Telecommunications: privacy protections.

Under existing law, the Public Utilities Commission has regulatory authority over public utilities, including telephone corporations. Existing law prohibits a telephone corporation, when selling or licensing lists of residential subscribers, from including the telephone number of any subscriber assigned an unpublished or unlisted access number without the subscriber's written waiver of this protection. Existing law prohibits a provider of mobile telephony services, as defined, or any affiliate or agent of the provider, when providing the name and dialing number of a subscriber for inclusion in a directory or directory database, from including the dialing number of any subscriber without first obtaining the express consent of that subscriber. However, existing law authorizes providing those telephone numbers without regard to consent to a law enforcement agency, fire protection agency, public health agency, public environmental health agency, city or county emergency services planning agency, or private for-profit agency operating under contract with, and at the direction of, one or more of these agencies, for the sole purpose of responding to a 911 call or communicating an imminent threat to life or property. This bill would additionally authorize providing those telephone numbers to those parties without consent for the purpose of testing systems that respond to 911 calls or that communicate threats to life or property.