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John Oliver Fights Robocalls By Robocalling Ajit Pai and the FCC (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Comedian John Oliver is taking aim at the Federal Communications Commission again, this time demanding action on robocalls while unleashing his own wave of robocalls against FCC commissioners. In a 17-minute segment yesterday on HBO's Last Week Tonight, Oliver described the scourge of robocalls and blamed Pai for not doing more to stop them. Oliver ended the segment by announcing that he and his staff are sending robocalls every 90 minutes to all five FCC commissioners. "Hi FCC, this is John from customer service," Oliver's recorded voice says on the call. "Congratulations, you've just won a chance to lower robocalls in America today... robocalls are incredibly annoying, and the person who can stop them is you! Talk to you again in 90 minutes -- here's some bagpipe music."
When it came to robocalling the FCC, Oliver didn't need viewers' help. "This time, unlike our past encounters [with the FCC], I don't need to ask hordes of real people to bombard [the FCC] with messages, because with the miracle of robocalling, I can now do it all by myself," Oliver said. "It turns out robocalling is so easy, it only took our tech guy literally 15 minutes to work out how to do it," Oliver also said. He noted that "phone calls are now so cheap and the technology so widely available that just about everyone has the ability to place a massive number of calls." Under U.S. law, political robocalls to landline telephones are allowed without prior consent from the recipient. Such calls to cell phones require the called party's prior express consent, but Oliver presumably directed his robocalls to the commissioners' office phones. Oliver told the FCC commissioners: "if you want to tell us that you don't consent to be robocalled, that's absolutely no problem. Just write a certified letter to the address we buried somewhere within the first chapter of Moby Dick that's currently scrolling up the screen... find the address, write us a letter, and we'll stop the calls immediately."
When it came to robocalling the FCC, Oliver didn't need viewers' help. "This time, unlike our past encounters [with the FCC], I don't need to ask hordes of real people to bombard [the FCC] with messages, because with the miracle of robocalling, I can now do it all by myself," Oliver said. "It turns out robocalling is so easy, it only took our tech guy literally 15 minutes to work out how to do it," Oliver also said. He noted that "phone calls are now so cheap and the technology so widely available that just about everyone has the ability to place a massive number of calls." Under U.S. law, political robocalls to landline telephones are allowed without prior consent from the recipient. Such calls to cell phones require the called party's prior express consent, but Oliver presumably directed his robocalls to the commissioners' office phones. Oliver told the FCC commissioners: "if you want to tell us that you don't consent to be robocalled, that's absolutely no problem. Just write a certified letter to the address we buried somewhere within the first chapter of Moby Dick that's currently scrolling up the screen... find the address, write us a letter, and we'll stop the calls immediately."
That linked article has a video that is not available in the UK - and other places I imagine. Here is one that works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... . It is cropped to pass youtube's flagging, so not the best (post if there's a better one), but if you want to see what the post is about it will serve...
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Is this happening to anyone else? About two weeks ago we started getting regular robocalls at 6 AM local. (Usually they've waited until 8:30 AM local time.) And then, late last week we got one robocall at 5:15 AM. (I'm on call, so I *have* to answer the phone.) And this is to a cell phone! (We haven't had a land line for a couple years.) This is going beyond annoying, to the point where I'm going to start calling FCC commissioners myself.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
They have been, but those calls have exploded in volume in the last 2 or 3 years.
That is true, but I know for a fact I installed my robo-call blocking apps way before Trump was elected.
It is ALSO true it was enough of a problem when Obama was president, the FCC should have been doing something at that point.
Doesn't mean they shouldn't do something about it now as well.
One fun new trick I've just started seeing in the last few months - calls from *international* numbers where the number ends up looking like a local number - so a call from Greece for example has a country code of "+30". You get a call from 304-298-8442 (not a real number), and if you are not looking closely for the leading "+" in callerID, you don't realize it's international number instead of a number from West Virginia (for example).
Let that soak in fo ra bit - calls are so cheap that even if you start doing something about U.S. numbers. spammers may just move to international lines.
What I would love to see is a discussion of - what CAN the FCC actually do to stop this? What would work? Or does the solution need to come from somewhere else, like congress? Maybe a few spammers wake up to a Seal Team 6 visit, or inside a CIA black site? I'm open to ideas here.
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Robocalls LIE about their number. They use random numbers in the same area code as you (often) to encourage you to pick up. They do NOT own these numbers.
What you're advocating would be punching a random person named "Frank X" cause two days ago someone hit you in the dark and yelled "I'm Frank X". Not the most reliable source of information there.
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I nearly never get robocalls in Germany, none of my friends watching LWT does.
I guess we're using a completely different phone network or technology in Europe.
That must be why universal healthcare works here, too, and cant work in the US :-)