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Senators Attempting To Remove Robocall Loophole
New submitter bearded_yak writes: Last week, it was reported here that a loophole for debt collection robocalls had found its way into the budget bill. In the end, the loophole survived. Now, several senators want to remove it with Senator Ed Markey's "Help Americans Never Get Unwanted Phone calls" (HANGUP) Act. Meanwhile, according to an article at Consumerist, "the Federal Communications Commission has nine months to craft rules dictating the conditions under which the government would be allowed to make these robocalls", so perhaps this loophole will meet its end before that time.
But in case that never happens, you can just buy a call blocker and hook it up to your phone.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
That's so nice of you to want to protect us from spam. But you know what's even more annoying and threatening and expensive than spam?
Worse than spam, is stuff that "finds its way" into our laws without ever being attributed. The guilty parties are never punished or even informally shamed or identified so that anyone can ever vote approval or disapproval for that person in the next election.
Put an end to unattributed "malgislation" (eww, let's keep working on finding the right word) and then you'll really be heroes. I want every item in every bill to have a person's name on it. Let them continue to be as evil and un-American as they want with their laws, but let's stop allowing them to be irresponsibly anonymous when they do it.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
You seem to be giving the republican party a free pass on this even though they voted for it, and not one of them is supporting this move to repeal it.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
They're not really backronyms, as the drafters didn't say "We're calling this HANGUP, now go find a phrase that could stand for!" If staffers had come up with a better title that abbreviated to DIALTONE or NOCALLS they'd have gone with that. The military does the same thing, but they're far more apt to drop or include letters to make an appropriately military-sounding word. It's probably a pretty fun process! And you have to admit this one is better than most; the title isn't a tortured mess. They could have even done Phonecalls as one word so as not to cheat.
Who gives a shit about Democrat/Republican anymore? It's one big morass called "government" that screws over the people of the USA on a consistent basis. Arguing R vs. D only perpetuates this system and has gotten us precisely nowhere.
In my adult lifetime, I've seen Democrats in control of the House, Senate and Presidency concurrently (1993-1994 & 2009-2010) and I've seen Republicans have the same control (2001-2005). In each case, things only got worse for the average citizen.
Government is the problem regardless of which of these two asshat parties happens to be in charge.
I'm an adult, and I rarely answer any number I don't recognize immediately. If it's important, they'll leave a voicemail and I'll call them right back at the number they provide.
But since 99.99% of the calls I receive from un-recognized numbers are horseshit robo-calls, no, I agree with commenter above: Why on earth would someone answer the phone any more?