6 ms·

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.
ineedasername 5y ago
Voter suppression is illegal and carries with it both a fine and up to a year in jail. Even if it was only 1.1k that would still be over 1,000 years in jail. The people making these robocalls are fortunate the FCC is the organization taking up the issue instead of the justice department. And when it comes to messing with someone's constitutional voting right, there's no such thing as "only" a certain # of incidents. It's all bad, it's all illegal.
- hanniabu 5y ago
  > Voter suppression is illegal and carries with it both a fine and up to a year in jail. Is that a year per person who's vote was suppressed? Seems like an old law meant for before the internet. Now that a single action can affect millions of people it seems prudent to modernize punishment to reflect the scale of attacks.
  - soco 5y ago
    So many laws are badly outdated in times of cryptocurrencies, robotic workers, offshoring, global warming... and most of those in position to change them are badly outdated themselves.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > The people making these robocalls are fortunate the FCC is the organization taking up the issue instead of the justice department. For various reasons, the federal agencies with civil enforcement powers tend to be faster in producing legal action than DoJ is with criminal action, but civil action does not preclude criminal action based on the same conduct.
dragonwriter 5y ago
The FCC order linked has detailed background on other enforcement actions contextualizing the $4,500/call basis for the fine, which is (1) in line with what FCC has assessed since 2006 for violations of the same provision, (2) less than half of the maximum authorized in 2006 for such violations, and (3) less than one-quarter the maximum currently authorized under the governing law for such violations.

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.

ineedasername 5y ago

Voter suppression is illegal and carries with it both a fine and up to a year in jail. Even if it was only 1.1k that would still be over 1,000 years in jail. The people making these robocalls are fortunate the FCC is the organization taking up the issue instead of the justice department. And when it comes to messing with someone's constitutional voting right, there's no such thing as "only" a certain # of incidents. It's all bad, it's all illegal.

hanniabu 5y ago
> Voter suppression is illegal and carries with it both a fine and up to a year in jail. Is that a year per person who's vote was suppressed? Seems like an old law meant for before the internet. Now that a single action can affect millions of people it seems prudent to modernize punishment to reflect the scale of attacks.
- soco 5y ago
  So many laws are badly outdated in times of cryptocurrencies, robotic workers, offshoring, global warming... and most of those in position to change them are badly outdated themselves.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> The people making these robocalls are fortunate the FCC is the organization taking up the issue instead of the justice department. For various reasons, the federal agencies with civil enforcement powers tend to be faster in producing legal action than DoJ is with criminal action, but civil action does not preclude criminal action based on the same conduct.

dragonwriter 5y ago

The FCC order linked has detailed background on other enforcement actions contextualizing the $4,500/call basis for the fine, which is (1) in line with what FCC has assessed since 2006 for violations of the same provision, (2) less than half of the maximum authorized in 2006 for such violations, and (3) less than one-quarter the maximum currently authorized under the governing law for such violations.