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Mississippi Makes Caller ID Spoofing Illegal
marklyon writes "HB 872, recently signed into law by Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, makes Caller ID spoofing illegal. The law covers alterations to the caller's name, telephone number, or name and telephone number that is shown to a recipient of a call or otherwise presented to the network. The law applies to PSTN, wireless and VoIP calls. Penalties for each violation can be up to $1,000 and one year in jail. Blocking of caller identification information is still permitted."
There shouldn’t need to be a law for this, though. Telcos should enforce it on their own.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
This should be a federal law.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
...you mean this wasn't already illegal? Strange.
Living With a Nerd
If I spoofed my caller ID, how would they ever know without wiretapping me, or doing something else illegal? How would anyone ever get caught? This law seems unenforceable.
If our elected representatives no longer represent us, do we still live in a Democracy?
Uh, I have a PRI line, and I definitely do not have any control over the CLID name displayed.
The name people see seems to come from any of a number of CNAM databases depending on the phone company terminating the call.
So everyone calling Mississippi is at risk of being prosecuted?
It would be great if this could somehow be used against telemarketers. I guess it will depend on the specific details of how the law is written. Not to mention that its difficult to track down the company that called when they are faking their outbound number.
Ask Slashdot: Where bad ideas meet poor googling skills.
I'd like to see how they work this one out with Skype and other VOIP providers.
This seems like an ineffective use of legislation at first glance, but the next time somebody does the "your auto warranty is about to expire" trick, the first thing I'll ask is whether they logged any calls to Mississippi. If so, send their skinny little butts there for some quality time with the general prison population where they can think about what they've done.
I don't really even care about the fine. Throw them in the can with Bubba for a year per call to MS, and justice will have been done.
Take off every 'sig' for great justice.
I think their governor needs a call, straight from the Whitehouse to fix this mess up.
God spoke to me.
They could just force ANI and drop CID, so it's not an issue.
My sausage tree didn't grow, does that make me a bad mommy?
How would enforcing a rule such as this enable telcos to make more money? I imagine that some of their larger customers are spoofers. And telcos are corporations. All corporations are inherently sociopathic, lacking in empathy, remorse, guilt, or any sense of right and wrong outside of "more money is right, less money is wrong."
If someone should do something, and they don't, we make a law to force them to.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
...all telemarketing firms in Mississippi are relocating to other states.
Ask Slashdot: Where bad ideas meet poor googling skills.
In fact, let's just do away with prisons and sentence people to serve time in automated rape machines. Who cares about cruel or unusual punishment, these guys are spoofing telephone numbers!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Telemarketers will call from another state and use a PSTN gateway in yet another state/country. All this does is move telemarketing jobs out of a state that badly needs any jobs it can get.
The Google Voice app on my Blackberry will allow me to initiate calls from my cell that show my Google Voice number on the caller ID, rather than my cell phone's number. Through the Google Voice web page, I can initiate calls from nearly any phone but my GV number will be displayed to recipients.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
This will put a hick up in collection company's practices since they do it all the time. I wonder how it will affect call centers since call centers normally spoof the caller ID to match the company they are calling on behalf of.
Telcos should enforce it on their own.
Yeah and corporations should do all sorts of things they don't do. Which is why the government has to step in to make them do it.
How would enforcing a rule such as this enable telcos to make more money?
It pollutes the feature? At what point is it no longer worth getting caller ID, because the numbers are not reliable enough to be worth paying to have it...
But yeah, you have a point. The telcos really don’t have much incentive to prevent spoofing when their larger customers are doing it.
However, here’s my take, and why it still doesn’t need to be illegal IMHO. The companies who spoof are generally doing stuff that should be illegal anyway, right? That’s why they want to hide their identity. So as I see it, if we could crack down on them for those actions, spoofing wouldn’t be the big-business issue it currently is. Then, the primary spoofers would just be pranksters, and the telcos would have good reason to prevent it again.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
If you want the billing number of the party that called, you want ANI. CLID is not for what you are talking about.
Regulation that has no concept of the subject it is regulating is worse than no regulation.
What about if I want to use caller ID spoofing for my business lines. I operate my own PBX (asterix) for my business and in order to provide a single point of contact for my customers, I link all of my phones to the same phone line. So calling from my desk phone or from my home phone will show up as the same phone number so that I can be working regardless of my physical location. I have also considered setting up a redirect system from my cell phone so that I call into my PBX and then it calls someone for me so I can mask the caller ID of my cell phone. This way I don't give out my cell phone's number and customers only see my single phone line.
Which part of the above becomes illegal by this new law? Or would any of this be considered illegal? Is it only wrong if you are spoofing a number you don't own?
Also, when you have low level control over a pbx and direct access to a voip wholesale provider, the caller id name and number are just settings you define. I actually noticed a bug in some of my caller scripts recently that improperly setup the caller id for some internal redirects to the outside world. Would I be liable for not properly setting the caller ID on all of my lines in this scenario under this new law?
A corporation pays my salary, so they can't be all bad.
On one hand, yes, it's about money, but on another, it's about money. If a telco customer can't rely on the telco for providing the proper information that the customer is paying for, then they will lose the customer to a telco who will.
Is it wrong for a customer to expect that a telco will provide proper service?
I totally agree. But in the mean time, to fight off spoofers, it's best that you never pick up the phone at all for personal lines. To receive calls, merely let it run to the answering machine and, once the person has been identified, return the call to them. Do not call people that you do not know. You should not be receiving calls from people you do not know... ever.
That’s so old-fashioned, though...
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
All corporations are inherently sociopathic, lacking in empathy, remorse, guilt...
A corporation pays my salary, so they can't be all bad.
They only pay you because slavery is illegal. Doing the right thing because you have no choice doesn't count when good karma is being totted up.
Not going to argue about the particular case of caller-ID spoofing, but as a general principle this is an absolutely horrible way to approach things.
Now I can't spoof my identity as Bea O'Problem or Amanda Hugginkiss ...
I really don't see your point. Whatever you show to other people when calling should be numbers you own. Why should the law be concerned with how that is actually implemented?
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Then make that the law. But there is a need for dialed out number to not be the displayed one for many legitimate and obvious reasons.
How? Seriously, how the hell would they enforce it? Companies use caller ID spoofing all the time! Look when an agent at your bank calls you from their call center. Does their phone number show up? Nope, its the 800 number, that you can call back the company on. Isn't that the same as spoofing? I mean, technically, its the exact same steps in the PBX to do it maliciously or not.
Then, you might have one call center in one region have a nice fat pipe coming in from ATT, a second call center handled by Verizon, but your 800 number is handled by sprint over in California. So how would ATT or verizon enforce the "spoofing rule" without having any knowledge or control over your 800 number?
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Preventing spoofing in the first place makes it easier to track down illegal actions, right?
I think that if it was easy and common to spoof IP addresses, the internet would be even more of a cesspool.
I think elimnating spam had to do with positive identification of the sender? Seems like it has gone down over the past few years. I would guess most servers/relays drop email that cannot be properly tracked to the origin, they could do something similar with phonecalls.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
Small question but ... what happens when all the people you know implement your philosophy? How do call somebody back when they have a policy of never picking up the phone?
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
If they decided it would be worth more money for them to grind you up and feed you to pigs, they would.
Right now you are bringing in more money than they are paying you. Hence your employment. If that wasn't the case you wouldn't be there. And if the penalty for murder was less steep, the odds of getting caught smaller, and if there was a pig food shortage - you'd be screwed.
Read up on the tobacco industry for current examples of what I'm talking about. They kill about half a million people in the United States every year, and all for profit. Money.
It should come as no surprise when a company does something less evil than that for money. The bar is set pretty high. So allowing people to spoof caller ID for cash? Mere child's play.
OP was exactly right about corporations being sociopaths. It's probably one of the most insightful things I've ever seen on /.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Really? You think laws are a bad idea? What method would you use to ensure that people's freedoms aren't infringed upon? As laws in a free democracy amount to nothing more than contracts between individuals, it seems as though you don't agree with the whole concept of contracts.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I hate to rain on your wishful thinking, but if what you say actually worked in reality, there should be at least one telco that already prohibits caller ID spoofing. Is there?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Then read the damn bill instead of shooting down straw men.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Why bother spoofing the caller ID when you can just block caller ID altogether? I'd just ignore "Unknown Caller" calls, except for the fact that my daughter's school makes emergency phone calls to parents with caller ID blocked... sigh. I point out to them every year that this is a problem, but they are too cheap to fix it. (Obviously they are using trunk lines from each school through the district headquarters, so if they displayed the number for the outgoing line, calling it back wouldn't put you in touch with the same person that called you. Also, they are too cheap to just use the main number for the district as a caller ID like every business in the country, 'cause then they would have to hire a receptionist to figure out who you actually wanted to contact.)
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Anon is correct. CallerID between telco does not support name. All you enter on your side is the number. The telco charges for the number-to-name entry, so if the name is incorrect, it's incorrect in the telco's database. Also, every time you see an 800 number in caller ID entry, it's false. You can't dial out on 800 lines. Whoever it is calling with 800 on their caller ID is actually calling from some other circuit.
It is obviously good... I am somewhat surprised to see this from my home state.
I'm neither against laws nor contracts, so give the strawman a rest please. I'm saying that there's a major difference between "you should do X" and "you should be required to do X". The former does not automatically justify the latter.
Who is this Blocked person, and why does he keep calling me?
Of course there is a difference between 'should do' and 'must do.' We are a free democracy, and we have a system for determining which 'should dos' become 'must dos.' I never said that every 'should' should be made into law. I'm saying every law is something that people 'should' do, but won't, without consequences.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
How does anyone ever enforce anything? You punish those you catch doing it wrong, of course.
Further if the displayed number is one of your own, I don't see this as 'spoofing' at all. Read the law, I guess and see if they agree.
Despite repeated attempts to get my cell phone company to change the name that shows up when I call someone, it still shows that person's name. So in this case, who would be breaking the law? Common sense would say that it's the cell phone company's fault because they control what name is shown, and I have tried to get it changed. Unfortunately, common sense doesn't apply to most laws. Could I now call someone in Mississippi, report to that state's government that the name is showing up incorrectly, and get my cell phone company to pay a fine every time I make such a call? That would get them to change it real fast.
They only pay you because open slavery is illegal.
Here, fixed that for you.
Ezekiel 23:20
There shouldn’t need to be a law for this, though. Telcos should enforce it on their own.
Score:4, Insightful
If I hadn't just spent my last mod point, you'd just now be at +5 Funny. Telcos, acting right without the law forcing them... good one!
You can't take the sky from me...
Think about it. That's not spoofing, that's giving an alternate callback number for the same entity. Spoofing a callback is saying you're someone else; like, say, a car "warrantee" company using a little old ladies number as their callback. Again, your bank agent is not spoofing by giving his own company's 1-800 number. I'm pretty sure that all of the phone companies already know how to route calls between networks and who owns them. How the heck do you think calls are routed currently?
Since this law allows for blocking, it's actually pretty good. I can think of no legitimate reason to want to initiate a call and pretend to be someone else.
I'm sure it was not intentional, but you did:
There's no qualification there, either in the quote itself or in the context. At no point in that post did you mention the protection of freedoms or any other justification for making a law beyond "you should do this". That was my point: taken at face value, that statement describes a policy that is downright evil.
Actually, that's not true. Slaves cost money; if they die, you gotta buy a whole new one!
When you have an employee, it doesn't matter what happens to him. You've only paid for his labor, not his life. It's easy to hire a new one and only has a minimal training time overhead.
If I wanted to convey what you believe I meant, I would have written "In every case where someone should do something, and they don't, we make a law to force them to."
What I wrote is simply true in a literal sense. I don't really see how it is controversial. "We believe you should do this" is the ultimate justification for every law on the books.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
If a telco customer can't rely on the telco for providing the proper information that the customer is paying for, then they will lose the customer to a telco who will.
Uh, you do realize that it's not the answerer's telco that's spoofing the caller ID right? If a caller on AT&T spoofs his caller ID and I'm on Verizon, is Verizon supposed to use their psychic powers to figure out the correct ID?
If people actually followed your logic, Verizon would intentionally spoof the caller ID of every call from its network to a competitor in hopes that everyone drops their competing phone companies. Of course, AT&T would do the same to calls to Verizon, and so on. This is an improvement?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I'm sure a good slave works out much better value for money in the long run...
All corporations are inherently sociopathic, lacking in empathy, remorse, guilt...
A corporation pays my salary, so they can't be all bad.
So when they outsource your job to someone making $8000 a year or less in India, what will that make them then?
Well, you could read the law.
I know, this is Slashdot, we're all supposed to jump to conclusions based on the title of the submission, and not even read the summary. But anway...
The answer is nobody would be breaking the law. The law is written so that it requires intent to deceive. You actually want the correct name, so you're not deceiving. The cell phone company is just being incompetent, and again shouldn't be prosecuted.
That's possible, but I don't have the feeling that many people have any particular job over the long haul these days.
If slavery were more cost-effective than paid employees, then slavery would still be legal....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
One of my coworkers uses Skype to call me when he's not in the office. I can recognize his calls, because they're from "0000123456" :-) He doesn't *have* an inbound Skype number, as far as I know. There are other VOIP systems that use addresses like username@domain to set up user-to-user connections, and don't use numbers at all.
And what's the "real" number for a PBX? Is it the number for the trunk group, or the individual line on the trunk, or the Direct In-Dial (DID) number for the operator, or the phone itself? If you're telling me "the phone itself", old PBXs often didn't have DID capability, and new ones only do if you buy the numbers from a telco. If I call my car dealer, I get the main phone, and the operator connects me to Parts or pages Fred from the sales lot to pick up a phone; if one of them calls me, the call's coming from the dealer's number, not some separate number for Parts. And often companies will have FX numbers, that let you call a local number in your exchange, even though their actual office is somewhere else, or toll-free numbers that go to inbound call centers which may not have outbound-calling service. And telemarketers often have PBXs that only need to do outbound calls, and the trunk has a billing number that's not related to an actual phone.
The 911 problem is related to this as well - it makes a number of assumptions about the relationship of physical locations, people, phones, phone numbers, buildings, and fire departments, which may have made sense back when everybody bought analog wired phones from their telco, and has a signaling system that's based on those assumptions, and a funding model that's based on those assumptions and 911 network implementations, and tries to require that newer systems like VOIP, PBXs, etc. implement that signaling interface even though it doesn't reflect the underlying network, and doesn't have any money to upgrade its own signaling to reflect current reality.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
There shouldn't need to be a law for this, though. Telcos should enforce it on their own.
Any customer with a phone switch or PBX is now in violation of this law.
If I had to guess, that would be pretty much all corporations with 25 or more phones, since using T1 channels becomes cost effective at that point.
I suppose the largest corporations aren't breaking that law, assuming each and every last handset in the company has an external phone number and DID tied to it. But just ONE internal only phone line, and they are in violation of this law every time someone lifts it and hits 9, as the phone number is 'spoofed' to the main company number.
Where I work for example, we have about 60 DIDs (outside phone numbers) yet over 100 phone extensions.
The internal 40 can make outside calls, but the phone system will spoof in our main reception phone number, so if someone actually called the number on caller ID, they will still get to us (And through the receptionist, to the extension they wanted to reach)
Pretty much every phone switch has the ability to not assign an external phone number, so any caller ID data will be spoofed. The only other option is to send the private or unavailable codes, which brings all the undesirable non-answering of calls such things typically bring.
Think of this feature as a form of NAT for phone lines.
In fact, for the short time the California law was in place that made IP spoofing illegal, everyone in the state using NAT was breaking the law. (Though to be totally fair, Cali also outlawed possession of water for a week or two as well...)
If slavery were more cost-effective than paid employees, then slavery would still be legal....
If it were less cost-effective, why would it need to be illegal? The slave owners would have had to stop on their own or go out of business.
Think of this feature as a form of NAT for phone lines.
It's more like the "From:" or "Reply-To:" headers of an email message: it indicates where you want follow-ups to go to.
http://outcampaign.org/
However, here’s my take, and why it still doesn’t need to be illegal IMHO. The companies who spoof are generally doing stuff that should be illegal anyway, right?
No they aren't. For example my company spoofs so that patients who hit *87 or return the call go to a number where their calls will get handled rather than some internal number that might just be an outgoing only line.
I'm pretty sure that all of the phone companies already know how to route calls between networks and who owns them
Well you would be wrong there. The ways calls are routed is very complex and no one has total knowledge of what they are passing. The PSTN is just not structured with that sort of identification information.
The problem isn't from Telcos. You can't spoof caller ID from a regular land line phone. This is for PBXs and 3rd party VOIP services where spoofing goes on all the time. In fact, I bet the local phone and cable companies are behind this bill since it causes problems for their customers.
Debt collectors are known to spoof caller IDs. For example, they'll spoof their number to that of a family member or employer. And, we recently had a spat of spoofed IDs a few months ago when that company in Missouri was selling extended auto warranties. In that case, they spoofed the number to hide their identity, so people couldn't complain.
FCC regulations already prohibit spoofing caller ID, but there really isn't any federal law which makes the regulations almost impossible to enforce.
There is a major problem with the bill. The bill only applies to people calling from Mississippi. The bill should have made it illegal to call a person or business in Mississippi using a spoofed caller ID.
Any customer with a phone switch or PBX is now in violation of this law.
RTFL. It's very short. Quoting it:
2(d) "False information" means data that misrepresents the identity of the caller to the recipient of a call or to the network itself; however, when a person making an authorized call on behalf of another person inserts the name, telephone number or name and telephone number of the person on whose behalf the call is being made, such information shall not be deemed false information.
and also:
3(1) A person may not enter or cause to be entered false information into a telephone caller identification system with the intent to deceive, defraud or mislead the recipient of a call.
(2) A person may not place a call knowing that false information was entered into the telephone caller identification system with the intent to deceive, defraud or mislead the recipient of the call.
So it's "with intent". I don't see anything wrong with the law as it stands.
http://outcampaign.org/
I "spoof". I purchase my incoming and outgoing service separately and from different vendors. I use different caller ID identification based on whom I am calling (one number for personal calls, another for business calls). They are both numbers that belong to me but there is no particular connection between that number and the "line" I am using to place the call.
I also forward calls from certain people to my mobile phone when I am not at my desk. In that case I am effectively placing a call to my mobile number, spoofing the CID to be that of the original caller, so I can see whether I want to answer it.
I would be very sad if I could no longer do these things, as they make my life a lot easier.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
As I mentioned elsewhere, I effectively do this many times a day, to no nefarious end.
When a call comes to my office number and I don't pick it up, my phone system dials my mobile phone, spoofing the number so as to pretend to be the original caller, so I can see on my screen whether I want to answer it.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
This will put a hick up in collection company's practices
Collection Agencies have already been employing hicks for years. Who else can they get to work in a place where your job is to be an asshole and harass some poor schmuck who's buried under a pile of debt. Most hicks are already belligerent and they tend to own guns too, so the job fits their nature.
Well, you could read the law.
I know, this is Slashdot, we're all supposed to jump to conclusions based on the title of the submission, and not even read the summary. But anway...
The answer is nobody would be breaking the law. The law is written so that it requires intent to deceive. You actually want the correct name, so you're not deceiving. The cell phone company is just being incompetent, and again shouldn't be prosecuted.
Speaking of jumping to conclusions...
Actually, I can't read the law, because both sites are blocked by my employer's firewall. /. is whitelisted, as are CNN, Wikipedia, and other popular, largely respected sites, but not the two linked in the summary.
Anyway, thanks for answering my (sincere) question, even if your reply was a bit presumptuous and rude. I wish that this law applied to incompetent phone companies too, because that seems to be the only way I can get this thing changed.
I like technological solutions. Make a phone that can check Caller-ID against a database. The database entries record how the phone should ring and whether voice-mail is enabled. The database entries can be updated by hitting a button on the phone.
(IANAL)
This solution is in every measure better that this law:
If the caller you want to classify is not spoofing, enter them into the database. Done
If they are,
they won't be in the database - use unknown caller's classification
they masquerade as another person/company - report them - this is fraud
No data - use No Data classification.
The law can't protect you from unknown companies, (legal name change, multiple valid phone numbers, etc)
The law can't protect you from No Data (well it could, but to be effective it would be draconian.)
The law already allows damages for fraud / misrepresentation - worse they probably have to defend the case in the state of the callee ! $$
The hardware needed is cheap enough that every cellphone company is giving something this powerful away for free (with 2 year contract).
There is no need for a new law.
Wrong. Read a book on slavery dude.
So how would this apply (if it does) to Google Voice? (and no, GV is not VoIP!) For example, I use GV on my Droid. I used to be on AT&T and I was able to move to Verizon with no "porting fee" or any of that crap because I use GV and had already gotten everyone to dial that number. My physical cell number is not given out. When I make a call, it uses GV and gives out that number. Seems like it must be "spoofing" at some point (although if I use the web page instead of the app it doesn't spoof because it calls both parties). I'd hate to see such a valuable and useful tool be hamstrung by a law intended to stop phone spammers.
You are really being idiots if you think Telco's are going to enforce a policy on their own. What's their incentive!? If anything, they would offer a service to allow you to spoof that info and charge for it.
Businesses are out to make money... why would they do something that is going to do nothing to either make them money, or worse, push their customers to another Telco that doesn't prevent spoofing.
"Libertarians" really need to think before they talk sometimes...
There are everyday situations where having the caller ID number be other than the actual phone number is a good thing. Most companies do this - they'll have dozens or hundreds of phone lines and all of them show the "master" number for the company as their caller ID.
Or for VOIP users like me - my phone lines show the POTS number you should call to reach me, not the "hidden" number of the VOIP line. In both of these situations (and probably others) "spoofing" makes the caller ID information more useful. The option to configure the outgoing caller ID information is built into almost all telephone switching equipment for just this reason.
The misuse of this ability is the problem, not the ability itself. Laws like this one are likely to cause more harm than good; the current situation where some bad guys spoof their caller ID information isn't totally bad - they almost always choose obviously incorrect numbers. That makes it easy for me to just look at the phone and if it's a call from 000-000-0000 then it's not going to be answered.
If the government actually took violations of the "do not call" list seriously - and if various stores (on and off line) didn't sell your name and phone number to anyone with the price - then these problems would be greatly minimized. The telephone company has the actual phone numbers for every phone call - that data is accurate and not the same as the caller ID information. Maybe even the phone company could block calls with invalid caller ID information? There are things that could be done that would really be useful.
But this kind of political grandstanding where they want to tinker with a system that they don't understand - this is stupid. But that's nothing new these days...
>You can't dial out on 800 lines.
You certainly can dial out on 800 numbers. If you have a long distance only T-1 or DS3. I manage one at work. Our local telco has bad incoming long distance issues. Small rural telco. We brought in a long distance t-1 and only have 800 numbers on it. Most people forget the larger enterprises use VOIP or T1/T3 which can route a toll free number to the terminating point on a key or PBX system.
Slaves require a large up-front investment. If you already own slaves, then you'll lose money switching away from slaves to free employees.
Note, by the way, that slavery wasn't outlawed because of cost questions. It was those damn Christians and their morality!
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I hate to play the devil's advocate here, because I hate those calls too, but it is a PUBLIC network and there is a freedom of speech element here (incidentally, if this gets overturned in court, I bet it is due to free speech issues). Back when autodialers weren't illegal for small businesses to have and no one had a cell phone, people believed their phone was "theirs." Well, the hardware is, since the Ma Bell breakup anyway, but the service is a public service, paid for with public funds and there's a pretty solid argument for jerkoffs being able to call you on it, even if you're eating dinner and hate the calls.
The reason spoofing caller id has been allowed is that those fields aren't even used by the Telco's, except when they charge you for passing them along to your caller id box (at least they used to charge for that service, not sure now). Setting the name to Mickey Mouse means no difference to the Telco as they use another set of fields that actually give correct information about a call. If you wanted to fix this problem, the real fix is to force the Telcos to provide you with these fields, on request, for no charge. They don't want to do that and I suspect that is why such a law would never be passed, but that is the correct solution.
All corporations are inherently sociopathic, lacking in empathy, remorse, guilt...
A corporation pays my salary, so they can't be all bad.
Assigning any type of pathos to a corporation is silly. They have no emotions. I could just as usefully wonder if my desklamp is bored.
Claiming that a company lacks empathy is like claiming that democracy lacks a rosemary-garlic flavor. Lacking the capacity for emotions doesn't make something inherently evil or bad, it's simply a trait shared by essentially everything that is not human.
Would a locomotive be evil for crushing anything that gets in its way? We have a tendency to think that way about powerful corporations, when instead, we should be concerned about where we place the tracks (the laws).
I don't think you wanted to convey that. I'm saying you (unintentionally) did convey it. You stated a rule to which exceptions were not implied and thus could not be reasonably inferred.
Additionally,"We believe you should do this" cannot in and of itself justify any law worth respecting; it must be justified by the protection of people's freedoms. Without that, "don't kill people" is on equal footing as a law with "go to church on Sunday or else".
Note, by the way, that slavery wasn't outlawed because of cost questions. It was those damn Christians and their morality!
The Bible endorses slavery, and the "red" south was the area with slaves, and the "blue" north didn't have them and worked to get rid of them.
And slavery could never be abolished today. They talk about issuing more taxi licenses in New York or Anchorage or other places with fixed numbers of licenses, and the cabbies get into an uproar. The Anchorage lawyers said the city should just pony up for buying every license out at market rates if they try to issue a new one, as they will be sued on a takings basis. Not that they took anything, but that they made something someone bought less valuable. Abolishing slaves today would require the government buy each and every slave. Doing it back then was such an issue not because they were cheap, but they were a sunk cost, and abolishing slavery would destroy their capital. The north instantly deleting that much capital plunged the south into the backward hick area it still remains today (at least in some areas).
Learn to love Alaska
Claiming that a company lacks empathy is like claiming that democracy lacks a rosemary-garlic flavor. Lacking the capacity for emotions doesn't make something inherently evil or bad, it's simply a trait shared by essentially everything that is not human.
You are right, which proves you wrong. A corporation doesn't "feel" anything, including ethics, morals, pathos, empathy, responsibility, etc. However, the law has set them up as "legal persons." So a corporation is a legal person that doesn't feel those things. You say that aren't a person and shouldn't be treated as such for comparisons of emotion, however the law defines them to be people and they get to act like people. So you are arguing for them being amoral profit-driven sociopaths. You claim an exception because they aren't human, but the law does assign them person status, so the exemption may be philosophical, but the law trumps that in practice.
Learn to love Alaska
>Most people forget the larger enterprises use VOIP or T1/T3 which can route a toll free number to the terminating point on a key or PBX system.
Wouldn't terminating it on your internal PBX make it incoming rather than outgoing? Unless you have the PSTN on your PBX? And you're doing tricks to make it outgoing? Using a T1/TDM circuit to route an 800 number doesn't make it outgoing.
As I mentioned elsewhere, I effectively do this many times a day, to no nefarious end.
Someone else quoted the law here, "when a person making an authorized call on behalf of another person inserts the name, telephone number or name and telephone number of the person on whose behalf the call is being made, such information shall not be deemed false information."
You are not spoofing. You are passing along the information when forwarding the call. The technical "spoofing" meaning (which is undefined, probably closest to "inserting any information not matching the ANI of the line originating the call") is what you seem to be using. That's unrelated to the "spoofing" used in the law. That's why you think it's bad, because you don't understand it. Read it, then let us know. They don't say you can't "spoof" in the sense of sending what you want as caller ID. They say you can't send false information with the intention of deceiving others. Sending "Chuck" instead of "Charles" down my line is not the spoofing discussed in the law. Sending the originating caller ID when forwarding a call to your cell is not the spoofing discussed in the law. And I'd even argue that sending the original information when forwarding a call isn't "pretending to be someone else" in the sense that the OP stated.
Learn to love Alaska
Regulation that has no concept of the subject it is regulating is worse than no regulation.
Posters with no concept of what they are commenting on is worse than no post. The law lets you set your caller ID to *anything* you want, including blocked, as long as what you set it to isn't misrepresenting who you are or are calling on behalf of. So if you are a contractor for IBM and working from home (whether that home be in Indiana or India) you are perfectly allowed to have IBM's main 800 number sent as your caller ID. You are calling as an agent of them, so you aren't lying. Giving false names and numbers to confuse and trick is the only thing made illegal by this.
If you think otherwise, please quote the part of the law that is in question.
Learn to love Alaska
People supporting this legislation need to understand that passing a law isn't the same as waving a magic wand and making all your desires come true exactly as you envision then, with no unintended consequences at all!
All laws have enforcement costs, bureaucratic / legislative costs, costs from encouraging spammers to turn to the black market, etc... But the worst costs of all is the cost to the citizens' ability to solve problems without the use of government force, ignoring the much more elegant and effective solutions that can be found in the free market. The whole idea of "anyone can make your phone ring" telephones is severely outdated, but what's keeping it alive is government red tape!
And you can't trust Mommy Government to cut your meat and wipe your poo for you without some serious consequences to individual freedom, if not immediately then a generation or two from now.
"A government big enough to supply you with everything you need, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have...." --Thomas Jefferson
(Signed: Alex Libman's sock-puppet.)
And slavery is only illegal because free labour works harder and costs less (over the long term.)
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
No, "it protects people's freedom's" is WHY "we think you should do this."
Hehe. Are we really just down to arguing semantics in a show of Internet chest-puffery at his point?
Maybe. But maybe I have a point.
Where do laws, rights, and freedoms come from? We can derive all sorts of fancy philosophical constructs that provide justifications and reasons for all sorts of laws, rights and freedoms. But why do we need these justifications? Because we need to get people to agree with us.
It may be an ugly truth, but there are no 'natural rights.' Without society, there is only power. With society, there are only agreements: contracts, where people give something and gain something.
So the cold hard fact is that the only reason "don't kill people" is NOT on an equal footing as a law with "go to church on Sunday or else" is because more people think agreeing not to kill each other is more important than agreeing to go to church every Sunday.
We don't have to look far for contra-examples, either. "Don't kill people" goes out the window in war, doesn't it? Every society thinks it is just fine to kill people for in certain situations. And some think everyone should go to church, by law.
If you think these societies are wrong headed about these issues, you need to change their minds, and they need to change their agreements. Freedom only comes from agreements, where something of value to each individual is offered and received.
Justification of law by the protection of freedom is a good argument. As long as you realize that everyone has a different definition of 'freedom,' and that every freedom involves a trade, a freedom lost for a freedom gained.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The bill includes intent. Unless one is trying to deceive or defraud your customer, there is no violation.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
If someone should do something, and they don't, we make a law to force them to.
Unless you live where I do, then you make the law and those not doing what they are supposed to do (and the new law mandates) still don't do it and just say the law does not apply to them for whichever bizarre reason comes to their mind in that moment.
That's not spoofing, it's trunking.
IMAGE VERIFICATION IS EVIL!
For example my company spoofs so that patients who hit *87 or return the call go to a number where their calls will get handled rather than some internal number that might just be an outgoing only line.
That’s a different situation, and I’m not even sure it’s considered “spoofing” or done in the same way.
If the caller ID says who you are (your name) and gives a number at which you can be reached, that’s acceptable – if you are a representative of a certain company, the caller ID can show the company name & line, not your personal extension. That’s not fraudulent and therefore not illegal according to this law.
In any case, the telco knows you’re doing it... and yes, the telco knows the fraudster spoofers are doing it too. They just can claim immunity if they don’t know about the (other) illegal actions of their customers... even when they probably know full well what’s going on.
Making the spoofing illegal is a way to pin the telcos and force them to reveal who the fraudsters are, but I’d prefer a solution without adding new things to the list of stuff that’s illegal.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Free as in speech, or free as in beer?
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
How? Seriously, how the hell would they enforce it?
They know it’s happening. They know when it happens.
Companies use caller ID spoofing all the time!
The list of companies doing it is finite, and once a company has been whitelisted for spoofing (i.e. they’re using a number they own, to route calls back to a central company switchboard), they’d only need to be re-investigated if complaints started arising.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
There is no right to anonymity in this country. This is not a free speech issue. This is a douchebag issue.
Well, they did overreact on the punishment. Fine them, sure. But a year in prison for spoofing caller id? Really guys? The cost to taxpayers for that is worse than the harm of letting them spoof.
There are two problems with the idea that telcos should enforce this:
a. Telcos connect to other telcos, PBXs, etc. Caller ID info is much like the name shown in your email, it is basically supplied by the client. In other words, the telco believes whatever the equipment connected to it tells them. How would you propose to fix this? The only real way is to use PKI or something.
b. Even more to the point, nobody should make a law to make something that's technically trivial to do illegal in most cases. It's like me making a law against opening an unlocked door. If you don't want the door opened, first at least lock it with a real lock. Then make a law against *breaking* in.
But who gets to decide what we should do? This is the slipperiest slope around...
So if the NSA calls me and the caller-ID reads "Restricted" would they get fined?
I was under the impression that congress gave exclusive authority to regulate the communications industry to the FCC.
The GV number is still a real telephone number, just connected through Google's servers. So no, this law wouldn't apply.
This law prevents putting anything you want as the number. For example, spammer from area code 999 calls the number 555-555-1234. The caller ID says 555-555-9876, so the person answers thinking it is a local number when it is not.
Another example of abuse, someone calls with the caller ID number of your ISP. They ask for username/password or credit card info to "fix" a problem with your account.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
The "intent" element is highly subjective, and becomes a real crap-shoot if you're taken to trial for whatever reason (e.g. the phone law violation is "piled on" to an unrelated charge in an effort to get you to take a plea deal, etc, etc, etc).
Want to bet your freedom on a jury's tech savvy? Because you'd better believe that the prosecutor is going to give a really convincing spiel painting you as guilty; I mean, mere possession of such a gadget shows some degree of intent to deceive, ladies and gentlemen of the rural Mississippi jury.
Laws like this put our freedom at the mercy of prosecutorial discretion. Which is a shitty idea.
You're trolling, but I'll bite anyways.
The McDonalds case is 100% on the money.
Read this if you are able then get back to me. Don't know about you, but if you offered me a few hundred thousand with the caveat that I'd have to undergo genital debriding - I'd pass.
Now read this and tell me if you think smoking is simply a personal choice. The tobacco industry has teams of chemists and scientists working to make cigarettes as addictive as possible - to take away your right to choose.
You're not nearly as clever as you think you are.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Free as in sex, or so I'm told.
Well there goes Richard and Sal's day jobs...
(if anyone get's the reference, sturdy Bababooey to you all!)
> The problem isn't from Telcos. You can't spoof caller ID from a regular land line phone Wrong. I can buy a card with 100 minutes of spoofing for my landline at the local Buy 'n Fly for $20.
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA
> Ordinary citizens don't get access to ANI Well, why not? All you need is to buy a toll-free number service with same-day online billing detail, and every caller is shown with their true ANI data. Then, only give out the toll free number. Yeah, spendy. So's privacy, these days.
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA
There shouldn’t need to be a law for this, though. Telcos should enforce it on their own.
It's already covered under FCC and Federal Telecommunications statutes for a lot of specific cases such as debt collectors, telemarketers, etc. Spoofing caller ID to say you are a different person or business can also result in charges of impersonation, identity theft, fraud, etc. But having a law that just flat out bans spoofing is a good idea since the prosecutors don't have to prove fraud, abuse, etc. and the side effect is that any telco's who ALLOW spoofing could potentially get in trouble if they allow it.
consists of interrupting people in the privacy of their homes, and trying to convince them to buy crap they don't need, and doing your damnedest to keep them from hanging up
telemarketing jobs should not exist, period. they are harassment, especially in regards to the elderly. even if half the population is unemployed: fuck telemarketers, burn the entire industry to the ground
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Should have noted that it only applies to unsolicited calls.
the telco believes whatever the equipment connected to it tells them. How would you propose to fix this?
They’re billing someone. They know who placed the call.
It's like me making a law against opening an unlocked door. If you don't want the door opened, first at least lock it with a real lock.
It’s already illegal to open an unlocked door if you do so with an intent to steal stuff... if the door was open as well as unlocked you can’t get “breaking” and entering, I think, but opening a door is considered breaking in.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Old-fashioned answering machines were nice. They answered the phone, let you hear the caller leave their message, and if you wanted to pick up the phone and interrupt, you could.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
First off this bill is just fluff, all of the things it outlaws are already illegal under federal laws. Second off this sort of legislation worthless as most of the companies committing this sort of fraud are located in other countries. They operate with a VoIP connection and will call with one carrier for a while till the FTC or some state attorney general gets fed up and gets their VoIP connection shut down. The company then turns around and in less than an hour has another VoIP connection through a different carrier. There is basically nothing that can be done to stop them so long as VoIP carriers allow them to send out random caller id.
Yes exactly. But I commenting on why people might want to give the wrong phone number.
Also, the information being entered in the above examples is technically not false.
Don't try to out wierd me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you, free with my breakfast cereal. --Zaphod Beeblebr
In some cases, anonymity is essential to the ability to speak freely. Used properly, for example, it prevents coercion in elections and allows workers to report problems without fear of unwarranted retribution.
Don't try to out wierd me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you, free with my breakfast cereal. --Zaphod Beeblebr
UP TO a year in prison. I imagine that would be reserved for the worst offenders.
Good luck with that. Apparently it’s expensive trying to keep a girl happy enough to give you “free” pussy.
Today I got an obvious spam call that was spoofed. Caller-id stated "Name Unavailable" and the phone number was "000-000-7774". Of course, there's no 000 area code. I didn't answer and whoever it was didn't leave a message. I'm on the do-not-call list, so I can't report this caller as violating that either due to the spoofing. I also have the feature from my phone company that doesn't allow calls that have caller-id blocked to ring my phone, but it doesn't consider an invalid phone number as being a blocked number.
I've been considering contacting my phone-service provider about enhancing that feature to at least stop these obviously false phone numbers.
By posting only as Anonymous Coward, I am arguably spoofing and hope I get charged with it when this reaches Mississippi. Actually, for some unfathomable reason, despite having repeatedly checked, verified, reset, checked, and verified my User ID and Password on SlashDot, and certain other sites, which assure me I am not blocked for which there would be no reason, I can never get in except anonymously.
What you report doing, using one identification for your personal and one for your business name, presumably registered as required in most states, and having forwarded calls show the original information, is not spoofing and should not be covered, much less prohibited or penalized, under this law. I think this should be viewed from the likely perspective of the person called, and you are apparently doing just what I would want you to do rather than deceiving or concealing anything of significance from me as the called party.
I'm a retired lawyer with a long-time interest in privacy, but not admitted in Mississippi or expert in Mississippi law. It has certainly improved in certain respects since my law school days in the sixties. The interesting problem is whether one state can make and enforce such a law if the call originates outside that state. In my view, all states and the federal Congress, with exclusive and plenary jurisdiction over interstate commerce, should have good anti-spoofing laws subject to certain narrow exceptions. There are already some laws against anonymous and deceptive voice calls and extending this to Caller ID technology we pay for makes a lot of sense while not doing so does not. Unfortunately, according to this article, this Mississippi law does not prohibit blocking your name and number from coming up on my Caller ID, reducing its value. In most cases, I would prohibit that as well as making it come up with deceptive information. I think I have the same right to keep from having to listen to you in my home, office, or cell phone as I would keeping you out in person. If you are calling from or on behalf of a business or other entity, I think the call should give me that instead of a personal name that may possibly mean something but more likely won't give me a clue who is calling or why.
There are some exceptions that I hope are in the law. If the call is from a legitimate law enforcement agency working a kidnapping case or calling back from a hang-up 911 domestic violence call, or a violence shelter, I'm OK with not identifying the real source. Likewise calls to Crime Stoppers, Child Protective Services, or a governmental or corporate fraud hot line, where the subject is powerful and dangerous. I don't know how, technically, to block Caller ID from my own land line or cell phone in such a case and would prefer not to have to go spend the money for a disposable cell phone.
Another set of legitimate circumstances would involve medical facilities, particularly mental health facilities, the privacy of which information is supposed to be protected under Supreme Court precedent and the federal HIPAA medical privacy law and similar state laws. Civilian and military suicide prevention hot lines may or may not be covered in the statutes but shod be under common law. I think that is what one post above yours referring to patients is about. I'm pro-life but as long as abortion is legal the patient or prospective patient's privacy should be protected, too, So should that of the teenage kid who is afraid he or she may have caught something. Now the fun technical problem arises if someone I really want to talk to, but doesn't want the world to know, calls me from a patient phone or the nurses' station at a mental hospital or an emergency room.
I can see legitimate reasons, arguably protected under the First Amendment, to permit spoofing where necessary to protect the identity of confidential informants to traditional or on line news people, investigations by them for publication, etc.
There is a long and honorable tradition of anonymous poli
Noting, of course, that the "red" south was dominated by Democrats at that time. And the "blue" north was dominated by Republicans.
Note that South Carolina seceded from the Union because a Republican President was elected for the first time.
Note also that the Bible's endorsement of slavery (in the Old Testament, which isn't actually considered binding on Christians) doesn't at all change the fact that the Abolitionists were a largely Christian group, both in the USA and Europe.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"