One More at Bat? Another Antispyware Act Has Been Submitted to the House
Posted by Joe Addiego
On the heels of the February introduction to the House of the Securely Protect Yourself Against Cyber Trespass Act, aka the Spy Act (H.R.964), which remains scheduled for debate and was the subject of my March 16, 2007 blog post, earlier this month another antispyware bill, this one called the Internet Spyware Prevention Act of 2007 (I-SPY), was ordered reported in the House.
If passed into law (this bill already has passed the house twice but never has cleared the Senate), I-SPY would make it a criminal offense punishable by fines and/or up to five years in prison for “intentionally access[ing] a protected computer without authorization, or exceed[ing] authorized access to a protected computer, by causing a computer program or code to be copied onto the protected computer, and intentionally us[ing] that program or code in furtherance of another Federal criminal offense.” Similar activity that is designed to defraud or injure a person or cause damage to a protected computer, but is not conducted in furtherance of another Federal offense, subjects the perpetrator to a fine and/or up to two years in prison.
Under I-SPY, protected “personal information” includes names, physical and email addresses, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, tax ID numbers, and the like, and credit and bank account numbers and passwords. Investigative activities of law enforcement and governmental intelligence agencies are exempted from I-SPY.
The bill also earmarks $10 million per year from 2008 through 2011 for use by the Attorney General to enforce I-SPY, including “prosecutions needed to discourage the use of spyware and the practices commonly called phishing and pharming.”
Perhaps there is hope that I-SPY will pass the House and also the Senate this time around, as it has not met with nearly as much opposition as the Spy Act, as discussed in my March 16 post. One possible reason, at least according to a Computerworld article, is that I-SPY is focused on “how the software is actually used, rather than on prohibiting the software itself.” Hopefully, these concerns will be resolved soon so that one of these acts are passed into law and the government will have the method and the means to combat spyware.