InfoBytes Blog
FCC chair asks Congress to act on robocalls
In December, FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel sent a letter to twelve senators in response to their June 2022 letter inquiring about combating robocalls. In the letter, Rosenworcel highlighted the FCC’s efforts to combat robocalls by discussing the agency’s “important” proposed rules, adopted in May, to ensure gateway providers that channel international call traffic comply with STIR/SHAKEN caller ID authentication protocols and validate the identity of the providers whose traffic they are routing to help weed out robocalls (covered by InfoBytes here). She also highlighted the FCC’s enforcement efforts, such as a December action where the FCC announced a nearly $300 million fine against an auto warranty scam robocall campaign for TCPA and Truth in Caller ID Act violations—“largest robocall operation the FCC has ever investigated” (covered by InfoBytes here).
Rosenworcel requested additional authority from Congress to combat robocalls and robotexts more effectively. Specifically, Rosenworcel asked the senators to “fix the definition of autodialer” – since robotexts are neither prerecorded nor artificial voice calls, the TCPA only provides consumers protection from robotexts if they are sent from autodialers. She further noted that the Supreme Court's decision in Facebook v. Duguid (covered by a Buckley Special Alert) narrowed the definition of autodialer under the TCPA, resulting in the law only covering equipment that generates numbers randomly and sequentially. She wrote that as a result, “equipment that simply uses lists to generate robotexts means that fewer robotexts may be subject to TCPA protections, and as a result, this decision may be responsible for the rise in robotexts.” Among other things, she also requested that Congress update the TCPA to permit for administrative subpoenas for all types of non-content customer records, and for Congress to grant the FCC the authority and resources to increase court enforcement of fines.