Privacy Digest

House tries again for antispyware bill | CNET News.com: "It's been at least four years since politicians pledged to enact an antispyware law, but it still hasn't happened. Now they're trying again.

A U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee on Tuesday once again approved a bill that proposes up to five years in prison for malicious spyware-related activities. Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) reintroduced the measure, known as the Internet Spyware Prevention Act, or I-Spy for short, in mid-March.

Similar versions passed the House by overwhelming margins in the past two congressional sessions but died before a Senate vote occurred.

'Phishing and spyware aren't just inconvenient to consumers, they represent a threat to the vitality of the Internet,' Lofgren said at a hearing on the bill Tuesday afternoon. 'If you can't trust the Internet, people will not use the Internet for commerce, and that is not a good thing.'

Goodlatte warned that the practice--by which cybercrooks sneak software on users' machines, often through security holes, in an attempt to steal information about them--represents 'one enormous hurdle to consumer confidence on the Internet.'

The bill's sponsors have said their effort differs from competing antispyware measures--backed by a different committee--because it is designed to combat the scourge without stifling software development or imposing heavy-handed regulations.

Rather than attempting to define what illicit software is, the bill would make it a crime to copy computer code on a machine without authorization if doing so divulges 'personal information' about a user or 'impairs' a computer's security. Violators would face up to five years in prison.

Yet the most worrisome forms of spyware already are illegal. The Federal Trade Commission has told politicians it already possesses broad authority to punish any fraudulent and deceptive adware or spyware practices with fines, and has sued spyware purveyors in the past. U.S. Department of Justice prosecutors have said the same thing about filing criminal charges and have already engaged in prosecutions.

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(Read Original Article - Via CNET News.com.)