Committee Readies Fresh, Bipartisan Assault of Spyware

Barton: "The Senate failed to act...I hope that will not be the case this year"

WASHINGTON - House Energy and Commerce Chairman Joe Barton opened committee business in the 109th Congress with a new, bipartisan attack on the spyware that plagues millions of computers, calling it "a trespass-like offense" that threatens not simply to crash the millions of machines it invades, but to inflict financial damage on their owners.

"In the worst cases, spyware can facilitate theft and fraud," said Barton, R-Texas, at a full committee hearing on Wednesday as he prepared to rejuvenate last year's anti-spyware legislation.

'I'm encouraged that the Federal Trade Commission is finally taking action against some of the worst actors in the spyware realm, but Congress must also act quickly to protect consumers from secret Internet monitoring," he said. "Last year we succeeded in passing this bill through the House, but the Senate failed to act. I hope that will not be the case this year."

The chairman noted the broad support for the SPY ACT (HR 2929), which passed the committee by 45-5 and the full House by 399-1 in 2004. He singled out U.S. Rep. Mary Bono, R-Calif., the original author of anti-spyware legislation, and her chief co-sponsor, U.S. Rep. Ed Towns, D-NY, for praise. Barton also commended the committee's ranking Democrat, U.S. Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, Consumer Protection Subcommittee Chairman Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., and subcommittee ranking member, U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., for their work on behalf of the bill.

Stearns said the new legislation, HR 29, "includes penalties for nefarious practices like keystroke logging and 'phishing.'"

Testimony at the hearing underlined industry support for dealing with spyware. Witnesses included officers of Microsoft Corp., EarthLink, the Center for Democracy and Technology and R&H Security Consulting.

Dave Baker, an EarthLink vice president, told the committee that spyware has grown to the degree that it now equals spam as a threat to the Internet. He said that an EarthLink audit had found a total of 83 million installations of spyware, including more than a million that specifically threatened to hijack computers or steal personal information.

Asked for suggestions, the witnesses each offered strong support for HR 29, the 2005 edition of the anti-spyware bill.

Under questioning by Schakowsky costs, Rubenstein added that spyware piles on "billions of dollars of cost to technology providers" who offer tech support to computer owners. "The scenarios we've heard where consumers have to reformat a hard drive or replace a computer are just unacceptable," he said.

Barton asked witnesses to characterize the creators and distributors of spyware, and the motives In essence, "who's the enemy?" he asked. Most spyware purveyors are commercial operators who do it for profit, the panel responded, but a handful are amateurs who do it for fun. "It's just malicious," said EarthLink's Baker of the latter group. "It's online vandalism."

The legislation, said Barton, "is on a fast track, and we hope to be marking this up in the very near future."

####