Declan McCullagh does a nice job of pointing out the hypocrisy of Members of Congress who are outraged at the privacy invasion that Hewlett Packard carried out in an attempt to discover the identity of a board member who was an anonymous source.
The particular focus of Congress’ rage has been pretexting — in which private investigators pretend to be an individual in order to fraudulently obtain information, such as phone records. But as McCullagh points out, 7 of the 11 bills introduce in Congress to outlaw pretexting include exemptions for law enforcement. And, apparently, law enforcement agencies have no qualms about using private agencies that use pretexting,
Federal and local law enforcement officials were named as customers of Internet-based pretexting services in a June article on MSNBC.com. Some companies, like Advanced Research, have admitted in letters to Congress that they did work for the FBI. A high-level source at a cellular provider confirmed to me that the company’s internal investigations of pretexting show that many police agencies are customers.
An Associated Press article named the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the FBI, the U.S. Marshal’s Service and municipal police departments in California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia and Utah as hiring pretexters. Time magazine has also reported on this.
According to McCullagh, efforts by Democrats to widen the ban on pretexting to include law enforcement are being blocked.
If police want phone records, they should follow the usual route; get a judge to issue a subpoena for the data and obtain it the old fashioned way — in compliance with the Fifth Amendment.
Source:
Perpsective: Anti-HP hypocrisy in Congress? Declan McCullagh, CNet News.Com, September 18, 2006.