WASHINGTON—A long-stalled bill to make the sale of telephone records illegal could come up for a vote today in the House as lawmakers race to get out of town for upcoming mid-term elections.
Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), chairman of the House Commerce Committee, said, “There is a good chance it could pop up and we might get to vote on it today.”
The news comes as the House Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee holds hearings on pretexting, which is the not-explicitly-illegal practice of impersonating someone else to obtain their personal information, including calling records.
During the hearing Democrats presented a movie poster from “Gone with the Wind.” They pointed out that pretexting—once a much-discussed issue in Washington following revelations that cell phone call records were for sale on the Internet—had been “gone with the wind” until the Hewlett-Packard Co. pretexting scandal blew up a few weeks ago.
The hearings, which started Thursday and initially focused on the HP scandal, quickly became a forum for lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to try to prod the Republican leadership to pass legislation to make pretexting explicitly illegal.
Pretexting hit the attention of policy-makers at all levels of government earlier this year following media reports that telecom customer call records were for sale over the Internet. Immediately, bills were introduced in Congress to address the issue, and both the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission began taking action to tighten customer-privacy rules.
Now, months later, the bills are stalled in Congress and the regulatory agencies have not completed their work.
The issue appeared dead until the Hewlett-Packard scandal erupted.
Hewlett-Packard executives collected the phone records of board members to ascertain who had been speaking with the news media. Wireless carriers are testifying on pretexting today.
There has been a consistent rumor that the House Intelligence Committee was refusing to let the legislation come up for a vote for fear that strengthening the rules for telecommunications carriers would make it harder for police and government to conduct surveillance. Indeed, the bill was pulled from consideration on the House floor at roughly the same time a USA Today story outlined the National Security Agency’s program to mine phone record information.
On the regulatory front, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin confirmed the commission is investigating AT&T Inc. in connection with the Hewlett-Packard scandal.
Friday’s hearing started the same as yesterday’s, with an alleged pretexter invoking his Fifth Amendment protection rights. Yesterday 10 witnesses, including the just-resigned general counsel of HP, took the same actions.