A New Senate Bill Would Hit Robocallers With Up To a $10,000 Fine For Every Call (gizmodo.com)

Massachusetts Democratic Senator Ed Markey and South Dakota Republican Senator John Thune have introduced a bill on Friday that aims to ramp up the penalties on illegal robocalls and stop scammers from sending them. Gizmodo reports: The Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence (TRACED) Act, raises the penalty for robocalls from $1,500 per call to up to $10,000 per call, and allows the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to take action on illegal robocalls up to three years after the calls are placed, instead of a year. The Act also aims to push the FCC to work along with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and other agencies to provide information to Congress about advancements in hindering robocall and prosecuting scammers. Perhaps most importantly for us highly annoyed Americans, the bill would also force phone service providers to use call authentication that filters out illegitimate calls before they go through to consumers.

Comments

Re: And nothing will change

[thomst]

An Anonymous Coward predicted:

and they'll have an exemption for political calls...

Yes, they will.

"They" will, because of the First Amendment's free speech guarantee. It is a long-established principle in American jurisprudence that political speech is granted extraordinary protections. Robocalls on behalf of candidates for elected office fall into that category, and will thus receive exemption from any strictures placed on commercial robocallers. By legal precedent, commercial speech is granted the lowest level of protection from government censorship under First Amendment principles, whereas political speech in general - including artwork that expresses a political viewpoint or social commentary, as well as campaign robocalls - enjoys the highest level of protection.

Note that courts have long held that First Amendment prohibitions on government censorship extends to government bodies, and elected and appointed officials at all levels of goverment from the Federal to the hyper-local. A village council has no more right to prohibit protected forms of speech than does Congress. On the other hand, it has also been firmly established by the courts that governments are under no obligation to provide a platform for political speech, unless they are compelled to do so by state or local law. Thus, as a relevant example, in California, city councils are required to provide a period for public comment at their meetings, but they are permitted to limit the length of time any individual speaker is alotted. Most therefore have rules limiting comments by uninvited speakers - which is to say, "the general public" - to 3 minutes. (That limit is not universally enforced - but, when it is, it must apply equally to everyone who chooses to speak during the public comment period.)

Railing at politicians for carving out exemptions from robocalling for themselves indicates a lack of understanding of the effect of the First Amendment on the ability of legislators to restrict political speech. They can and will specifically exempt calls of a political nature from robocalling - but, if they did not do so, rest assured that the first pol that's cited for violating the shiny, new restrictions they try to emplace will promptly sue them for violating his or her right to free speech.

He (or she) will, without question, win that lawsuit - and the judge who hears the case might well rule the entire law to be unconstitutional, and unenforceable ...