Truth in Caller ID Act of 2009
The Truth in Caller ID Act of 2009 is an Act of the United States Congress that generally makes it illegal to use false Caller ID information for a call with the intent to defraud or scam a called party. The Act makes exceptions for certain law-enforcement purposes. Callers are also still allowed to preserve their anonymity by choosing to block all outgoing caller ID information on their phone lines. Caller ID spoofing is generally illegal in the United States if done "with the intent to defraud, cause harm, or wrongfully obtain anything of value"
Under the act, which also targets caller ID spoofing on
History
On April 6, 2006, Congressmen Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) and Joe Barton (R-Tex.) introduced H.R. 5126, a bill that would have made caller ID spoofing a crime. Dubbed the "Truth in Caller ID Act of 2006", the bill would have outlawed causing "any caller identification service to transmit misleading or inaccurate caller identification information" via "any telecommunications service or IP-enabled voice service." Law enforcement was exempted from the rule. Three weeks later, an identical bill was introduced in the Senate.[4] On June 6, 2006, the House of Representatives passed the Truth in Caller ID Act, although no Senate action was taken on either the House or Senate bill. At the end of the 109th Congress, the bill expired (all pending legislation not voted into law at the end of the House term, a.k.a. end of a session of Congress, is dead).
On January 5, 2007, Congressman Engel introduced H.R. 251, and Senator Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) introduced a similar bill (S.704) two months later. On June 27, 2007, the
In the 111th Congress, Congressman Engel and Senator Nelson once again introduced similar versions of the Caller ID legislation, H.R. 1258. The bill was reintroduced in the Senate on January 7, 2009, as S.30, the Truth in Caller ID Act of 2009, and referred to the same committee.[8] The Senate and the House both passed their respective versions of the legislation, but on December 15, 2010 the House passed S.30 and sent the legislation to the President for a signature. On December 22, 2010, President Obama signed the bill into law.[9]
Notable applications
In November 2020, Kenneth Moser and his company, Marketing Support Systems, was fined $10 million for sending out 47,610 unlawful robocalls on May 30 and May 31, 2020. The calls attempted to discredit California State Assembly candidate Philip Graham by planting a story Graham attempted to grope and kiss a woman in a bar. A San Diego County Sheriff's Department investigation concluded that the allegations were false. The FCC said Moser violated the federal Truth in Caller ID Act by manipulating caller ID information to make it appear the recorded calls were coming from another firm called HomeyTel.[11]
References
- ^ Sirkin, Corrie (September 11, 2011). "Don't Believe Your Eyes: Spoofing". Archived from the original on September 28, 2011. Retrieved November 19, 2020.
- ^ "Congress outlaws all Caller ID spoofing (VoIP too)". Ars Technica. 15 April 2010. Retrieved 14 June 2015.
- ^ "Caller ID and Spoofing". Retrieved 14 June 2015.
- ^ "Truth in Caller ID Act of 2006 (2006; 109th Congress H.R. 5126) - GovTrack.us". GovTrack.us. Retrieved 14 June 2015.
- ^ Senate Bill S.704. Retrieved from http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:s.00704:.
- ^ House Bill HR251. Retrieved from http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:HR251: Archived 2014-12-12 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ "Truth in Caller ID Act of 2007 (2007; 110th Congress S. 704) - GovTrack.us". GovTrack.us. Retrieved 14 June 2015.
- ^ "Truth in Caller ID Act of 2010 (2010; 111th Congress H.R. 1258) - GovTrack.us". GovTrack.us. Retrieved 14 June 2015.
- ^ "Truth in Caller ID Act of 2009 (2010; 111th Congress S. 30) - GovTrack.us". GovTrack.us. Retrieved 14 June 2015.
- ^ Peters, Jeremy W. (12 August 2011). "At The Times, Era of '111-111-1111' Nears Its End". The New York Times (Media Decoder blog). Retrieved August 12, 2011.
- ^ "California telemarketer fined $10M by FCC over political ad". San Francisco Chronicle. November 18, 2020. Retrieved November 19, 2020.