Carriers defend security measures before Congress

Reports coming out of the hearing last Friday, which put executives from U.S. mobile carriers before the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on pretexting are largely boring and uneventful. The execs deferred most of the regulatory questions to their lobbyists and legal department all the while defending the security measures they have in place to protect their customer's contact info. Executives from Verizon, Sprint, Cingular, T-Mobile USA, Alltel and U.S. Cellular all agreed that the House should criminalize the practice of pretexting. Choice quote: "The stronger you make the security, the more likely it is people are going to be locked out," making it more difficult to distinguish genuine customers from the con artists, said Thomas Meiss, Cingular's associate general counsel.

For more on the pretexting hearing:
- see this article from CNET