US House Passes Ban On Caller ID Spoofing 171
smarek writes "The 'Truth in Caller ID Act' passed the US House of Representatives on Wednesday. The legislation is trying to outlaw Caller ID spoofing. In some cases, this spoofing has led to individuals giving out information that has led to identity theft. Last year the NYPD discovered over 6,000 victims of Caller ID spoofing, who together lost a total of $15 million. A companion bill has already been passed by the Senate, and the two are on their way to 'informal conference to reconcile any differences.' The bill that results will most likely pass."
PCWorld's coverage notes that callers will still be able to block their information entirely, and that the bill may have negative consequences for legitimate phone-related services, such as Google Voice.
Yet another legal solution to a technical problem (Score:5, Insightful)
If Congress legislates Email From: headers... (Score:5, Insightful)
And if Congress legislates that in all email messages, the "From:" headers cannot be forged, THAT will stop SPAM. I'm certain of it. Just like this will stop caller ID spoofing.
This will show the wrascally criminals (Score:5, Insightful)
Fraud (Score:2, Insightful)
Last year the NYPD discovered over 6,000 victims of caller ID spoofing, who together lost a total of $15 million.
It's this already called fraud?
Re:Yet another legal solution to a technical probl (Score:5, Insightful)
People who steal identities will carry on spoofing caller ID, because they already commit more serious crimes, while users of legitimate services will be inconvenienced.
What, you mean criminals won't follow the law? Say it isn't so!
Re:What they didn't bother to do. (Score:5, Insightful)
Interstate commerce, don't ya know? It's the one sized catch all that works for everything from SPAM to the guy growing pot in the basement for his own personal consumption.
Re:What they didn't bother to do. (Score:4, Insightful)
(Now, there might well be an argument to be made if the caller-ID spoofer could demonstrate that the spoofed call was strictly intrastate; but I'm guessing that vanishingly few of them are.)
Re:Yet another legal solution to a technical probl (Score:5, Insightful)
If they really wanted to do something about this, they'd discontinue the entire CallerID system and allow regular folks to use ANI [wikipedia.org] as a standard feature. That's the same system used by both toll-free numbers and emergency services like 911. Unlike CallerID, it's out-of-band and cannot be spoofed by the caller alone. It uses the billing data, the same data that the phone company uses to know whom to charge for the call. By comparison CallerID is a joke.
I've often wondered this myself. I found out the other day that Verizon Wireless has the ability to block numbers from being able to call you or text you. Family member of mine has been getting harassing phone calls. Of course the block is utterly useless because a simple caller-id block (*67 in the US) will defeat it. The phone company provides the service but can't use the ANI information?
They do the same thing with their "mobile to mobile" calling features. If you block your caller id and call someone who is "in network" they will get charged minutes as though it was an out of network call. ANI is not blocked when caller-id is but they are too stupid to use it for their own billing purposes? WTF?
Google logic gets pretty thin (Score:5, Insightful)
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It really isn't debatable if the intent is to defraud or deceive. If I call you from my phone through google voice, and the caller ID displays my name and my google voice number which, if called, connects to me on whatever phone I can be reached at, where is the deception? Who's being defrauded? What should the number say, Google, Inc.?
Similarly if I'm at work making a business call on a work phone, how can anyone argue displaying the company name and main phone number be deceptive?
Re:Yet another legal solution to a technical probl (Score:3, Insightful)
You're not preventing the problem, you're adding to the list of offenses you can charge people with while you investigate the actual crime.
I think if you're going to have caller ID you should be able to trust it. At the same time, it would be better to educate people that people can sneak into other people's houses or businesses and legitimately be calling from the phone, but not actually being the trusted person. Or picking up someone's cell phone that doesn't have password-protection. It's not foolproof.
If you want to be safe, you have to do things like ask if you can call the person back at a different time, and ask for a number. If it doesn't match what's on Caller ID then ask why it doesn't match. We should spend more time educating people and less time passing laws, but Congress is not an educational organization - it writes laws. "The politicians" are not doing anything about the problem, only one of three branches is, and all three need to be involved.
Meantime, Congress gave additional powers to law enforcement so they can hold someone longer for questioning. Is that good or bad? Depends. What legitimate need would you have for spoofing? Completely shutting off the ID is still an option, but what use would you have for pretending to be another phone number?
Re:Yet another legal solution to a technical probl (Score:1, Insightful)
You, sir, have just uncovered the glaring flaw of gun control legislation. Guess what - only criminals use guns to commit murder. If you're willing to commit murder, then illegally purchasing a firearm is child's play by comparison.
with the intent to defraud or deceive (Score:5, Insightful)
IANAL but I have a lot of experience with telephony and telephony policy. So take this with as many grains of salt as you want.
The key phrase in the House bill is "with the intent to defraud or deceive". There is similar language in Senate bill. There's a lot of reasons to legitimately set your caller ID to something. With ISDN PRI service it's up to the calling party equipment to set the Caller ID. So for something like Google Voice, if they're bridging SIP to the PSTN, you absolutely don't want your caller ID showing up as the trunk identifier or billing number for their equipment. My reading of these bills doesn't outlaw it.
The bills in question are H.R. 1258 and S. 30. I made a comparison document that highlights the differences in each bill the other day. It's located here:
http://dfs.org/comparison.pdf [dfs.org]
Re:Yet another legal solution to a technical probl (Score:5, Insightful)
They do the same thing with their "mobile to mobile" calling features. If you block your caller id and call someone who is "in network" they will get charged minutes as though it was an out of network call. ANI is not blocked when caller-id is but they are too stupid to use it for their own billing purposes? WTF?
That doesn't sound like stupidity to me... That sounds like profitable evil, in the same vein as the "placing the button that causes your phone to load some crappy WAP page at $.10/KB right next to the button you actually want, and making it impossible to remap/disable". I'm sure that, if people who are out of network were using caller-ID spoofing to appear as "in-network", they'd start using ANI. As long as the net effect of not using ANI means more minutes billed, not fewer, though, why would they change?
Re:Yet another legal solution to a technical probl (Score:3, Insightful)
That's my problem with it. I don't share the vindictive urge to nail people with as many charges as possible. Instead, I'd rather see fewer criminals.
A law against spoofing CallerID does not make CallerID more trustworthy so long as it's still technically feasible to perform the spoofing. This is for the same reason that the laws against fraud have not made phishing sites go away, the laws against illegal drugs have not prevented people from doing drugs, and the laws concerning gun-control have not made it difficult for criminals to obtain firearms. We just don't want to learn this lesson, but that doesn't make it less true.
That's universally bad. Law enforcement already has a way to hold someone for a good long time: collect enough evidence to charge them with a crime. If there is no such evidence, law enforcement should kindly fuck off. It's that simple. A few criminals who get away with it or are more difficult to catch means absolutely nothing in the face of the kind of threat that unmitigated police power poses to free society. Think of it this way: if criminal activity causes us to become a non-free society because of the ever-increasing expansion of state power, then the criminals have won because they've done the greatest possible damage to our way of life.
Re:Yet another legal solution to a technical probl (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yet another legal solution to a technical probl (Score:3, Insightful)
How are users of legitimate services inconvenienced by not being able to use spoofed caller ID's?
Personally, I think it not only should be illegal but also, it should be the responsibility of the telephone companies to make sure that it is technically impossible, or at least very hard, to call under a false ID.
That companies and people call with anonymous ID is OK. I simply do not pick up the phone when the ID is hidden. But I should be able to trust that if it says number 123456789 is calling me, it really is number 123456789 and not somebody pretending to be 123456789.
If, as you say, there are good reasons for offering a caller ID spoofing service, I should be offered the option of not letting these spoofers call me since there is no one in the entire world that have any kind of legitimate reason nor the right to call me with a spoofed ID.
Re:Yet another legal solution to a technical probl (Score:3, Insightful)
You know, I don't really care what the caller wants to display on my phone. It's my phone! If they want to call it, it should be on my terms, not theirs. And my terms are: that I know who the fuck is calling me.
Re:Yet another legal solution to a technical probl (Score:3, Insightful)