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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.
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.