By Steve Ragan Jun 18, 2007, 15:04 GMT
First you had the I-SPY Act and the SPY ACT, each passed in the house and later, stalled in the Senate. Adding to that, there was another ‘Spy’ bill announced last week, by Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR), the Counter Spy Act. The Counter Spy Act of 2007 makes it illegal for companies or fraudsters to implant Spyware on a person’s computer without consent, following on the tails of the I-SPY Act and SPY ACT which already had technology and political opponents talking. Anohter interesting note to the new bill is that it has many of the same aims and goals of the other two.
Pryor said in a statement that Spyware raises significant privacy, economic and security concerns for consumers and businesses as companies covertly plant unwanted software on them. Spyware is used to collect information about a consumer’s browsing habits, enable pop-up ads, and/or change a user’s home page. In addition, Spyware allows a malicious user to duplicate another website, including financial or retail site where they can steal personal information such as credit card numbers.
Spyware is generally downloaded without the user’s knowledge during another software download or by simply clicking on a link, referred to as drive-by downloading, the Senator said. Adding, that once downloaded it is almost impossible to remove. In 2004, an AOL study revealed eighty percent of all computers in its test group were infected and that eighty-nine percent of the users of those computers were unaware of it.
“Spyware is a serious infringement upon basic levels of privacy and security. There are very few, if any, legitimate reasons for this practice to continue, but countless reasons for it to be stopped, including identity theft and sluggish computer performance,” said Pryor.
Pryor said his Counter Spy Act of 2007 would prohibit the covert embedding of Spyware on a user’s computer without first obtaining their consent. The bill provides that the Federal Trade Commission enforce the law as if a violation was an unfair or deceptive practice. The agency would have authority to bring civil action. In addition, criminal penalties including fines, imprisonment or both for up to five years could be imposed for violation of the law.
“My bill protects consumers’ right to privacy and their confidence in using the Internet,” Pryor said. “The industry has failed in self-regulating. It’s time to step in and enact serious consequences against those who use this invasive and deceptive practice.”
In May, two Spyware bills passed by the U.S. House of Representatives. None of these bills made it past the Senate, but the reason might be because of how they were worded, essentially the two bills compete against one another. Most tech companies and software developers liked the wording of the first bill, the Internet Spyware Prevention Act of 2007 (I-SPY Act), which was narrow compared to its counterpart bill HR 964. That bill, Securely Protect Yourself Against Cyber Trespass Act, or the SPY ACT got plenty of attention, and complaints, because of restrictive wording.
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