Welcome to the 111th United States Congress! On January 7th, the bill that never made it through the Senate in the last Congress has been reintroduced as S. 30, the Truth in Caller ID Act of 2009. It was apparently read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. It’s now got two more years to attempt to make it through the Senate and get signed into law… Is anyone else as skeptical as I am that it’ll actually happen? Remember, this bill started as the Truth in Caller ID Act of 2006.
Voice of VOIPSA
Collective thoughts and musings on the state of VoIP security today.
State Public Utility Commissions need to get a grip on how caller id is delivered, to deal with the enormous problem of grandmas being whacked in their kitchens by scammers hiding behind falsified called ID. Enforcement of the existing laws requiring the accurate delivery of caller ID and other CLASS services by local phone companies to their customers is desperately needed. The elderly and disabled and non-english speakers–those least familiar with the internet– are under a massive assault just now, and simply banning CID falsification is not appropriate:
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2009/07/prweb2681224.htm
Federal Court Strikes Down Florida Anti-Caller ID Spoofing Law
(PRWEB) July 28, 2009 — the U.S. District Court in Miami ruled that Florida’s recently enacted Caller ID Anti-Spoofing Act was unconstitutional and issued a judgment in favor of SpoofCard.com’s parent company, TelTech Systems Inc, and other plaintiffs. The Act prohibited most callers, and service providers, such as SpoofCard, from using Caller ID spoofing (which is the changing of the Caller ID to show any desired number) when making a call within Florida, or to any person in Florida.
The plaintiffs, who also included callers that use the Caller ID spoofing feature … claimed that the Florida law violated the U.S. constitution (TelTech Systems Inc. v. McCollum, 08-61664-CIV (U.S. D.Ct. S. D. Fl.)). The court agreed and held the Act unconstitutional, reasoning that … mobility … call forwarding and other technological developments, made it impossible for callers or service providers outside of Florida to ensure that they were not violating the Florida law except by not using Caller ID spoofing at all. Thus, the law had the practical effect of regulating commerce outside the state’s borders, in violation of the Commerce Clause of the U.S. constitution.