The U.S. Congress has again taken aim at telemarketers, advancing consumers' privacy interests at the expense of telemarketers' free-speech interests.

On Sept. 27, the House unanimously (420-0) passed the "Know Your Caller Act of 2000," which prohibits telemar-keters from interfering with caller iden-tification services.

The measure provides that it shall be unlawful:

(a) "to interfere with or circumvent the capability of a caller identification service to access or provide to the re-cipient of the telephone call involved in the solicitation any information regard-ing the call that such service is capable of providing," and

(b) "to fail to provide caller identifi-cation information in a manner that is accessible by a caller identification service, if such person has capability to provide such information in such a manner."

The measure allows individuals to sue violators of the law and to be reim-bursed for "actual monetary loss" or $500 for each unlawful solicitation. The measure further allows a court, if it finds that the defendant "willfully or knowingly violated" the law, to triple the damage award.

Rep. Rodney P. Frelinghuysen (D-N.J.), sponsor of H.R. 3100, questioned why commercial entities should be able to compile personal identifying infor-mation on consumers but deny consum-ers the right to learn the identify of the commercial solicitors.

"Some telemarketer enterprises pur-posely block out Caller ID, yet these same companies know your name, your address, and your telephone number," he said. "Is it not only fair that they share their company name and their telephone number so a person can make sure that they are a legitimate com-pany?"

The Know Your Caller Act is not the only measure Congress has intro-duced to combat telemarketers. In Oc-tober 1999, Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.) introduced H.R. 3180, the Tele-marketing Victims Protection Act.