Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

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By Mr. NELSON (for himself, Mr. DONNELLY, Ms. COLLINS, and Mr. BOOKER):

S. 2956. A bill to prevent caller ID spoofing, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, in 2010 Congress passed, and the President signed into law, the Truth in Caller ID Act, which prohibits caller ID spoofing when it is used to defraud or harm Americans.

What is caller ID spoofing? It is a technique that allows a telephone caller to alter the phone number that appears on the recipient's Caller ID screen. In other words, spoofing allows someone to hide behind a misleading telephone number to try to scam consumers or trick law enforcement officers.

The Truth in Caller ID Act put in place tough new sanctions to crack down on phone scams, empowering States to help the Federal Government track down and punish these fraudsters.

Since then spoofing technology has evolved to give fraudsters new tools to pull the wool over our eyes. They take advantage of innovative text messaging services to trick unsuspecting Americans into sending money or providing sensitive personal information.

I believe our laws must evolve and adapt to the new tactics and technologies used by these criminals. That is why I am introducing the Phone Scam Prevention Act of 2014, to update the protections we put in place in 2010 and give consumers the tools they need to help them protect themselves.

The bill does 3 simple things.

First, it extends the current prohibition on Caller ID spoofing to calls coming from outside the United States and stops crooks from using text messaging services to scam consumers.

Second, it ensures consumers have access to what are known as ``whitelist services,'' where the technology exists. Whitelist services allow consumers to pick a list of approved phone numbers to ring through to their phone. All other numbers are automatically forwarded to voicemail or rerouted to a different number.

Calls from first responders, government agencies, and other important entities would still ring through to the consumer's phone.

Several phone companies currently offer whitelist services to their customers. It only makes sense to allow more Americans to have access to these valuable services so that they can help protect themselves from abusive phone calls.

Third, the bill directs the Federal Communications Commission, FCC, to develop Caller ID authentication standards within 5 years from the date of enactment to ensure Caller ID information is accurate, or at the very least warn consumers when such information cannot be verified.

An international group of telecom engineers, including specialists at the FCC, are currently working to develop such standards. The bill would merely accelerate the timeline for the standards to be finalized and move us to a more secure telephone system sooner.

When in place, Caller ID authentication will give consumers the information they need to judge the legitimacy of the call. Scammers will no longer be able to use spoofing technology to claim to be from the IRS, your bank, your utility company, or law enforcement and bilk you out of all your savings.

I invite my colleagues to join Senators COLLINS, DONNELLY, BOOKER, and me in support of the Phone Scam Prevention Act of 2014. Working together, I am hopeful that we can finally stop many of the fraudsters behinds these phone scams.

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