8 ms·

FCC proposes fining conspiracists $5.1M for voter suppression robocalls

76 points by commoner 5y ago

h2odragon 5y ago
Now can we do something about all the other spam calls please? Something like 90% of the calls I get are spam.
- DamnYuppie 5y ago
  Out of curiosity, if you are in the US, have you put yourself on the no call list? https://www.donotcall.gov/ https://www.donotcall.gov/ I did this probably over 10 years ago, I have not changed my phone #, and I receive very few spam calls. I did receive some in 2015 and stated I would like them to remove me from there list and not contact me again, and I never heard from them again. The majority of "spam" I get is from recruiters offering me jobs for tech I haven't done in 15 years :(
  - repiret 5y ago
    I'm in the US, have had the same cell phone number since 2004 [1], and have put it on the do-not-call list, and it doesn't seem to have made a difference. I receive 2x as many junk calls as legitimate calls, but at least an unknown number in my cell phone's area code (where I haven't lived since 2007) is a strong signal that its nobody I want to talk to. (But I can't tell my phone to filter unknown numbers by area code) [1]: https://xkcd.com/1129/ https://xkcd.com/1129/ applies well to me.
  - carbocation 5y ago
    "You successfully registered your phone number ending in XXXX on March XX, 2006." I still get 5-10 spam calls per day.
  - bigbob2 5y ago
    I tried this multiple times over the past several years and it seemed to make little difference for me. I'm thinking whoever had this number before me gave it out to anyone and everyone. I will try signing up for this list again. Thanks!
  - meepmorp 5y ago
    Most spam calls I get are about the soon-to-expire warranty on my car or the student loans I haven't had since since the 20th century. They always hang up when I ask if it's a scam.
  - h2odragon 5y ago
    "You successfully registered your phone number ending in xxxx on May 05, 2017." ... The number of calls went up and stayed up months after i did that.
  - adamrezich 5y ago
    what are the mechanics of adding oneself to this list? I just did, but how is this realistically going to stop robocalls?
    - sdenton4 5y ago
      It will stop robocalls from law abiding callers. Unfortunately, most robocalls are spammers who are frauding anyway, so the list doesn't matter.
    - prewett 5y ago
      I think it just enables you to collect damages of $3000/call if you are able to identify the entity robocalling you and you sue them.
      - duskwuff 5y ago
        Add another condition: "and they are under US jurisdiction". Technically, yes, you can obtain a judgement against a call center operating outside the US, but you're never going to collect on that judgement.
  - alistairSH 5y ago
    The DNC list doesn't work. Scammers ignore it. Politicians are exempt. Any nominal business relationship is also exempt.
    - bluGill 5y ago
      > Politicians are exempt True, but they mostly call you if the polls are closing and your haven't voted yet. > Any nominal business relationship is also exempt. true, but here again they have a relationship and are at least somewhat useful. They also aren't robo calls, but a real person spending their time calling you so they won't abuse your time like robo calls do.
      - alistairSH 5y ago
        I get a constant stream of political push-poll callers from both major parties. As for the business calls - it's a lot of car warranty crap and similar mostly useless, borderline scammy sales pitches.
        bluGill 5y ago
        Your business calls are scams and nothing to do with the legitimate businesses with an established relationship.
- stronglikedan 5y ago
  I no longer do, but only because I recently learned that some carriers allow you to block them completely, before they ever reach the phone. For example, on T-mobile, you just dial #662# to activate it, #632# to deactivate it, and #787# to check if it's currently enabled.
  - coding123 5y ago
    Wait, what? Would that work on Ting?
    - aparks517 5y ago
      #787# and #632# work for me on Ting with an X3 SIM, but #662# says "unable to process request." I'm guessing you actually need to be a T-Mobile customer to use the service.
  - DangitBobby 5y ago
    I have T-Mobile and a Pixel. With their blocking measures combined, it's very rare that I get robocalls.
- bluGill 5y ago
  If you have time you can figure out who is behind each one and take them to court. You just about need to be an unemployed lawyer to get all the paperwork right, but it is possible.
- EMM_386 5y ago
  The industry is implementing STIR/SHAKEN which should help somewhat. https://www.fcc.gov/call-authentication https://www.fcc.gov/call-authentication
medina5 5y ago
A $5.5m fine for 1.1k robocalls appears extremely excessive and reeks of an underlying political motivation
- coding123 5y ago
  The message included: > personal information will be part of a public database that will be used by police departments to track down old warrants and be used by credit card companies to collect outstanding debts Whichever side uses that would be in the wrong.
  - joshuaheard 5y ago
    I am a lawyer that does collection work and I use Lexis Smartlinks to get current address information on debtors. Smartlinks includes voter registration information as part of the profile it generates. I don't know about police departments, but I have heard of law enforcement using private data services. I think the statement is true. I also receive 5 - 10 robocalls per day. To go after these people reeks of selective enforcement based on politics.
    - belltaco 5y ago
      They didn't use the robocalls to promote their side, like the robocalls that you get, they used them for voter suppression.
- happytoexplain 5y ago
  As the title indicates, the relevant portion is the alleged crime committed by the robocallers, not the fact that they used robocalls to perform it.
- belltaco 5y ago
  >Nessel said 85,000 calls were believed to have been made across the nation. She said nearly 12,000 residents in the 313 ZIP code received the calls in Detroit, and that similar calls also blanketed urban pockets of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and New York. And she encouraged anyone who received such a call to file a complaint with her office.
adolph 5y ago
"conspiracists" is the new "terrorists"
- seattle_spring 5y ago
  You can't actually be trying to defend spam robocallers.... Can you?
  - adamrezich 5y ago
    I think a more charitable reading of the above comment is that the use of the term "conspiracist" in this context is interesting because it ties the broad concept of "conspiracy theories" and the "conspiracists" who subscribe to them, to robocallers, based on the actions of two individuals. in recent months, we've seen a concerted effort in the media to label various Americans as "domestic terrorists" for actions that don't exactly fall in line with how the term has been used in the past two decades. thus, this seems to be another example of attaching nebulous political labels to people, which is concerning for anyone whose political thought lies outside the generally-accepted mainstream narrative, because instantly associating them with unrelated people doing unrelated actions isn't exactly fair. I'm having a hard time putting my thoughts to words but in general, using terms like "conspiracists" in headlines tends to give me pause, because it tends to have the effect of painting a large group of people with a broad brush and associating them with the actions of a few.
  - adolph 5y ago
    The sibling comment captures the idea well. Reading through the notice [0] it looks like the FCC played things pretty straight and has evidence of other similar fines, so maybe the "conspiracists" is more descriptive than boogieman language. 0. https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-21-97A1.pdf https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-21-97A1.pdf
commoner 5y ago
My voicemail gets plenty of robocalls, many of them threatening me about some "expired warranty" for a product that I never bought. If you are in the US, here are some ways to reduce robocalls or at least make them less annoying: - Enroll all of your phone numbers into the National Do Not Call Registry: https://www.donotcall.gov https://www.donotcall.gov. This lets you report robocalls immediately after registration, and forbids sales calls (including ones that are not robocalls) to your number starting 31 days after registration. Report all robocalls to https://www.donotcall.gov/report.html https://www.donotcall.gov/report.html after registering your numbers. When the FTC receives enough reports about a robocaller, they will file a class action lawsuit and you can get reimbursed. - If you have a postpaid plan with a major US carrier, you may be able to use a free app that blocks calls identified as spam. Postpaid customers of AT&T, T-Mobile/Sprint, and Verizon all qualify. The Verge has a summary: https://www.theverge.com/21327304/spam-calls-how-to-stop-block-robocalls-robots-scam-iphone-android https://www.theverge.com/21327304/spam-calls-how-to-stop-blo... - Both Android and iOS have APIs for call blocking, which third-party apps can use. If you are on Android, Yet Another Call Blocker is a free and open source app that uses an offline database to show you the reputation of incoming callers, and optionally lets you block them automatically: https://gitlab.com/xynngh/YetAnotherCallBlocker https://gitlab.com/xynngh/YetAnotherCallBlocker - If you don't need to receive calls from phone numbers outside of your contact list, you can set your phone to send all calls from numbers not on your contact list to voicemail. Instructions for Android vary by phone manufacturer, but Yet Another Call Blocker can do this on any Android phone (use "*" in the blacklist to block all calls, and whitelist all contacts). iOS has the Silence Unknown Callers feature: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207099 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207099
- JoeAltmaier 5y ago
  My buddy does all that, and still gets calls every day. They rotate the caller-id numbers they report. His phone has a blocking list and he adds to it every time but that means he still gets the robocall once a day anyway. There's no perfect solution?
  - commoner 5y ago
    I just added the fourth point about blocking unknown numbers. If your buddy is in a situation (e.g. certain type of job) that makes this impractical, then I'm afraid there's no better solution yet. Edit: Actually, Google Pixel phones have an automatic call screening feature using the Google Assistant: https://support.google.com/phoneapp/answer/9118387 https://support.google.com/phoneapp/answer/9118387. Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWap-nPQUO0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWap-nPQUO0. The privacy trade-off is that Google screens all of your calls, and the feature does not work with custom OSes, but some people might find this to be worth the added convenience. I'd love to see a FOSS implementation of this after a free voice recognition solution becomes available.
jimbob45 5y ago
Why not just $5.1M for...robocalls? In the age we live in, there's virtually no reason for robocalls to be legal when emails exist. If robocalls are needed, they should be exceptional with exceptions granted, not the norm.
- Arrath 5y ago
  I live in central California and any bit of forecast wind nets me a robocall from the utility letting me know that they my cut my power to reduce the risk of fire. Which seems like one of those exceptional cases. Even it gets flagged as potential spam.
api 5y ago
I've started thinking that at some point society will be forced to make lying a crime. Tell something untrue that is not clearly labeled as fiction or satire and be fined or even charged with a misdemeanor or felony in certain circumstances such as influencing elections. The reason is similar to why large scale wars must be effectively outlawed in the nuclear age. Before then wars were fought with weapons that while deadly to the soldiers did not present an existential threat to the rest of humanity. Today's microtargeting, viral social media, and AI-driven text generation are to lying and con artistry what the H-bomb was to warfare. It is now possible to construct deception weapons of mass destruction that have the capacity to obliterate rational discourse across entire swaths of society. I truly think that a sufficiently determined and clever attacker could at this point destroy civilization through expertly crafted propaganda augmented by big data and AI. Of course a huge number of our politicians, pundits, news anchors, and PR flaks would be in prison. Maybe that would be a good thing.
- snarf21 5y ago
  Who gets to decide what is a lie? Which is the lie: "Biden won" or "Trump won"? Depends on who is in charge, depends on who gets to decide what "proof" is, depends on who controls the "news" (there is no such thing as news anymore, it is all infotainment click-bait nonsense)
  - api 5y ago
    "The Earth is flat" is not true. If you think the Earth is flat you are wrong. If you tell people the Earth is flat you are lying. I don't like the idea of regulating speech this way, but I am starting to wonder if there's an alternative. I hope I'm wrong, but right now it seems like the emergence of information age digital propaganda has altered the balance of power in some fundamental way. I am deeply concerned about the continued existence of societies that are both free and open. I get the sense that we will be forced to either give up a lot of freedom to restrict speech and discourse or give up all our freedom when unrestricted speech and discourse is exploited by a populist totalitarian to take power. Of course one of the things this new totalitarian regime would do immediately is shut down the systems of free and open discourse they exploited to gain power to make sure nobody else can repeat the same trick.

76 points by commoner 5y ago

h2odragon 5y ago

Now can we do something about all the other spam calls please? Something like 90% of the calls I get are spam.

DamnYuppie 5y ago
Out of curiosity, if you are in the US, have you put yourself on the no call list? https://www.donotcall.gov/ https://www.donotcall.gov/ I did this probably over 10 years ago, I have not changed my phone #, and I receive very few spam calls. I did receive some in 2015 and stated I would like them to remove me from there list and not contact me again, and I never heard from them again. The majority of "spam" I get is from recruiters offering me jobs for tech I haven't done in 15 years :(
- repiret 5y ago
  I'm in the US, have had the same cell phone number since 2004 [1], and have put it on the do-not-call list, and it doesn't seem to have made a difference. I receive 2x as many junk calls as legitimate calls, but at least an unknown number in my cell phone's area code (where I haven't lived since 2007) is a strong signal that its nobody I want to talk to. (But I can't tell my phone to filter unknown numbers by area code) [1]: https://xkcd.com/1129/ https://xkcd.com/1129/ applies well to me.
- carbocation 5y ago
  "You successfully registered your phone number ending in XXXX on March XX, 2006." I still get 5-10 spam calls per day.
- bigbob2 5y ago
  I tried this multiple times over the past several years and it seemed to make little difference for me. I'm thinking whoever had this number before me gave it out to anyone and everyone. I will try signing up for this list again. Thanks!
- meepmorp 5y ago
  Most spam calls I get are about the soon-to-expire warranty on my car or the student loans I haven't had since since the 20th century. They always hang up when I ask if it's a scam.
- h2odragon 5y ago
  "You successfully registered your phone number ending in xxxx on May 05, 2017." ... The number of calls went up and stayed up months after i did that.
- adamrezich 5y ago
  what are the mechanics of adding oneself to this list? I just did, but how is this realistically going to stop robocalls?
  - sdenton4 5y ago
    It will stop robocalls from law abiding callers. Unfortunately, most robocalls are spammers who are frauding anyway, so the list doesn't matter.
  - prewett 5y ago
    I think it just enables you to collect damages of $3000/call if you are able to identify the entity robocalling you and you sue them.
    - duskwuff 5y ago
      Add another condition: "and they are under US jurisdiction". Technically, yes, you can obtain a judgement against a call center operating outside the US, but you're never going to collect on that judgement.
- alistairSH 5y ago
  The DNC list doesn't work. Scammers ignore it. Politicians are exempt. Any nominal business relationship is also exempt.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    > Politicians are exempt True, but they mostly call you if the polls are closing and your haven't voted yet. > Any nominal business relationship is also exempt. true, but here again they have a relationship and are at least somewhat useful. They also aren't robo calls, but a real person spending their time calling you so they won't abuse your time like robo calls do.
    - alistairSH 5y ago
      I get a constant stream of political push-poll callers from both major parties. As for the business calls - it's a lot of car warranty crap and similar mostly useless, borderline scammy sales pitches.
      - bluGill 5y ago
        Your business calls are scams and nothing to do with the legitimate businesses with an established relationship.
stronglikedan 5y ago
I no longer do, but only because I recently learned that some carriers allow you to block them completely, before they ever reach the phone. For example, on T-mobile, you just dial #662# to activate it, #632# to deactivate it, and #787# to check if it's currently enabled.
- coding123 5y ago
  Wait, what? Would that work on Ting?
  - aparks517 5y ago
    #787# and #632# work for me on Ting with an X3 SIM, but #662# says "unable to process request." I'm guessing you actually need to be a T-Mobile customer to use the service.
- DangitBobby 5y ago
  I have T-Mobile and a Pixel. With their blocking measures combined, it's very rare that I get robocalls.
bluGill 5y ago
If you have time you can figure out who is behind each one and take them to court. You just about need to be an unemployed lawyer to get all the paperwork right, but it is possible.
EMM_386 5y ago
The industry is implementing STIR/SHAKEN which should help somewhat. https://www.fcc.gov/call-authentication https://www.fcc.gov/call-authentication

medina5 5y ago

A $5.5m fine for 1.1k robocalls appears extremely excessive and reeks of an underlying political motivation

coding123 5y ago
The message included: > personal information will be part of a public database that will be used by police departments to track down old warrants and be used by credit card companies to collect outstanding debts Whichever side uses that would be in the wrong.
- joshuaheard 5y ago
  I am a lawyer that does collection work and I use Lexis Smartlinks to get current address information on debtors. Smartlinks includes voter registration information as part of the profile it generates. I don't know about police departments, but I have heard of law enforcement using private data services. I think the statement is true. I also receive 5 - 10 robocalls per day. To go after these people reeks of selective enforcement based on politics.
  - belltaco 5y ago
    They didn't use the robocalls to promote their side, like the robocalls that you get, they used them for voter suppression.
happytoexplain 5y ago
As the title indicates, the relevant portion is the alleged crime committed by the robocallers, not the fact that they used robocalls to perform it.
belltaco 5y ago
>Nessel said 85,000 calls were believed to have been made across the nation. She said nearly 12,000 residents in the 313 ZIP code received the calls in Detroit, and that similar calls also blanketed urban pockets of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and New York. And she encouraged anyone who received such a call to file a complaint with her office.

adolph 5y ago

"conspiracists" is the new "terrorists"

seattle_spring 5y ago
You can't actually be trying to defend spam robocallers.... Can you?
- adamrezich 5y ago
  I think a more charitable reading of the above comment is that the use of the term "conspiracist" in this context is interesting because it ties the broad concept of "conspiracy theories" and the "conspiracists" who subscribe to them, to robocallers, based on the actions of two individuals. in recent months, we've seen a concerted effort in the media to label various Americans as "domestic terrorists" for actions that don't exactly fall in line with how the term has been used in the past two decades. thus, this seems to be another example of attaching nebulous political labels to people, which is concerning for anyone whose political thought lies outside the generally-accepted mainstream narrative, because instantly associating them with unrelated people doing unrelated actions isn't exactly fair. I'm having a hard time putting my thoughts to words but in general, using terms like "conspiracists" in headlines tends to give me pause, because it tends to have the effect of painting a large group of people with a broad brush and associating them with the actions of a few.
- adolph 5y ago
  The sibling comment captures the idea well. Reading through the notice [0] it looks like the FCC played things pretty straight and has evidence of other similar fines, so maybe the "conspiracists" is more descriptive than boogieman language. 0. https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-21-97A1.pdf https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-21-97A1.pdf

commoner 5y ago

My voicemail gets plenty of robocalls, many of them threatening me about some "expired warranty" for a product that I never bought. If you are in the US, here are some ways to reduce robocalls or at least make them less annoying: - Enroll all of your phone numbers into the National Do Not Call Registry: https://www.donotcall.gov https://www.donotcall.gov. This lets you report robocalls immediately after registration, and forbids sales calls (including ones that are not robocalls) to your number starting 31 days after registration. Report all robocalls to https://www.donotcall.gov/report.html https://www.donotcall.gov/report.html after registering your numbers. When the FTC receives enough reports about a robocaller, they will file a class action lawsuit and you can get reimbursed. - If you have a postpaid plan with a major US carrier, you may be able to use a free app that blocks calls identified as spam. Postpaid customers of AT&T, T-Mobile/Sprint, and Verizon all qualify. The Verge has a summary: https://www.theverge.com/21327304/spam-calls-how-to-stop-block-robocalls-robots-scam-iphone-android https://www.theverge.com/21327304/spam-calls-how-to-stop-blo... - Both Android and iOS have APIs for call blocking, which third-party apps can use. If you are on Android, Yet Another Call Blocker is a free and open source app that uses an offline database to show you the reputation of incoming callers, and optionally lets you block them automatically: https://gitlab.com/xynngh/YetAnotherCallBlocker https://gitlab.com/xynngh/YetAnotherCallBlocker - If you don't need to receive calls from phone numbers outside of your contact list, you can set your phone to send all calls from numbers not on your contact list to voicemail. Instructions for Android vary by phone manufacturer, but Yet Another Call Blocker can do this on any Android phone (use "*" in the blacklist to block all calls, and whitelist all contacts). iOS has the Silence Unknown Callers feature: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207099 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207099

JoeAltmaier 5y ago
My buddy does all that, and still gets calls every day. They rotate the caller-id numbers they report. His phone has a blocking list and he adds to it every time but that means he still gets the robocall once a day anyway. There's no perfect solution?
- commoner 5y ago
  I just added the fourth point about blocking unknown numbers. If your buddy is in a situation (e.g. certain type of job) that makes this impractical, then I'm afraid there's no better solution yet. Edit: Actually, Google Pixel phones have an automatic call screening feature using the Google Assistant: https://support.google.com/phoneapp/answer/9118387 https://support.google.com/phoneapp/answer/9118387. Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWap-nPQUO0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWap-nPQUO0. The privacy trade-off is that Google screens all of your calls, and the feature does not work with custom OSes, but some people might find this to be worth the added convenience. I'd love to see a FOSS implementation of this after a free voice recognition solution becomes available.

jimbob45 5y ago

Why not just $5.1M for...robocalls? In the age we live in, there's virtually no reason for robocalls to be legal when emails exist. If robocalls are needed, they should be exceptional with exceptions granted, not the norm.

Arrath 5y ago
I live in central California and any bit of forecast wind nets me a robocall from the utility letting me know that they my cut my power to reduce the risk of fire. Which seems like one of those exceptional cases. Even it gets flagged as potential spam.

api 5y ago

I've started thinking that at some point society will be forced to make lying a crime. Tell something untrue that is not clearly labeled as fiction or satire and be fined or even charged with a misdemeanor or felony in certain circumstances such as influencing elections. The reason is similar to why large scale wars must be effectively outlawed in the nuclear age. Before then wars were fought with weapons that while deadly to the soldiers did not present an existential threat to the rest of humanity. Today's microtargeting, viral social media, and AI-driven text generation are to lying and con artistry what the H-bomb was to warfare. It is now possible to construct deception weapons of mass destruction that have the capacity to obliterate rational discourse across entire swaths of society. I truly think that a sufficiently determined and clever attacker could at this point destroy civilization through expertly crafted propaganda augmented by big data and AI. Of course a huge number of our politicians, pundits, news anchors, and PR flaks would be in prison. Maybe that would be a good thing.

snarf21 5y ago
Who gets to decide what is a lie? Which is the lie: "Biden won" or "Trump won"? Depends on who is in charge, depends on who gets to decide what "proof" is, depends on who controls the "news" (there is no such thing as news anymore, it is all infotainment click-bait nonsense)
- api 5y ago
  "The Earth is flat" is not true. If you think the Earth is flat you are wrong. If you tell people the Earth is flat you are lying. I don't like the idea of regulating speech this way, but I am starting to wonder if there's an alternative. I hope I'm wrong, but right now it seems like the emergence of information age digital propaganda has altered the balance of power in some fundamental way. I am deeply concerned about the continued existence of societies that are both free and open. I get the sense that we will be forced to either give up a lot of freedom to restrict speech and discourse or give up all our freedom when unrestricted speech and discourse is exploited by a populist totalitarian to take power. Of course one of the things this new totalitarian regime would do immediately is shut down the systems of free and open discourse they exploited to gain power to make sure nobody else can repeat the same trick.