US Congress approves data privacy bill

The US Senate on Friday passed without dissent legislation to ban the use of deceptive methods to obtain consumers' telephone records. With the Republican-led 109th Congress drawing to a close, the Senate approved the measure previously passed by the House of Representatives and sent it to President George W. Bush to sign into law.
The measure is aimed at stopping the practice of impersonating people to obtain their phone records, also known as pretexting. Currently there is no law against the practice. The issue came under public scrutiny when Hewlett-Packard Co admitted that its investigators obtained telephone records of board members, employees and journalists without their permission as the company tried to find out who was leaking sensitive information.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, hailed passage of the measure, saying, "The practice of fraudulently obtaining a customer's phone records and selling them over the Internet is wrong and must be stopped." "Consumers have a right to expect that this information will be kept private, with very limited exceptions."
Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, said, "Phone information and call logs should be protected with the same safeguards as financial data or medical records."
"With pretexting companies popping-up across the country, law enforcement will get the tools needed to track down these criminals down and put this industry out of business."
The Telephone Records and Privacy Protection Act would criminalize obtaining confidential phone records through making fraudulent statements or providing false documents to a telephone service provider or accessing customer accounts through the Internet or by fraudulent computer-related activities.
It would also prohibit the unauthorised sale or transfer of confidential phone records information, or the receipt of such information with the knowledge that it was fraudulently obtained.
The measure would also ban buying records from a data broker and sets criminal penalties of up to 10 years in prison and fines. It does not apply to federal, state or local law enforcement agencies. Some senators had pushed for a broader bill, which also would have given consumers and telephone companies the right to sue for damages.