Supreme Court Upholds Cellphone Robocall Ban (apnews.com) 64
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Associated Press: The Supreme Court on Monday upheld a 1991 law that bars robocalls to cellphones. The case, argued by telephone in May because of the coronavirus pandemic, only arose after Congress in 2015 created an exception in the law that allowed the automated calls for collection of government debt. Political consultants and pollsters were among those who asked the Supreme Court to strike down the entire 1991 law that bars them from making robocalls to cellphones as a violation of their free speech rights under the Constitution. The issue was whether, by allowing one kind of speech but not others, the exception made the whole law unconstitutional.
Six justices agreed that by allowing debt collection calls to cellphones Congress "impermissibly favored debt-collection speech over political and other speech, in violation of the First Amendment," Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote (PDF). And seven justices agreed that the 2015 exception should be stricken from the law. "Americans passionately disagree about many things. But they are largely united in their disdain for robocalls," Kavanaugh noted at the outset of his opinion.
Six justices agreed that by allowing debt collection calls to cellphones Congress "impermissibly favored debt-collection speech over political and other speech, in violation of the First Amendment," Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote (PDF). And seven justices agreed that the 2015 exception should be stricken from the law. "Americans passionately disagree about many things. But they are largely united in their disdain for robocalls," Kavanaugh noted at the outset of his opinion.
Does the law do anything really? (Score:5, Insightful)
I still get tons of robocalls, is this decision really going to make a difference?
I guess ofd nothing else, it prevents it from getting worse...
It's long been said whitelists do not work but I am really just about on the edge of basically using a whitelist anyway, as I no longer answer any call I do not know, all of them go to voice mail. I almost wish there would be a system where someone would have to submit a formal request to me to contact me via phone number, and they couldn't;t even use my number unless I agreed explicitly beforehand.
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Yes it is normal (Score:3, Interesting)
It's the norm, and it sucks as much as you might imagine. Spam blocking apps like NoMoRobo and Hiya are mandatory. Sorry you get affected by some of that while traveling. :-(
Probably the number you call is not on the national Do Not Call registry [donotcall.gov] either, might make it worse.. Next time you travel, maybe try registering it when you get the number and see if that helps..
I'm seriously at the point where whatever candidate offers to use seal teams to practice wet-work on all heads of active telemarketing com
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I'm seriously at the point where whatever candidate offers to use seal teams to practice wet-work on all heads of active telemarketing companies gets my vote.
Waste of precious government resources. Indiscriminate airstikes is the answer, with maximum collateral damage. We want to incentivize immediate lynching of your neighbor if you discover he's making robocalls, to prevent the bombs getting you to. That way we'll only need to bomb half as many targets.
Does that seem like overkill? There is no such thing as overkill when it comes to telemarketers.
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Look who it is responding to SuperKendall. Seems you two so commonly go together. Wonder why that is?
Ultraviolence as a solution is no surprise coming from you though. Lynching? Sure, that's a word that comes to mind. Any uniform ideas for these lynching do-gooders? Maybe a little cross burning to go with it?
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Look who it is responding to SuperKendall. Seems you two so commonly go together. Wonder why that is?
There are only a half-dozen sane frequent posters left on Slashdot.
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Maxim 37: There is no "overkill." There is only "open fire" and "reload."
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That's on my mouse pad!
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Tighten up the law and allow recompense of each victim, the cost of receiving an unsolicited call. Cost of energy, cost on equipment and cost of time of the call receiver. Make them pay the fine and then force them into bankruptcy by making them pay compensation to each person the called, each time they called them, only has to be say $25 per call but it would bankrupt them every time and don't forget to target those who paid them.
It is not a matter of free speech because the speech is not free to those wh
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The problem with non-bombing solutions is that it's hard to enforce outside the US, and people will be at it again after bankruptcy.
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I'm seriously at the point where whatever candidate offers to use seal teams to practice wet-work on all heads of active telemarketing companies gets my vote.
Millions of people likely feel the same. I don't understand why national politicians don't see this.
Trump would have no credibility if he promised to crack down on robocalls, because he has done nothing in four years.
But if Biden promised action and made it a campaign issue, it may win him millions of votes. It would certainly diminish the perception that he is disconnected from the concerns of ordinary Americans.
Re:Yes it is normal (Score:4, Insightful)
Any candidate promising to do away would Daylight Savings Time is an automatic shoe-in.
Re: Yes it is normal (Score:4, Insightful)
Biden has been in public office for 4+ decades. I do not recall the "Biden Amendment" to any telecom bills that would in any way even pretend to address spam calls.
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Politicians don't waste their time on amendments that have zero chance of passing unless they are trying to make some kind of statement. If he is in the running for POTUS though he could make it a campaign promise and there is a decent chance he could get it through.
Leaked internal GOP data suggests they think the Democrats could take the White House and Senate from them, so what he promises has a decent chance of actually happening.
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He was a Senator for 36 years. The "Biden Amendment" couldn't have really happened when he was VP. Since the TCPA was passed in 1991, it would have seemed that the issue was resolved. It was agreed to in the Senate via voice vote so it's hard to tell whether he voted for/against it. That said, cell phone spanning wasn't nearly as bad as it is now when Biden left office. Pinning blame on him makes as much sense as blaming Reagan, Bush, or Clinton.
Re: Yes it is normal (Score:2)
I'm not blaming him. I'm saying he has zero track record of caring about it. Is there even a single public Biden quote that robocalls suck and something should be done to stop them? One?
Re: Yes it is normal (Score:2)
Hah, go figure! He's got my vote!
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It's the norm, and it sucks as much as you might imagine. Spam blocking apps like NoMoRobo and Hiya are mandatory
Too bad you don't have a Pixel. It deals with all of that by default, easy as pie.
Still, there isn't much good you can expect from a technicologically backwards company like Apple. I'm sorry you're going through those troubles.
DoNotCall works fairly well (Score:4, Informative)
I'm in Canada but pick up a travel sim for data when I vacation in Mexico as it is significantly cheaper. These plans are always some kind of USA T-Mobile/AT&T number and plan with unlimited Mexico roaming. I'm always inundated with spam calls and texts. I was never sure if that was the norm for Americans or if it's because that number/plan is whored around weekly.
America has a national "do not call" [donotcall.gov] opt-in list that supposedly deals with this. You can opt-in easily by phone directly by calling their number, or slightly less conveniently online. In theory, this should get you out of unwanted calls for some time period - I think it might be 5 years.
DoNotCall.gov automatically removes numbers when they are transferred or disconnected, so the SIM phone number is therefore not on that list due to reassignment. Next time you vacation, register the SIM number with the site listed above and see if that helps.
Telemarketers are required to update their lists from DoNotCall.gov at least once every 31 days, so register your number a couple weeks in advance of your vacation (if you can).
Re: DoNotCall works fairly well (Score:4, Informative)
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Which I presume is a list that has been hacked and used to make more calls.
Our government cant do shit right that is important. You think they can get this right? Hahahahhhaaa
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In my experience, registering a new number on the national do not call list essentially confirms that new number is active. Robocalls explode directly after a registration.
Much like every other national program, it's achieved exactly the opposite of what it's purported to do. The question is whether that's by design or incompetence. You'd think Occam's Razor, but at some point the law of averages would suggest SOMETHING would do as it was supposed to if that were the case.
Re:Does the law do anything really? (Score:5, Informative)
It's not normal any longer, but there was a spike for a while.
About 3-4 years ago a group started doing robocalls where they would spoof the call to look like it came from a local number. US phone numbers are 10 digits, ###-###-##### where the first 3 are the "area code" and the next 3 are the "exchange." So if those number match, then the chances are the caller is in your local town. I made the mistake a few years ago of picking-up a telemarketing call from my area code+exchange, and pushing the "opt-out" button in their menu. NEVER DO THAT! It just tells them that someone picked-up and listened, so call more! I spent the next year getting about 2-3 calls daily. That lasted for about a year. After that, a multi-million dollar fine was levied against a few telemarketing operations, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) opened-up the rules allowing phone companies to block calls, and congress passed a law expanding the FCC's power on this (I think).
At this point, I get about 1 per month. But I think it was bad enough to change people's behavior. I used to answer any call I got to my cell phone. Now I only answer calls from known numbers. I could probably revert to my old habit now, but I still fear accidentally picking-up and getting 2-3 calls a day again.
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For the last year I've been getting calls from Canadian telemarketers. I initially managed to block them by blacklisting the numbers at my VoIP service, so it wouldn't
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I still get those stupid "local number" calls. Hilariously, I know almost no one that has a local number here... everyone brought their number when they moved here or are in the neighboring zip code. So if I get one with my same area code, I instantly know it's a garbage call.
I still get about 2-3 a day. At its peak, I was getting them every 1-2 hours, even sometimes in the middle of the night (I had to start leaving my phone set to auto-silent mode from 11 pm to 7 am).
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Well, it's not normal for me. I've never had either text or voice spam on my cell....
Re:Does the law do anything really? (Score:4, Interesting)
If nothing else, when robocalls are illegal, only lawbreakers make robocalls. Which means that you know it's not a legitimate call. There's something to be said for certainty.
Re:Does the law do anything really? (Score:4, Insightful)
If nothing else, when robocalls are illegal, only lawbreakers make robocalls. Which means that you know it's not a legitimate call. There's something to be said for certainty.
And politicians. The "do not call" registry law explicitly cuts out an exception for campaigns to call you anyway. Which is exactly the sort of slime which qualifies someone to be a politician, so they use it in spades especially in September and October.
The other thing that speaks volumes to the narcissism needed to be a politician is that they think doing this is somehow a good idea. As if, having expressed my desire to not be spammed on the registry, in their heads they're so important that I will somehow welcome their call and end up having a good impression of whichever jackass ignored my stated preference and called me anyway? Yeah right. They're spending their time and money making negative impressions and have their heads too far up their posteriors to even realize it.
But you repeat yourself (Score:3, Funny)
only lawbreakers make robocalls. ... And politicians.
"And"?
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And politicians. The "do not call" registry law explicitly cuts out an exception for campaigns
Charities are also exempted. Of course, most "charities" that make robocalls are actually scams that use little if any of their donations for good causes.
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There is a way to get around this. When you tell them "Put me on your Do Not Call List" they'll say that they aren't required to have once since they're a political or polling organization. At that point my reply is, "If I were to swear at you or threaten your organization you have a list you'd put my number on to make sure I don't get called again, right? Put me on that list." Seems to work pretty well, I only have to do it three or four times per election cycle and the calls stop.
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Wait'll you find out that political incumbents get to mail some campaign materials for free [columbian.com] (i.e. on our dime). The congressman for my district disguises these as "informational" mailings telling us what he's accomplished in Congress each month.
Re:Does the law do anything really? NO BUT (Score:1)
from duckduckgo search cell phone block all calls from an area code
then pick How to block specific area and country codes on Android
I also have from Play Store CallDetector that allows reporting of call to help
I used to have one that rerouted call to company that killed bad ones.
Also get on the FFC Do Not Call program.
My Panasonic home phone attached to Spectrum [only allows 25 blocks] holds
like 5000 blocks along with "begin with" and "end with" and has 1500 white list.
Re:Does the law do anything really? (Score:4, Insightful)
I still get tons of robocalls, is this decision really going to make a difference?
Several years ago it became illegal to robocall landlines in the same way. The FCC has never found a way of enforcing the law, and we get just as many robocalls as ever. This cellphone ban will have the same fate.
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Yes and no. It used to be the case that all legitimate, big companies would do robocalling. These bans keep those from happening.
As another pointed out above, now, if you receive a robocall you can be SURE that it's an illegal scam. That _is_ helpful. Even if we can't completely stop it - at least we can be knowledgeable and make appropriate decisions (hangup).
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Right. There is this assumption that because laws don't do ENOUGH that they don't do ANYTHING.
Re:Does the law do anything really? (Score:4, Informative)
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The funny thing is that anti-phone-spam laws work pretty well in other countries (I’m in Australia, for example, and never get them). So it’s not that this problem can’t be solved; it’s that it can’t be solved in America.
Unfortunately, telecom companies make money off of companies getting access to their systems, and have no interest in shutting that down.
For Debt Collecting Yes (Score:3)
The scams are mostly overseas, but most folks don't borrow money from overseas companies.
This isn't for everyone, but it does work. (Score:1)
You can forward all calls to a Google Voice number, which serves two purposes. First, it has spam call blocking. Second, it'll give you an accurate enough text summary of calls. This will let you identify spam calls at a glance if they get through the filter.
I don't think anyone here has to be told what the drawbacks of using a Google service are, but this is in my experience an effective solution to spam calls, and you can turn it off at a moment's notice by disabling call forwarding on your phone.
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>"It's long been said whitelists do not work"
Said by whom? Works fine for me. I just wish I could do it on my land line, as well. It won't work for someone who depends on receiving unknown callers, but few people with non-business phones need such calls.
Whitelisting won't stop the calls coming in, but it will stop the annoyance of the calls. I combine it with a very long voicemail greeting that contains disconnect tones, then message saying they will have to wait, then some white noise, then 20 secon
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I just disabled my voicemail entirely.
Anyone who needs to contact me can do so via email or text. Voicemail was a bad idea from the start and is poorly implemented, it's slow and doesn't support direct call-back. Just say no.
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>"I just disabled my voicemail entirely."
The thought had crossed my mind. But there are cases where I just have to allow for the unexpected. All I really want is the ability to force the caller to dial some random digits that are spoken in the greeting before it will allow them to record. If I could perform the voicemail function on the phone instead of the CO, this could be done (in theory). Of course, Android wouldn't allow it. Also, it couldn't take messages if the phone were off or off-net.
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In and of itself no. What it does do is allow the FCC to enforce it and punish those who violate it. The problems we are currently having have a lot to do with a phone system infrastructure that was, much like the internet, designed to be robust and reliable. Not necessarily secure or accountable. This is exploited by robocallers both domestic and overseas and they can be difficult to trace or block. Remember, the first PSTN system dates back to the 1800's. Bell could never have envisioned robocallers mucki
I used to get tons of robocalls (Score:2)
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There are two robocalls that I don't mind... (Score:4, Informative)
The second robocall that I don't mind getting is one from my bank or CC card company telling me to call them back at my earliest convenience about a confidential matter that they will never disclose in the call. The number they give to call back is the same number that is on the back of my bank client card and/or credit card. The two times it has happened to me so far were both in connection to suspicious purchases.
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The second robocall that I don't mind getting is one from my bank or CC card company telling me to call them back at my earliest convenience about a confidential matter that they will never disclose in the call. The number they give to call back is the same number that is on the back of my bank client card and/or credit card. The two times it has happened to me so far were both in connection to suspicious purchases.
Those aren't robocalls. A robocall is when a machine works its way through all the phone numbers and happens to hit you.
I imagine you also think that email lists you signed up for but don't want are called spam.
Re:There are two robocalls that I don't mind... (Score:4, Insightful)
>"Those aren't robocalls. A robocall is when a machine works its way through all the phone numbers and happens to hit you."
Not correct. A robocall is any call that is automatically dialed by computer and connects/greets you without a human behind it, usually with a pre-recorded or computer-generated message.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
What you are describing is a type of brute-force, sequential spamming system. It is a sub-category of robocalls.
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I usually pick up (well, usually I don't, but sometimes I'm expecting a call from a number I don't know ahead of time, like my bank's loan departmen
Re:There are two robocalls that I don't mind... (Score:4, Informative)
" A robocall is when a machine works its way through all the phone numbers and happens to hit you."
Wrong. That is called wardialing.
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I think the law does not apply if you are actively doing business with the company, so those calls are okay.
Oh, Thank God (Score:2)
The Schwartzeneger effect (Score:2)
The result? I voted for the other guy. The guy that didn't spam my answering machine 2-3 times a day.
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Of course, you're assuming that the calls weren't from the other guy.
Who answers their phone anymore anyway? (Score:3)
Millennials, Xennials, Gen Z, and onward do not answer their phones in the first place.
There are only three classes people who call my cell phone that I answer the call
- My mom
- My wife
- A work contact who is in my contacts list
Anyone else, *ANYONE* else, you're straight to voicemail, and if it was actually something important you'd be emailing me.
So frankly, I don't know nor care if I am being called by people or robots, it's all the same nonsense.
And yet... (Score:2)
... I still get several of these weekly....
And that's why polls don't mean anything anymore (Score:2)
It used to cost money (Score:2)
The ban on cell phones was mostly put in place when people had very limited minute plans and receiving a call cost precious minutes. Now, the vast majority of people have unlimited minutes or more than they will ever use. Robocalls don't cost money now, just time. I could see that change affecting some future court decisions. That said, with the ability to move phone #s from land lines to cell to VOIP it would seem extremely difficult to determine what is a cell #.