FCC Examines Need For Tougher Privacy Rules.
"In a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) adopted
today, the Commission seeks comment on a variety of issues related to
customer privacy, including what security measures carriers currently
have in place, what inadequacies exist in those measures, and what kind
of security measures may be warranted to better protect consumers’
privacy. The Notice grants a petition for rulemaking filed by the
Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) expressing concerns about
whether carriers are adequately protecting customer call records and
other customer proprietary network information, or CPNI. EPIC claims
that some data brokers have taken advantage of inadequate security
standards to gain access to the information under false pretenses, such
as by posing as the customer, and then offering the records for sale on
the Internet. The practice is known as "pretexting.""