Anti-spyware bill resurfaces in the US

US House of Representatives leaders have introduced a bill aimed at tackling the threat of malicious PC-disrupting spyware.

This is not the first time the House has attempted to regulate spyware - back in October 2004 it voted for a bill which was subsequently ignored by the Senate. The same thing happened again in May 2005.

The latest bill would impose 31 pages of regulations on the software industry in an effort to define what types of activities are permissible and which ones aren't.

Representative John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat and the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, called the announcement "a serious down-payment on resolving the scourge of identity theft and related abuse". He promised legislation would be sent to the House floor "expeditiously".

Dingell was referring not only to the spyware measure but also to three other proposals announced at the same time: a bill to regulate telephone pretexting; one to curb the sale of Social Security numbers; and one to impose many additional security requirements, including data breach notifications, on private companies (though not on federal agencies).

Taken together, the measures represent a broad and surprisingly bipartisan attempt by House leaders at rewriting many electronic privacy laws. But they still face substantial obstacles in the form of senators who proposed an alternative security breach approach two days earlier, opposition from telephone companies, and fatigue from politicians who recently approved another anti-pretexting bill which President Bush signed into law just last month.

Another political obstacle could be large data brokers that buy and sell personal information on American citizens including Social Security numbers, and the police agencies that are their customers and might find some of their data flow drying up. As far back as July 2000, Congress held a hearing on a bill to restrict the sale of Social Security numbers - an idea that died quietly in a Senate committee.

Declan McCullagh and Anne Broache write for CNET News.com