WASHINGTON-House telecommunications subcommittee Chairman Billy Tauzin (R-La.), reacting to continuing thefts on the information superhighway, is expected this spring to sponsor comprehensive legislation that bolsters wireless privacy and security.
The coming Tauzin bill will likely serve as a companion to narrower legislation introduced just more than a week ago by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) that would close loopholes in current law that keep cloning a big business at the expense of wireless carriers, The Kyl bill also stiffens criminal penalties for wireless cloners.
“He does not want to do it in piecemeal fashion,” said Ken Johnson, a spokesman for Tauzin.
Legislative activity comes on the heels of new claims that digital cellular security is weak and that the purported benefits of digital cellular privacy (over analog cellular) are overstated.
“Cloning is not casual entertainment, it is an organized effort by sophisticated criminals to undermine the wireless telecommunications infrastructure,” said Thomas Wheeler, president of the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association.
“Bad guys use cloned phones for evil purposes, and they must be stopped,” Wheeler added. Wheeler urged Tauzin in a March 20 letter to move forward with legislation to give wireless consumers the same legal protection against eavesdropping that wireline subscribers have.
Specifically, CTIA said the Kyl bill would:
Clarify laws making it unlawful to possess, produce or sell hardware or software used by criminals to clone, eliminating the need for prosecutors to prove that a criminal intended to defraud a wireless carrier;
Revise the definition of “scanning receiver,” making it clear that devices used to intercept a wireless phone’s number are illegal;
Exempt law enforcement officials and telecommunications services from using cloning devices when those devices are used as part of criminal investigative activities; and
Increase penalties for cloners from 10 to 15 years for a first offense, and from 15 to 20 years for subsequent offenses.
As such, the wireless industry is left with trying to secure legislative remedies and virtually non-enforceable laws to cope with hackers whose sophistication has kept pace with technology advances.
For the emerging personal communications services sector, recent news that a Minnesota cryptographer had decoded the U.S. digital cellular algorithm with little trouble became an instant advertisement for digital personal communications services phones.
The European-based Global System for Mobile communications wireless standard was not part of the Internet paper by Counterplane Systems on digital cellular and is said to be more secure than digital cellular. So is Code Division Multiple Access technology, like that produced by Qualcomm Inc.
“While this advanced wireless technology offers the optimum in protection against electronic eavesdropping, no technology is infallible,” said Jay Kitchen, president of the Personal Communications Industry Association.
