Federal Agencies Need to do More on Robocalls, Senate Hears
Lax DOJ enforcement lets fines go uncollected, witnesses said.
Jake Neenan
WASHINGTON, October 24, 2023 – Federal agencies need to do more to tackle robocalls, experts told lawmakers on Tuesday.
For its part, the Federal Communications Commission has been taking more aggressive action on fraudulent calls and texts in recent months. The commission moved last week to block call traffic from 20 companies for lax robocall policies, and the agency has issued more than $500 million in fines for scam calls in the last year.
But that has not been enough to curb the longstanding issue, said Senator Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., said at a Senate subcommittee hearing.
“Scammers used our telecom networks to defraud Amwericans out of an estimated $39 billion in 2022 alone,” he said. “That’s enough money to provide affordable broadband to the 21 million households enrolled in the Affordable Connectivity Program for eight years.”
Very few of the fines issued by the FCC have been collected. For Megan Brown, a lawyer representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, that comes down to lax DOJ enforcement.
Josh Becu, the head of USTelecom’s Industry Traceback Group, agreed, telling the Subcommittee on Communications, Media, and Broadband that Congress should push the DOJ to prioritize robocall enforcement.
“The FCC’s efforts really run out of steam if the [Justice] Department is not there to get them across the finish line and actually collect on some of those forfeitures,” Brown said.
She said Congress could push the Department to prioritize money for robocall investigations and enforcement, or set up a dedicated robocall office.
Margot Saunders, a senior attorney at the National Consumer Law Center, said the FCC should move faster to block call traffic from offending voice providers in the future.
“If the FCC were to adopt a system under which it quickly suspends the ability of a voice service provider to participate in the network once that provider is determined to be a repeat offender,” Saunders said, “we think that would be a magic bullet.”
The commission announced yesterday a proposed notice of inquiry seeking comment on using artificial intelligence to root out robocall fraud. Commissioners will vote on the proposal at the FCC’s November 15 open meeting.
