Slashdot Mirror
CallerID Spoofing to be Made Illegal
MadJo writes "US Congress has just approved a bill that will make it illegal to spoof CallerID. From the bill: 'The amount of the forfeiture penalty (...) shall not exceed $10,000 for each violation, or 3 times that amount for each day of a continuing violation, except that the amount assessed for any continuing violation shall not exceed a total of $1,000,000 for any single act or failure to act.'"
I work for Congress, but not on this issue. But I can correct some misinformation.
1. You're right. We shouldn't make murder illegal either.
2. See number 1. The question is whether the money spent on this law is worth the societal good of making it easier to prosecute scammers.
3. The phone companies don't have an incentive to stop scamming. Congress does (they're occasionally responsible to voters.)
4. It doesn't stop you from not allowing the number to show up at all. It just stops you from faking it.
5. It was specifically written to exempt these uses, since Congressional offices, for example, have the public number show up when people call out from them, rather than individual extensions.
I'm not so much worried about criminals, but I don't think this bill addresses what I want it to:
I'm sick of companies calling and their damn name not showing up, for whatever reason. "Tollfree number" (well no shit, other than collect, when do I get charged for receiving calls?) or "Unknown Caller"
Some of them are bill collectors. Who want someone that isn't here, and don't seem to want to believe that no, that person isn't here, and isn't going to be, so stop calling me. But either way, if they can't identify themselves, they shouldn't be calling my damn number. Which is why I disagree with #4 on your list.
If you're calling my house, I have every right to know who you are. Can you seriously come up with a legitimate situation where you should be able to call me and me not be able to see who you are before I answer the phone?
I barely answer unless I recognize the number anyway, because of a massive amount of wrong numbers. And some of the numbers these idiots are trying to dial aren't even close.
I agree with #3, however, in regards to #2, the cost of it will just be passed on to you one way or another. #5 I can see, but I've never had a business call me and use a sales associate's name.
#1 is a silly argument. Making rape illegal hasn't stopped it, either. You can make the case that no law is ever going to stop any crime. However, it makes it so that if you do it and get caught, you can be punished.
That's the damn thing. Last I checked we already had laws against fraud. So why make a law specifically towards something like this? I can understand the disabilities act, but really, go after spoofers for fraud and if the penalty isn't high enough ADJUST the penalty for fraud across the board. We're making every damn little thing a frickin' crime in this country anymore.
No sig for you!!
Should impersonating a police officer, identity theft, false advertising and passing fake checks all have the same punishment? These are all, at the base, fraud. Could they even reasonably fit under one singular law? We're making every damn little thing a frickin' crime in this country anymore. Here's the thing, the general term "fraud" is not illegal. Only specific forms of fraud. For example, claiming you can bench 200 lbs when you can barely press half that is not illegal. So, instead of just making "fraud" illegal, laws target specific types, and they *define* those specific types. Caller ID spoofing probably doesn't fall into any existing category of fraud, so this form of fraud can be presently engaged in with impunity.
So what choices are there? Basically, they are to expand an existing law to cover Caller ID spoofing, create a new law, or ignore it altogether. Ergo this story.
If slashdot's comments and moderation can be abused, how is that a bug? Some features are inherently prone to different forms of abuse, and there is no magical way to completely solve the problem without removing the feature. I do not have faith in the idea that features can always have a perfect solution. If there was not a mistake in how something should function, it is not a bug. One could make improvements to make abuses harder, but this would be an improvement on the system - not a bug fix.