WASHINGTON—Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin confirmed the agency is investigating AT&T Corp. in connection with deceptive means used to obtain the phone records of Hewlett-Packard Co. board members and journalists covering the company. The mushrooming scandal prompted HP Chairman Patricia Dunn to resign her post and Sen. Charles Schumer to call for prompt passage of legislation criminalizing a ‘pre-texting’ practice made infamous by cell phone data brokers around the country.
Martin, following a Senate hearing Tuesday on his nomination for another five-year FCC term, told reporters the agency sent a letter of inquiry to AT&T, but declined to offer details. The FCC could issue new rules soon to better safeguard wireless and wireline subscriber phone records.
“Stealing someone’s private phone records is absolutely a criminal act and the fact that it can’t be prosecuted as one has got to change,” Schumer said. “Stealing a person’s phone log can lead to serious personal, financial and safety issues for just about any American. Pre-texting companies are popping up across the country and we need to give law enforcement the tools to track these criminals down and put them out of business.”
“The TRAPP (Telephone Records and Privacy Protection) Act will make it a federal offense, punishable as a felony, to obtain customer information from a telephone service provider by false pretenses or access a customer account on the Internet to obtain billing information without authorization,” said Schumer, a sponsor of one of several bills to outlaw pre-texting. The Schumer bill also makes it a crime for phone company employees to sell customer information without proper authorization, applying to cell phone, landline and voice Internet phone records. An identical version of Schumer’s legislation passed the House 409-0.
