CM Harrington (@octothorpe.mastodon.online.ap.brid.gy)

In a press release late last month, FCC chairman Brendan Carr said “We must bring meaningful robocall relief to consumers.” In another press release two days later, the commission wrote that “Stopping illegal calls is the FCC’s top consumer protection priority.” At face value, this emphasis should be welcome news to the American public. Late last year a report from the consumer advocacy group U.S. PIRG Education Fund found that Americans had received 2.14 billion robocalls per month in 2024. That’s only about six per month on a per-capita basis, but they aren’t evenly distributed. It’s not unheard of for some Americans to get over 100 spam calls in a day. But the FCC’s cure might be worse than the disease. Among other sweeping changes, the era of the burner phone could end with the rollout of new “Know Your Customer” rules voted on by the FCC on April 30, as noted by the blog of the D.C. telecom law firm Wiley Rein. Customers would, according to the proposed rules, have to present a government ID, a physical address, a full legal name, and an existing phone number. FCC rules at this phase are not yet in force, and would not go into effect for a year after full approval. The commission is still seeking comment, and is asking to hear privacy concerns specifically. A May 6 blog post on the website of the civil liberties group Reclaim the Net says, “The result would be an identity-verification regime covering one of the last semi-anonymous communication tools available to ordinary Americans.” Indeed, easy access to phones for people in dire situations, such as refugees or people fleeing abusive relationships, is seen as a hugely pro-social use of the relative anonymity provided almost accidentally by low-cost prepaid phone service providers. In addition to cracking down on anonymity, there are proposed “red flags” that may trigger scrutiny from the FCC. Using a virtual office, or certain commercial addresses when asked for a physical address, operating a website or using an email address deemed suspicious, and not being traceable to the state claimed in the address provided. Paying for phone service with cryptocurrency could also become an FCC red flag. “By screening new and renewing customers, originating voice service providers are in the best position to prevent scammers and other bad actors from flooding telecommunications networks with illegal calls,” the FCC press release about the proposed rule change says. The release lays much of the blame at the feet of telecom providers, saying “Commission rules already require originating providers to take ‘affirmative, effective’ measures to ‘know its customers,’ and ensure that its services are not used to originate illegal call traffic.” But it claims that some are “not doing enough,” and the result is “more illegal calls that defraud Americans and making it difficult to hold the criminals making these [callers] accountable.” Consequently, the enforcement regime these rules would put in place is intriguing. Per Wiley Rein, it would be a fine of $2,500 per call, and _against an offending telecom provider—_ not the customer making the calls. The FCC would basically be deputizing telecom companies as ID verifiers and scrutinizers of user behavior, and they would be highly motivated to crack down on their customers heavily, because $2,500 per call in a country with billions of robocalls per year could be devastating. https://gizmodo.com/fcc-attempts-to-solve-robocall-problem-by-potentially-creating-even-bigger-privacy-problem-2000756762