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.

Comments

Well with Hillary immune from

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Well with Hillary immune from

[EmeraldBot]

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?

Seriously? You don't like the government's policies, so your first reaction is to kill the leader? For the love of god, you're a shining example of the extremism that's become fashionable nowadays. This isn't Iran, if you have a problem you protest peacefully or become active in politics yourself, you don't fucking assassinate people.

Second off, I think the AC parent is the only one I've read so far who's RTFA. If you actually did, it still bans politicians, which will prevent the at times harassing political bombardments, but the government itself is of course going to need to call people. Businesses are exempt when they do business - but what does the government do? It's sure as hell not supposed to be business. Without the mass calling exemption, they wouldn't be able to distribute natural disaster alerts, the Amber Alert system would be questionable, and I think we can all agree saying no to a researcher the one time in your life you're called isn't too hard compared to the benefits scientific studies bring us all. I'm as frustrated with our government as anyone is right now, but geez people, think before saying something.

Shrugged again, alas

[harvey the nerd]

Punitive laws and distraints primarily apply to Little People, as so recently demonstrated, again.

More fun times ahead

[Archfeld]

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.

Don't expect help from the government.

[fustakrakich]

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.

Re: Don't expect help from the government.

[Opportunist]

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.

Re:Well, of course it is! It's the damn government

[Opportunist]

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.

Re:why are contractors included?

[dywolf]

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.

Re:Not an emergency and FCC shouldn't overrule Con

[Ol Olsoc]

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".