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.'"

Comments

A campaign

[ringokamens]

There's a campaign going on at Binary Freedom right now that some of you may be interested in.
http://binaryfreedom.info/node/163
Basically, there are several arguments against this law

1. It doesn't do anything
Criminals will still make calls and spoof, so it won't stop fraud. Police can already track down spoofers with the same amount of non-spoofers who are using their phones for illegal purposes.

2. It costs money
We're gonna have to spend money to catch spoofers.

3. Jurisdiction
If the phone companies want to stop spoofing, they should design a secure system instead of relying on the congressional police

4. Privacy
It strips privacy that is gained by spoofing.

5. Legitimate use
It has legitimate uses such as for telecommuters who want the name when they make business calls to be the company's. Or how about a business that has several people using one phone line? They might want the sales associate's name to appear, which would be done through spoofing.

Fact of the matter is, this gains us nothing. If I can write a fake name on a letter and mail it, why can't I do the same with my phone?

Re:A campaign

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:A campaign

[Khaed]

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.

Fines in America - just can't figure it out

[Bombula]

I don't get why in America we can't figure out that fines only work when the penalty is commensurate with the infraction. If you want fines to work, you have to do what they do in Scandinavian countries - charge a percentage of your income. What is a $500 parking ticket for a billionaire? But $500 will ruin your life if you work for minimum wage. It's not fair, it's not just, and it doesn't work.

Fines for corporations should certainly have a minimum value, but they should have NO upper ceiling. When companies like Microsoft or Phillip Morris or ExxonMobil are fined $200 million dollars - as most of them have been - they don't even blink. It's completely useless. The law in America in this regard is completely idiotic in this regard.

Actually, nothing happened

[gruntled]

So I'm actually reading the legislative action on this bill (through Thomas, provided by the link), and it doesn't appear as though there's been any kind of a vote on this. Am I, you know, missing something? Or does somebody not understand that a bill actually has to be voted on by each full chamber (both the House and the Senate) in an identical format, before it can be said that "Congress" has approved anything?

Re:Interesting

[smartr]

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.

Re:Interesting

[Grendel70]

Feature: (n) - A bug with seniority.