Lawmakers Propose to Put Cell Phone Records Off-Limits

Selling or obtaining another person's cell phone records would become a crime in Georgia under a proposal that is moving through the Georgia Legislature. Cell phone records are being sold over the Internet, with attorneys among the top customers, according to some reports. 'It's wrong for attorneys to engage in actions to obtain information that is gotten through subterfuge or theft,' said Sen. John Wiles, R-Kennesaw, who authored Senate Bill 456. Wiles added that patronage of the Web sites certainly is not limited to attorneys. 'Let's put it this way, the legal profession is keeping it alive,' Rob Douglas, a private eye turned security consultant who has helped the Federal Trade Commission investigate and prosecute online operators that sell phone records, told the National Law Journal, a sister publication of this newsletter. 'I've investigated them with the federal government and in private lawsuits and in every single case, the overwhelming majority of users of these companies are attorneys,' Douglas said. These attorneys include divorce lawyers, who want to know to whom feuding spouses are talking; business lawyers, who want to know to whom their clients' competitors are talking; and employment lawyers, who want to know if employees are selling trade secrets. Wiles said personal cell phone records can be obtained by pretending to be the owner of the account, paying for someone else to provide the records, or hacking into the computer system where the records are stored. 'The way that a lot of people are getting records is that they are lying to cell phone companies, and that's just identity theft,' Wiles said. Pretexting ' the act of acquiring personal information, such as cell phone records, under false pretenses ' isn't illegal. 'I'm not aware of any state law that makes releasing this information a crime,' said Daryl A. Robinson, counsel to state Attorney General Thurbert E. Baker. 'There is a code section that was passed last year that restricts giving this information to telemarketers.