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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!”
Basic espionage laws along with destruction of evidence and lying to the FBI (which is what Martha Stewart was jailed for)
Why should government be bound by any laws us little people have to follow?
Punitive laws and distraints primarily apply to Little People, as so recently demonstrated, again.
The best method to discourage sales or political calls is to engage them in useless time consuming discussion about imaginary family or to request a moment to get a pen, and put the phone down for minutes then return with a pen, that mysteriously won't write, ramble on like a dementia afflicted individual. It takes a bit of time but can be quite amusing and I've found it to be very effective. Often informing the other side that you are recording the conversation for future entertainment purposes will discourage them as well.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Nope: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
We are simply on our own.
If you can, get a caller ID machine that allows you to create a white list of numbers that can get through and send all others straight to the answering machine which you can later blacklist from getting in at all. Works for email, I whitelist my inbox in order to take care of old business before wrestling with new business going into the spam box.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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.
This is Lenny.
Have gnu, will travel.
Is this a peculiarly American problem? I don't think I've ever had a robo-call in my life in Australia, unless you count the ones that connect you to a call-centre operator a second or two after you answer. SMS spam, yes. Plenty of charities begging, some sales calls that got past the "do not call" register, and the occasional overseas scam call. But always human, never a recording.
Do any counties other than the US - oh, and presumably Canada, have this problem?
with sim cards being easy to buy, its not hard to change your number often.
I've gotton on some prank lists where I was getting nuissance calls.
I dropped that number. buh-BYE. end of story.
phone is not even the main channel of comms anymore. 20 yrs ago it was. today, everyone has a more perm email and phone numbers can, and do, change. I'm and older guy and even I am ok with throwing away phone numbers and restarting, should I get on a 'annoy this guy by calling and not taking no' list.
we can also have devices that whitelist and let ring thru. when I had a landline, I used modem callerid and a unix daemon. now, most people just have cell phone #'s and the app I use is 'mrnumber' (yeah, lol). it lets me put a select switch between calls and me.
this is what it comes to. like online ads, its a war and we users are left to fend for ourselves. at least we now have good tools to defend ourselves from.
the part about the gov granting itself more rights, yeah, well, that's fully expected given the trajectory the US (and ROW) is headed. sad but its not unexpected. and since we have no control over our gov's (no one, anywhere in the world, does) we are stuck with what they all grew into. this crap where the system rewards itself and cares nothing about the people, themselves.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
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.
<sarcasm>Why can't they just post it to FB like everyone else these days?</sarcasm>
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
But this article is about robocalls made by the government-- Oh, I see your point.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
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.
While entrenched in British Common Law, the very notion of "soverreign immunity" is completely contradictory with the founding principles of the United States. The idea was whatever powers (sovereigns) were subject to limitations.
To now claim "sovereign immunity" is merely a complete about-face, and very likely corrupt.
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.
Do people still jump and pick up the phone every time it rings? I know I don't. In fact, during meal time and when I'm asleep I put it on silent. I am unreachable by telephone during those times.
The more I think about it, robocalls aren't such a big deal. We have the tech to block them. So, I guess the issue is resolved.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”