Last updated April 12, 2019
The issue of privacy relating to used cell phones has been called into question by lawmakers on the House Energy and Commerce committee in Congress in the United States. The phone hacking scandal which has caused controversy for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp organization in Great Britain and has now led to the announcement of an FBI investigation into the media magnate’s corporation in this country has raised serious worries as to the security of used cell phones in general.
“I’d like to call on the chairman of the full committee to use his jurisdiction to probe the whole issue of privacy (and used cell phone) hacking,” Anna Eshoo, a ranking member on the Communications and Technology Subcommittee, said during what was an unrelated hearing into the issue of privacy on the internet, “and this burgeoning scandal of News Corp.”
Nor is Eshoo alone in her concerns, with Mary Bono Mack, the chairwoman of the Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade Subcommittee, also saying that the scandal raises serious worries about how private used cell phones really are. Mack noted that privacy laws in the United Kingdom and Europe are much tighter than in the United States, yet News Corp journalists were still allowed to get away with their illegal and unethical behavior for a long time, raising questions as to the vulnerability of American consumers in terms of the privacy of their cell phone conversations.