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Entire Federal Government Exempt From Robocall Laws, FCC Rules (thehill.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via The Hill: Late Tuesday night, the Federal Communications Commission ruled that the entire federal government is exempt from consumer protection laws that limit unwanted robocalls. They ruled that the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 doesn't apply to the federal government, while the law does bar businesses from making numerous autodialed or prerecorded calls to a person's cellphone. The FCC did also make contractors working on behalf of the government exempt from the law as well. Earlier this year, a Supreme Court case found that the law does not apply to the government because of sovereign immunity. However, the FCC ruled that the government falls outside the law's definition of a "person." "Indeed, had Congress wanted to subject the federal government to the TCPA, it easily could have done so by defining 'person' to include the federal government," according to the ruling. Therefore, contractors hired by members of Congress can robocall individuals to participate in town halls, government researchers can place autodialed calls to the cellphones of survey respondents, and contractors can make similar calls to offer information about social security. The ruling does not apply to lawmakers who are using the calls for political campaigns.
It is exempt from everything. Who cares? The voters don't. So why should I dwell on it?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Punitive laws and distraints primarily apply to Little People, as so recently demonstrated, again.
Get your libels correct:
"...Stewart was found guilty in March 2004 of felony charges of conspiracy, obstruction of an agency proceeding, and making false statements to federal investigators,..."
The Conspiracy charge was by far the most serious, and isn't usually pursued unless the evidence is overwhelming. Conspiracy cases can take a decade to develop, and Stewart was just the most public conviction. BTW, she deserved it.
Clinton may be guilty of many things; lord knows Republicans have charged her, with sound bites, of everything up to and including bad fashion sense. But those bastards always melt away when push comes to Indictment, because they have _nothing_. If they did have anything, other than sound bites, they would seriously pursue Conspiracy charges.
"Basic Espionage Laws". Name just one, you rectal hemorrhage. (Hint: Look up the various Alien and Sedition Acts and the Fifth Amendment, and in 1000 words or less, explain why they don't apply. Provide Proofs in logical order. Oh, double spaced, please, and this time, no crayons.)
With the Internet, Email, SMS .... why do you even need robocalls these days with so many areas to access information?
Because ninety-five percent of people doing robocalls are crooks, scumbags, and scammers. And most older, retired people (their chosen mark) still use telephones as a primary means of communication.
WTF are you talking about? Government absolutely spams people. Government is a bunch of politicians, each one with their own agenda, each one trying to make some money/name for himself. This has nothing to do with any so called 'public good' (there is no such thing anyway). These robocalls are illegal and now the government says: fuck you all, we are above the law. We will call you, promote our agenda, ask for money, threaten you into compliance, into voting a particular way, etc.etc.etc.
Tyranny of a collectivist government is worse than tyranny of a singular tyrant. A tyrant can be taken down, even killed. How do you kill the hydra that is a collectivist government?
You can't handle the truth.
Because emergency information? Duh.
With more and more people kicking out TVs (which is absolutely understandable), please tell me of a way to inform a large amount of people of a danger in their area. And note that you don't have a few thousand people standing by to call everyone, this ain't the 50s, phone operators are a thing of the past.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
No, of course you should be allowed to block the hurricane warning. At the same time, you should, if you choose to do so, not expect any kind of compensation from your insurance.
Idiocy should not be rewarded.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This isn't Iran, if you have a problem you protest peacefully or become active in politics yourself, you don't fucking assassinate people.
- I disagree. I think assassinating government officials makes perfect sense, they don't give a hoot about assassinating anybody and everybody if that's what it takes to stay in power. Starting wars, murdering thousands, tens, hundreds of thousands, millions, all of this is done by governments. Sure, sure, governments have support of their people, but that's the problem - the people are very often uninformed, unintelligent creatures that follow another 'charismatic' asshole down the drain. Sometimes that 'charismatic' asshole needs to be taken down to pull the people out of their idiocy. Sometimes the dear leader simply cannot be replaced by any other means (see North Korea for example).
As to the fucking collectivist governments, like the ones in USA, EU, those are the worst types of offenders where it comes to impossibility of getting rid of a completely fucked up situation.
I am against the very existence of the IRS, Federal reserve bank, FDIC, FHA, EPA, FCC, FBI, departments of all shapes and sizes, SS, Medicare, Medicaid, every form of welfare, every form of theft and redistribution.
These things cannot be eliminated because the people who are voting will always vote to take from others what they think is their entitlement. These things should not exist in the USA in the first place, not a single one of them is Constitutional, every one of them is usurpation of power. AFAIC the power is already such that it is way beyond the normal process, there is no way to abolish all of these institutions without a violent event. A violent event is coming, it will be brought upon by the crash of the US bonds and the dollar itself. The violence is coming and these institutions will be gone simply because the very foundation for them, the US dollar that is fake (defaulted upon back in 1971) is going to fail and the Fed will make sure it fails in the worst way possible.
We are alive on this planet today, not tomorrow necessarily, not 100 years from now but right now. We should not suffer any of this right now.
Well, the US must be so hard for you, but Somalia embraces all of these. No IRS, no Medicaid, no government! Just those sweet leader assassinations and the warm African desert. What's not to like?
And how much are we willing to bet that all of these services, the retirement, the health insurance, the police, how much are we willing to bet you use all of these? You can't escape taxes without revoking your citizenship, but at least you can be an honest anarchist and refuse to use any and all government services.
That includes both running water and electricity.
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
the government is exempt when it is performing government business.
since much of that business is contracted out, it makes sense to also exempt those actually carrying it out.
this should not be a hard concept, even for an AC.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
And yes, that should be disallowed. But outlawing robocallers would be tossing the baby with the bathwater.
More and more people are adopting the technique of not answering any number they don't recognize. So if I set the phone to only ring those in my address book - its all good until someone goes to the trouble of mining my address book and spoofing numbers of my list.
In other words, the telephone system is so broken it is of very little use any more. It's my last line of communication, and since "do not call" has never worked, I've implemented "Do Not Answer".
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.