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

And nothing will change

[Balial]

... wake me up when they charge the telcos for every robocall they don't filter. That will make a change.

Re:And nothing will change

[Xenx]

A lot of telcos offer services to block specific callers and such. Blocking robocalls is doable, but requires a bit more finesse. The telcos don't want the liability when the filter blocks a call that the recipient really wanted to receive. Even if they weren't legally liable for it, they still don't want to fight with a paying customer when it happens. It's safer, from a business standpoint, to not filter.

Re: And nothing will change

[saloomy]

Really, we should just get rid of the telephone system. Put it on open protocols for audio/video/data, run it over the internet. End to end encrypted. That old shit has got to go. Plus, I don't want to pay for a phone plan when an iPhone and a data plan will do.

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 ...

spoofed calls from abroad

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

These calls originate from outside America and the number is spoofed.

If FBI sets up honey pots, take the bait, follow up, go up the chain and fine the people who hire these robo callers, then it might have some effect. Otherwise you can even call for death penalty, it wont have any effect.

YES YES YES YES Hallelujah, we shall overcome

[goombah99]

This is going to change things if it happens here's why:

Bounty hunters. If it's really 10K$ per call, I can offer to split my share with a bounty hunter who will track down the Mofo and collect.

I smell bullshit

[rsilvergun]

Robocalls work because they do thousands of them. If you caught one of the guys $1500 per call is already going to be millions, if not billions and maybe trillions.

Also, we know damn well how to stop Robocalls, you stop them at the source by making AT&T et al police their bloody network. They don't do this because they're making money off the robocalls.

So once again, I smell bullshit. More political theater to distract me and you from real issues like healthcare, wages and those 8 bloomin' wars we're fighting....

Do I get a percentage?

[mveloso]

Shouldn't the end-user get a percentage of that fine? That would make me want to almost sign up, just until I could validate the caller. Then whack, I get $5k. That would be awesome.

Give the fine

[Anonymous Coward]

to the telco. Financial incentive to the telco would fix it. As it is, the telco profits from the extra biz.