Excellent. The phone companies are gonna be pissed. This means they can't use your records for telemarketing, so sell to other people, etc. Your privacy ceases to be a commodity.
So let me again throw this to the useless Democrats out there. Now, after a good 3 weeks, do you finally get that this is an issue that isn't going away? That this is an issue that is SO up our ally in terms of privacy rights affecting so many issues we care about? That even Republicans are scrambling to get on board? That this is an issue that is STILL going on in the local media? Why in God's name aren't the Democrats the ones holding press conferences and public meetings on this issue? Are they actually that afraid of taking credit for something when it's handed to them? I gave this to the Dems before I even wrote about it - they weren't interested. And we wonder why we don't ever win.
Oh yeah, that's right, they're busy planning for the next Supreme Court nomination.
Pathetic.
Two of the nation's top regulators urged lawmakers today to ban the sale of consumer telephone information by not only online brokers but also by telephone companies.There's more. Read how Congress loosened what protectsions we already had in the Telecom Act:
The comments by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin and Federal Trade Commissioner Jon Liebowitz came during a House Energy and Commerce hearing probing the source of black-market telephone data, including call records and location of the calls, for sale over the Internet.
Lawmakers had previously focused on the online brokers selling the data and the security measures of the telephone carriers. Martin and Liebowitz, though, went a step further and suggested telephone companies too should be barred from selling consumer data.
"I believe that Congress could specifically make illegal the commercial availability of consumers' phone records," Martin said. "If any entity is found to be selling this information for a fee, regardless of how it obtained such information, it would face liability."
Agreeing with Martin, Liebowitz said the sale of telephone records is a "serious intrusion into consumers' privacy and could result in stalking, harassment and embarrassment."
The carriers are currently allowed to sell customer data to their affiliates, agents and joint venture partners. As originally passed in the Telecom Act, phone companies were obligated to get an opt-in permission from consumers in order to sell the information, but a court decision overturned that ruling.
Consumers are now obligated to opt out of the arrangement.
"Why don’t we make opt-in a moot point? Let's just outlaw [selling consumer phone data]," Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-Tex.) said.
In a rare show of bipartisanship, Democrat Ed Markey of Massachusetts agreed with Barton.
