A Bipartisan Bill That Could End Our Robocall Hell Just Passed the House 429-3 (gizmodo.com) 99
The Stopping Bad Robocalls Act passed the U.S. House of Representatives by a nearly unanimous vote, with only two Republicans and one independent voting against the bill. Gizmodo reports: The bill, sponsored by Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, prescribes strict regulations around the use of automatic telephone dialing systems or other artificial or prerecorded messages. The bill specifically requires any entity making robocalls to first obtain the consent of those being called. The bill also requires the creation of reliable mechanisms whereby consumers can withdraw their consent. Emergency services and certain non-commercial entities would be exempt from the new regulations, which would be enforced by the Federal Communications Commission. If passed, the law would also prohibit phone companies from passing on the cost of robocall enforcement to consumers in the form of line-item charges. The bill now heads to the Senate where it's expected to pass without hardly any resistance.
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
Name and shame:
"GOP Representatives Andy Biggs and Thomas Massie, as well as Rep. Justin Amash, who quit the Republican party earlier this month, voted against the bill. The lawmakers could not be immediately reached for comment."
Probably trying to fit big wads of cash in suitcases before they jetted away from the lynch mob.
Re: So... (Score:4, Informative)
More likely they're libertarian/objectivist true believers. I've seen this in person.
Room full of union workers testifying against Verizon selling their landline business to Fairpoint, one dude stands up and talks about upholding the rights of businesses above all else.
Fun fact: Fairpoint lied to regulators and everything the union dudes were worried about came to pass.
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Let's see...
Andy Biggs:
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In 2013, he implied that cold weather undercut the argument for climate change, tweeting "Today's Science Committee Hearing on Global Warming canceled due to snow".
That tweet alone does not mean he's implying cold weather undercuts the argument for climate change.
It means he has a sense of irony.
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There is a website called (IIRC) Open Secrets . org that lists much of this stuff. It's sobering to read just how little it takes to buy a vote (in my district, I've seen votes go for as little as $1,500) and just how many are bought and paid for from the start.
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Let the tarring and feathering begin!
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Probably trying to fit big wads of cash in suitcases before they jetted away from the lynch mob.
Since there's only three of them dissenting anyone handing over big wads of cash deserves exactly what they got from the vote result.
Meaningless Political Posturing (Score:5, Insightful)
The bill specifically requires any entity making robocalls to first obtain the consent of those being called.
And what happens when this new law is ignored?
99% of all robocalls are already illegal. I get lots of calls that use a spoofed number, which is already illegal. I get lots of calls, even though I am on the Do Not Call list. Which is already illegal.
The problem is, existing laws aren't being enforced, because enforcement is tedious and expensive.
Passing a new law might make you feel good, but it will do nothing to actually stop the problem until there is actual enforcement.
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Most laws that aren't criminal are enforced by lawsuits only. Sometimes there's a federal agency that tries to do this (the purpose of FTC, EPA, etc). Othertimes you really do have to have citizens start the lawsuits.
Now the exception for some "non-commercial entities" is most certainly there to allow the most despised of robo-calls, the political robo-call. This includes the fake surveys ("Question 3, are you aware that the Bull Moose Party is campaigning to sterilize all citizens?", "Question2, did you k
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And this law can't be enforced. The robocallers won't tell you their company name even if you talk to a human. Since I want to practice insulting people in Hindi ala Hoax Hotel on YouTube I have been getting to a human for all the "Lower your credit card debt" nonsense I get.
It's invariable someone in India who says they are with "Visa-Mastercard" (I ask them which one and they say "both"). They have no idea of my name but I ask them if they can see how much I owe on their screen and they say yes. I've trie
No executive branch right now (Score:1)
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The bill takes aim at illegal spam calls by toughening up the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) ability to take action against illegal robocalling operations and requiring all carriers to implement technology to make sure calls are authentic.
It's this last part that counts. The new technology is supposed to provide technical capabilities to enable incoming call validation features. I presume one of them is to prevent caller ID spoofing.
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I unplugged my landline two months ago.
I haven't missed it at all.
I certainly haven't missed the never-ending stream of spam calls.
Not the best solution (Score:5, Interesting)
But I will take it!
They should have made is so that people can force Telco Companies to back bill the robo-callers and credit the callee. Would have been far more fun!
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I'd be happier if it included a mandate that I can block all calls originating in a foreign country, and all calls that come through the internet (and it'd be nice to have a whitelist capability for specific numbers, too).
Because that's where most of the robo-call criminals are calling from. I do not foresee the FCC doing much enforcement in, say, China or India.
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Probably wouldn't be effective though, as they usually use an IP connection to the US which only then hits the POTS network, meaning they get billed only slightly more than a local/national call despite it being international.
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I already said it was not the best solution, what else do you want from me?
here's a curve (Score:1)
- Give the end user a *50 type code to dial to report the prior call as a robo call
- Charge the carriers via FCC fine $0.01 per reported robocall
- Prevent persons dialing your number from using computer programs for interactive voice response unless the very beginning of the call states it is a computer. The "Hi my name is Susan, and I'd like to ask you a question about insurance" with a set of single word yes/no/number questions should be prohibited unless directly stated before the call begins.
I expect this will solve nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
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This, although I doubt there will even be much of a pause. The scammers have found a loophole in the international calling system, and all the legislation in the world isn't enough to rewrite that software now that it's the backbone of our telephony. Any technical solution will be expensive (read: unlikely) and very difficult to deploy throughout the system.
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As a side note, MMS spam doesn't even seem to have an actual categ
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So report it as unwanted spam messages. The FCC shouldn't expect you to be able to differentiate between SMS and MMS; if they don't recognise the difference then join them by indicating you've had spam SMS.
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We might see a brief reprieve of a few months to a year or so, and then the scammers will find a loophole, and we'll be right back to where we were.
The biggest loophole to plug is to technologically prevent spoofing a phone number you do not own. If scam boiler rooms can't spoof my neighbor's phone number, if the Caller-ID has two possibilities: "Really Truly The Actual Caller" or "None", I can continue to block all "None", and only answer the phone if I know the caller.
Or maybe even get around to setting up a VoIP system where only callers in my phone book ring through, all others go directly to voicemail.
I don't see how the scammers will get around
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By spoofing numbers in your contact list, obviously.
While the chance that they might guess a number in your contact list is remote, it is possible, especially if you have a company's 1-800 number in your contacts or something similar. All they have to do is get lucky at guessing which companies you might have dealings with and they get through.
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Have you not had a reprieve lately anyway? Six months ago I got multiple spam calls daily from what looked like local numbers. Three months ago I got multiple spam calls daily from "Spam Likely". For the last month, I've had maybe one or two a week get through. T-Mo has really been on the case.
Toothless (Score:5, Insightful)
The bill specifically requires any entity making robocalls to first obtain the consent of those being called.
That was already the law. The problem is people are ignoring it. And spoofing caller ID. And worse. How about making a law that forces the telephone companies to disallow spoofing caller ID? Especially since they're the ones that make it possible for their spamming customers?
Learn, know and remember these names. (Score:1)
"GOP Representatives Andy Biggs and Thomas Massie, as well as Rep. Justin Amash, who quit the Republican party earlier this month, voted against the bill. The lawmakers could not be immediately reached for comment."
Is there an exception for political calls? (Score:2)
...and certain non-commercial entities would be exempt from the new regulations
I seem to recall that with previous laws (possibly the national do not call list) there was an exception made for political campaign calling. Maybe some particularly diligent person around here feels like RTFB and reporting back whether they've given themselves an exemption yet again? (H. R. 3375, I think. I tried control-f-ing but came up empty handed.)
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Fixed and updated for robocallers, thanks to you for having an amazing idea:
Your post advocates a
( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting robocalls. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Robocallers can easily use it to harvest phone numbers
( ) Legitimate phone uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop robocalls for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of phones will not put up with it
( ) Cell/Phone providers will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from robocallers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many phone users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Robocallers don't care about invalid numbers in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for CallerID
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching/brute forcing all phone numbers from any account
( ) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in CallerID
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than CallerID to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by Service Providers
( ) Armies of worm riddled or cheap broadband-connected computers
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of robocalls
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with robocallers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of robocallers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending phone calls should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time phone numbers are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government tapping my phone calls
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
Doing the Right Thing should not be preempted by making a buck.
That bill's sponsor? (Score:1)
FCC? (Score:1)
If you expect the FCC to actually enforce this in a meaningful way, you're living in a fool's paradise.
âoeWithout hardly any resistanceâ? (Score:3)
Seriously?
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Is that a double negative that equates to whatever the opposite of 'hardly any' is or is being without 'hardly any' equivalent to zero?
Yes.
Sorry, but this is BS. (Score:3)
Sorry, the majority of these calls are originating out of IP telephony banks.
There's pretty much NO way to track these.
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Yes there is, when they originate a large volume of reported spam/fraud/telemarketing/robo calls
Re:Sorry, but this is BS. (Score:5, Informative)
They are quite possible to track.
At the point it leaves the IP network and enters the PSTN network, a telco
is routing a call for a customer. That customer is breaking the law. The telco
(or the authorities anyway) can find out who that customer is from the payments
they make.. The banking system makes that possible. If the customer is using
some sort of anonymising payment network then ban the use of those in telecom.
Problem solved. That customer i.e. which ever bullshit US/Indian/Chinese company
it is, is charged with the offense. Probably they should also go after the directors of
the company, that is likely to be more effective.
It will turn into whack a mole for a while as the telcos are closing crooked accounts
and the crooks reopen new ones. But that will really slow them down, and also increase
the chance of them making a mistake and getting caught.
I run a telco here in Japan, and we have to report end customer names to the Police
regularly. They try to hide behind circuit aggregators, but we threaten to cut those
aggregators off if they dont tell us who the crooked end customer is. It does work. Far
fewer spam calls here.
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"There's pretty much NO way to track these."
The telephony provider knows who to bill for each call, so just make them liable for the fines if they cannot pass the fine through.
Until (Score:2)
Some robocaller bribes Mitch McConnell.
Just give me a personal whitelist (Score:3)
That cannot be spoofed.
If it starts snowing in Hell (Score:2)
It will be because our Congress actually did something useful for once.
Pah (Score:2)
I used to have a political science professor who'd always pontificate about "you can't have international law without international law enforcement." How, praytell, is this bill going to stop robocalling? Anyone who's already ignoring the Do Not Call will ignore these restrictions, too (especially those offshore). Laws are useless; we need technical solutions.
Double negative (Score:1)
Does that mean "WITH resistance"