Observers of privacy in the United States have long commented on how privacy protections are largely sectoral and enacted in response to particular incidents. For example, after a newspaper printed the video rental records of then-Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork (revealing that he had a taste for westerns), Congress enacted 18 U.S.C. § 2710, protecting the privacy of video records. In the wake of the Hewlett-Packard pretexting scandal, Congress has now repeated the pattern for telephone privacy by enacting the Telephone Records and Privacy Protection Act of 2006, Pub. L. No. 109-476, 120 Stat. 3568, which adds a new section 1039 to title 18 of the U.S. Code. The statute bars obtaining or attempting to obtain confidential phone records by pretexting or via the Internet without the permission of the consumer to whom the records pertain as well as selling, purchasing, or receiving confidential phone records without the permission of the affected consumer.
Brian Wolfman had blogged on the bill (at the point at which it had been passed by the Senate) back on December 9.
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