[Infowarrior] - MPAA Kills Anti-Pretexting Bill

[Richard Forno]

MPAA Kills Anti-Pretexting Bill
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,72214-0.html?tw=rss.index

By Ryan Singel
02:00 AM Dec, 01, 2006

A tough California bill that would have prohibited companies and individuals
from using deceptive "pretexting" ruses to steal private information about
consumers was killed after determined lobbying by the motion picture
industry, Wired News has learned.

The bill, SB1666, was written by state Sen. Debra Bowen, and would have
barred investigators from making "false, fictitious or fraudulent"
statements or representations to obtain private information about an
individual, including telephone calling records, Social Security numbers and
financial information. Victims would have had the right to sue for damages.

The bill won approval in three committees and sailed through the state
Senate with a 30-0 vote. Then, according to Lenny Goldberg, a lobbyist for
the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, the measure encountered unexpected,
last-minute resistance from the Motion Picture Association of America.

"The MPAA has a tremendous amount of clout and they told legislators, 'We
need to pose as someone other than who we are to stop illegal downloading,'"
Goldberg said.

Consequently, when the bill hit the assembly floor Aug. 23, it was voted
down 33-27, just days before revelations about Hewlett-Packard's use of
pretexting to spy on journalists and board members put the practice in the
national spotlight.

Legislature records confirm that the MPAA's paid lobbyists worked on the
measure. An aide to Bowen, who was forced out of the legislature by term
limits and was elected Secretary of State, said the MPAA made its
displeasure with the bill clear to lawmakers.

"The MPAA told some members the bill would interfere with piracy
investigations," the aide said. The association "doesn't want to hamstring
investigators."

The MPAA declined to comment for this story.

California went on to pass a much more narrow bill that bans the use of
deceit to obtain telephone calling records, and nothing else. A similarly
tailored bill languished in Congress this year, despite high-profile
congressional grillings of senior HP employees.

Sean Walsh, past president of the Califonia Association of Licensed
Investigators and an investigator for 27 years, said his group opposed
SB1666 because it was too vague and would have tied the hands of
investigators looking into insurance fraud, child support cases and missing
children.

"There's a public reason and benefit for some of this information to be
available to legitimate licensed investigators," Walsh said. "Should it be
available to everyone out there? Probably not. There are people that have
legitimate need for getting this information in terms of an investigation,
enforcing a court order and helping to return a child. Those are all very
legitimate reasons and by excluding that you do grave disservice to the
average citizen and to large corporations."

Walsh also said groups like the MPAA and the Recording Industry Association
of America hire investigators who use pretexting to ferret out copyright
infringers, such as vendors on the street who are selling bootleg copies of
CDs or DVDs. In that case, investigators may use some ruse to find out where
the discs originated. (Records do not indicate that the RIAA had a position
on the bill.)

Ira Rothken, a prominent technology lawyer defending download search engine
TorrentSpy against a movie industry copyright suit, says he didn't know
about the lobbying, but can guess why the MPAA got involved. Rothken is
suing (.pdf) the MPAA for allegedly paying a hacker $15,000 to hack into
TorrentSpy's e-mail accounts.

"It doesn't surprise me that the MPAA would be against bills that protect
privacy, and the MPAA has shown that they are willing to pay lots of money
to intrude on privacy," Rothken said. "I do think there needs to be better
laws in place that would deter such conduct and think that it would probably
be useful if our elected officials would not be intimidated by the MPAA when
trying to pass laws to protect privacy."

For his part, private investigator Walsh, whose current firm specializes in
protecting the privacy of corporate clients, said he hopes lawmakers in 2007
take their time.

"Everyone wants a quick fix, but they don't see the ripple effect until much
later," Walsh said. "Our organization has been successful at educating
legislators by saying, 'Wait a minute, but look at how it effects X, Y and
Z.' They have to see those tangents so that if they are going to go ahead
and pass legislation, they do it in a responsible and educated way."