, including Mr. Barton, Mr. Dingell, Mr. Waxman, Mr. Markey, and Mr. Boucher, as well as Mr. Upton, who was also chairman of this subcommittee. I also want to thank this Congress' lead sponsor and hardworking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, my good friend, Eliot Engel from New York.

I support this legislation.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Tim Murphy), the distinguished Member who also has been active in this, in fact has had a separate bill, so he was sort of a forerunner on this issue.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton), the distinguished ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

(Mr. BARTON of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

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

I just would echo the comments of the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton) about Mr. Boucher. Having worked with Mr. Boucher, he and I have cosponsored many bills across the spectrum. Recently, obviously, we worked on privacy together. And also, we tried to hammer out some kind of compromise on net neutrality. Net neutrality was difficult because the FCC was attempting to move it to title II. We finally got them to stop that. In fact, the court stopped them. Again, Mr. Boucher and I met with the stakeholders across the board to try and see if there was some compromise. We both agreed it should be under the jurisdiction of the Congress and not the FCC acting unilaterally, as it appears they are going to do on December 21 when they vote for net neutrality, which I am against. But I have to admire Mr. Boucher's perseverance, his stick-to-it-ness, whether it is trying to reach compromise on legislation, or his reach-out to stakeholders. For example, on the privacy, he had a comment period on his privacy bill that I cosponsored, which is unusual around here. A lot of times we say we don't have an opportunity to even read the bills before they are voted on, but in fact, under Mr. Boucher's leadership as chairman of the Telecommunications Subcommittee, he took his bill and offered it as a draft to get stakeholders' comments. That is a credit to his leadership.

As Mr. Barton pointed out, we are going to miss him. He provides strong, competent leadership, and we wish him well and thank him for his service.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I thank my friend from Virginia for yielding to me. I want to thank my friend from Florida (Mr. Stearns) for his kind words, and also the kind words of the gentleman from Virginia.

I rise today in strong support of my legislation, the Truth in Caller ID Act. This is about as bipartisan as a bill can be. We have passed this bill several times in the House only to have it not move through the other body, and I am delighted that for the first time we have had it passed in the other body. So now when we pass this bill, hopefully the President will sign it into law and we will finally have a stoppage of this fraud which is being perpetrated on the American people.

I originally read an article in the newspaper on a plane talking about what was going on with spoofing, and I remember thinking, This is ridiculous. How could this be legal? How could we just turn a blind eye to it? And then I realized we needed to have legislation.

We have been supported every step of the way, again, bipartisan, by the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman) and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton). We have all worked on this legislation together.

I introduced the bill because we need an immediate change in our laws to help prevent identity theft, to crack down on fraudulent phone calls, and to protect legitimate uses of caller ID technology. We have seen, as my colleagues have mentioned, a large number of cases of caller ID fraud leading to illegal or even violent activities.

Last year, the New York City Police Department uncovered a massive identity theft ring where criminals stole more than $15 million from over 6,000 people. They were able to perpetrate this fraud in many instances by using caller ID spoofing. In another case, a person in New York called a pregnant woman who she viewed as a romantic rival, spoofing the phone number of the woman's pharmacist. She tricked the woman into taking a drug used to cause abortions.

Caller ID fraud has even been used to prank call the constituents of a Member of this body, with the caller ID readout saying it came from that Member's office. Just imagine if people committed this fraud in the days leading up to a close election. You could see it. You spoof a number of your political opponent. You call someone at 3 o'clock in the morning. You say something obnoxious on the phone, and then the constituents are angry and are not going to vote for that person. This is all perfectly legal, up until the passage of this bill.

I have said again and again that one of the most troubling aspects of caller ID spoofing is not simply that it is legal. What disturbs me is how incredibly easy it is to carry out caller ID fraud. Criminals use a tool called a spoof card to change their outgoing caller ID; so you could look at it and see a phone number, any phone number that that person wants to put down, they can do it, and the person getting the call has totally no idea where it is coming from or thinks it is coming from a place where obviously it is not.

This technology can even be used to disguise someone's voice in order to trick people. If it is a man doing it, he can change the voice to sound like a woman, and vice versa. So it can be done completely to trick people.

This can trick people, corporations, or even banks. Imagine senior citizens who see the number of their bank put up when they take a look and see who is calling and it is fraudulent, or their doctor or their pharmacist or a close family member or a close family friend. This is terrible, and this tool is available to anyone with access to a Web browser. So, as was pointed out, the technology has gotten easier and easier for someone to perpetrate this fraud.

This legislation will outlaw caller ID spoofing when the intent is to defraud, cause harm, or lawfully obtain anything of value. And, let me say, we have had many, many hearings on this bill.

The reason why this outlaws caller ID spoofing when the intent is to defraud or cause harm, as my colleagues have pointed out, we put that in the bill based on the hearings we had because we don't want some legitimate reasons to use this technology to be outlawed. So it is only outlawed when the intent is to defraud, cause harm, or wrongfully obtain anything of value.

We won't be challenging the rulings for legitimate uses of this technology. For example, domestic abuse shelters will still be able to change the number on caller ID to protect the occupants of the shelter. We have some scrambling right here in the Capitol, as a result, to protect very important private numbers. That won't be changed.

So, again, I am pleased this bill passed the House in the 109th and 110th Congress. This is now the 111th. We are about to pass it. The Senate has done it for the first time. So I look forward to the President signing this bill into law.

I strongly urge my colleagues to support the Truth in Caller ID Act to outlaw this type of fraud once and for all. I thank my colleagues again for their support.

I thank my colleague.

I rise to speak about S. 30, the Truth in Caller ID Act of 2009, addressing the serious problem of caller ID fraud that allows a caller to hide his true identity. They do this through Web sites that will let you choose any number to show up on the caller ID. The Web sites even offer options to disguise your voice, such as making a man or woman's voice appear as the opposite gender.

I am glad to see the Senate is finally acting on this issue that I first raised in 2006 when I introduced H.R. 5304, known as the PHONE Act, or the Preventing Harassment Through Outbound Number Enforcement Act.

My bill passed the full House on December 9, 2006, and while it didn't make it through the Senate, several Members of the House pressed on. Congressman Bobby Scott and I reintroduced this legislation in the 110th and 111th Congresses. The House passed the bill in March of 2007 by a vote of 413-1. And I would like to thank my colleagues in this session of Congress for overwhelmingly voting in favor of the Murphy- Scott Phone Act a year ago tomorrow by a vote of 418-1.

Caller ID can have legitimate uses to protect victims or when law enforcement are trying to track down criminals. However, here we are concerned about illegitimate uses.

When I first introduced the PHONE Act, several problems were already beginning to emerge. On one level friends were using it to prank others, and just to annoy them. On another level, there were famous or infamous cases where the harassment involved well-known personalities, * * *.

But caller ID is also employed for more sinister reasons. My own office experienced this when an organization used a phony caller ID system to make it appear as though my congressional office was calling constituents. Constituents were understandably puzzled and annoyed when bombarded by these calls. Unfortunately, we were not able to track down the perpetrators. In total, at least 42 House Republicans from 14 States were targeted in their home districts by similar harassing phone calls using call spoofing. Although I believe that action alone constitutes a fraud in posing as a Federal elected official's office, that is not the worst case.

In several cases, police and FBI have been subjected to so-called ``swatting'' calls when a caller uses another person's caller ID to phone the authorities, report a fake crime in progress, which draws a police and SWAT team response. Luckily, no one has been harmed in these cases, but you can imagine the potential tragedy when a team of police with guns drawn respond to the scene of what they believe is a dangerous ongoing crime. It is more than just a false alarm to a fire department. It can lead to serious injury for police and the community, and that is why we must pass this bill before someone gets hurt.

Here are some other reports. A woman from Pennsylvania discovered her phone number was appearing on other people's caller ID, and it was being used as a vehicle to harass people.

In the wake of the Haitian earthquake, the Virginia State Police warned citizens to be vigilant against scam artists using phony caller ID numbers to obtain donations. Under such circumstances, perpetrators can pose as a legitimate charity to fool others into donating to an illegitimate account.

We have heard of cases where a county courthouse number appears as citizens are told they missed jury duty and are asked to give their credit card number to pay a fine.

Last December, another case in Pennsylvania occurred when a woman claimed to have shot her baby. It turned out to be a hoax. The police and detectives were forced to spend their Christmas Day wasting valuable resources investigating what was presented as a gruesome crime that was never committed.

These are just a few examples, and if we do not enact this legislation into law, I worry we will read about many more cases of call spoofing, including some that will inevitably end in tragedy.

Because of these, I am still a supporter of enhanced penalties when caller ID spoofing is used in the commission of a crime. Therefore, we should not stop with this legislation. The Truth in Caller ID Act provides for civil penalties under the Communications Act of 1934. My legislation, the PHONE Act, which has already passed the full House, provides for criminal penalties under the U.S. criminal code.

But I want to thank Congressman Engel and Congressman Barton for being leaders on this issue in the House of Representatives in introducing their version. I urge my colleagues to vote for the Truth in Caller ID Act, and let's hope in the future we can pass enhanced criminal penalties such as those in my PHONE Act bill. Together these pieces of legislation would create a comprehensive set of civil and criminal penalties to enable us to effectively combat caller ID spoofing.