A federal bill to establish a nationwide drug dealers registry has been referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary. HR 304, quaintly entitled, Clean Town Act of 2007, if enacted, would set forth “guidelines and incentives for States to establish criminal drug dealer registries and to require the Attorney General to establish a national criminal drug dealer registry and notification program…” From the point of view of a private investigator this would be another research tool, but for the criminally charged it’s another nudge toward a public national criminal offender database.

Other introduced federal legislation would expand on the recently enacted Telephone Records and Privacy Act of 2006. S.92, Protecting Consumer Phone Records Act would make it unlawful to “acquire or use the customer proprietary network information of another person without that person’s affirmative written consent…”

Continuing on the consumer privacy theme Senator Feinstein has submitted two bills related to the release of personal information. S. 238, concerns the misuse of Social Security numbers; S. 239 would “require Federal agencies, and persons engaged in interstate commerce, in possession of data containing sensitive personally identifiable information, to disclose any breach of such information.” Text is not yet available for either measure.

The Texas legislature is entertaining a number of bills that could impact private investigators. SB 123 would block release of certain personal information on minors; SB 48 would redact social security numbers from county public records; HB 73 prohibits acquisition of telephone records without the subscriber’s permission; HB 87 is similar to a bill private investigators and the motion picture industry defeated in California that would have prevented anyone from acquiring personal information in a business record.

Indiana House Bill 1046 will prohibit “a person from transmitting false or misleading caller ID information through a caller ID service.”