Dinowitz Moves To Ban Sale of Cell Phone Logs

Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz plans to introduce legislation to prohibit Web sites in New York State from acquiring and selling cellular telephone users' phone logs.

"Right now I can buy your cell phone records. ... For about $100 I can find out every person you've called and everyone who's called you," Mr. Dinowitz said yesterday at a news conference outside City Hall, where he was joined by City Council Member David Weprin and representatives of the Consumers Union, NYPIRG, and the NYCLU.

About 40 Web sites sell the logs of all incoming and outgoing calls from a particular cell phone, a practice that is legal, Mr. Dinowitz said.

"This is a disgraceful violation of civil liberties and privacy rights," he added. "No one should have access to our personal records. It is imperative that the Legislature act quickly to end those abuses."

The records are obtained in three ways: Someone pretending to be the owner of the phone calls and request the record of his calls; phone company employees will leak the records, and hackers infiltrate phone information that is kept on the Internet.

The socialite Paris Hilton found her address book posted on the Internet last year after hackers infiltrated her T-Mobile Sidekick II.

The minority leader of the U.S. Senate, Senator Reid, on January 13 sent a letter to the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Kevin Martin, requesting that the agency investigate such sales. On January 17, the commission announced it would launch an investigation.

The next day, Senator Schumer joined a Republican senator of Pennsylvania, Arlen Specter, and a Democratic senator of Florida, Bill Nelson, to introduce the Consumer Telephone Records Protection Act of 2006, a bill that would outlaw the sale of cell phone records and protect against other telephone misconduct.

The phone companies Verizon and T-Mobile endorsed the bill, as did General Wesley Clark, whose phone records were purchased by a liberal Web log that opposes phone record sales, AMERICAblog.com, for $89.95 as a demonstration of how invasive the practice could be.

Mr. Dinowitz's bill, which has more than 20 co-sponsors, would impose civil penalties on those who sell other people's cell phone records.