US Judge Bars Unauthorized Sales of Phone Records

The Register delivers the good news that a US federal judge had slapped down the practice of pretexting and ordered a Wyoming company to pay almost $200,000; AccuSearch was also permanently barred from selling individuals' phone records without their permission. The FTC had filed suit in 2006 against the company and four others. AccuSearch had advertised a service that made phone records of any individual available for a fee. The current article makes no mention of whatever became of the other four accused data brokers.

Comments

What? This is unheard of!

[Phantombrain]

Since when has the US government cared about the privacy of individuals?

Re:What? This is unheard of!

[Dr. Hellno]

If I may, I'll take off my top hat and replace it with my tinfoil cap for a second:

It seems probable to me that the reason this happened is phone records which show calls

from politicians to call girls

from lobbyists to politicians

and of course

conference calls between the three.

Paint me stupid.

[palegray.net]

How in the hell did this firm gain access to peoples' phone records in the first place? I guess I don't know enough about how this works, but I thought it was illegal for the phone company to provide such records to a private firm without a court order. Hell, even cops have to get warrants to go through phone records, right?

Re:Paint me stupid.

[corsec67]

In the current government, who cares about a "warrant"? Not like that means anything anymore. Especially to a phone company.

Re:Paint me stupid.

[Doc Daneeka]

The company, AccuSearch, was calling up phone companies and pretending to be certain persons in order to gain their account information. They then sold the relevant information to an interested third party. The private firm was misrepresenting itself in order to gain sensitive information.

"FTC attorneys argued that using false pretenses, fraudulent statements and fraudulent or stolen documents to induce carriers to disclose records was illegal."

So, they didn't need a warrant because they were pretending to be a customer trying to access their account records.

Re:Paint me stupid.

[palegray.net]

I'd like to see criminal charges pressed for this sort of behavior. Surely the employees taking these actions couldn't possibly use the defense of "I was just doing my job." That would be like low level dope peddlers claiming they only sold their product under duress from their "boss." Anyone care to do a little digging on exactly what criminal statutes might have been broken here?

Other data brokers?

[hawks5999]

The current article makes no mention of whatever became of the other four accused data brokers They all now go by their original names:

NSA

CIA

FBI

DHS

Not such a big deal

[Anonymous Coward]

The 3 letter agencies don't have to buy their phone records

Re:Wtf

[palegray.net]

Please do not feed the trolls. It only incites them to further stupidity. Please reference the official Wikipedia article on the topic for further information. You may also be interested in The Psychology of Trolling. This has been an online discussion tactics PSA. Thank you, HAND, YMMV, IANAL, FWIW.

OK, that's a start.

[ScentCone]

But a judge telling a firm that they can't do it any more isn't NEARLY as good as congress making it a big ol' Federal No-No. So, c'mon, Pelosi. Reid? Where's all of that protect-the-little-guy stuff? Hillary? Obama? Where are the firey populist bits about how they'll use their party's control of congress to work on this sort of thing? Well, first things first. Like... hearings on steroid use in baseball leagues.