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John Oliver tackles robocalls by flooding FCC with spam calls:
"The host of HBO's Last Week Tonight has come up with a new way to encourage FCC commissioners to take a harder stance on robocalls: by robocalling them. On his show Sunday evening, Oliver debuted a system ... that robocalls FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and fellow commissioners every 90 minutes.
Can we call it treason? I don't think so, this guy is foreign, from U.K. Time to deport?
John Oliver Fights Robocalls. by Robocalling Ajit Pai and the FCC:
Comedian John Oliver is taking aim at the Federal Communications Commission again, this time demanding action on robocalls while unleashing his own wave of robocalls against FCC commissioners.
In a 17-minute segment yesterday on HBO's Last Week Tonight, Oliver described the scourge of robocalls and blamed Pai for not doing more to stop them. Oliver ended the segment by announcing that he and his staff are sending robocalls every 90 minutes to all five FCC commissioners.
"Hi FCC, this is John from customer service," Oliver's recorded voice says on the call. "Congratulations, you've just won a chance to lower robocalls in America today... robocalls are incredibly annoying, and the person who can stop them is you! Talk to you again in 90 minutes—here's some bagpipe music."
[...] When it came to robocalling the FCC, Oliver didn't need viewers' help. "This time, unlike our past encounters [with the FCC], I don't need to ask hordes of real people to bombard [the FCC] with messages, because with the miracle of robocalling, I can now do it all by myself," Oliver said.
"It turns out robocalling is so easy, it only took our tech guy literally 15 minutes to work out how to do it," Oliver also said. He noted that "phone calls are now so cheap and the technology so widely available that just about everyone has the ability to place a massive number of calls."
It would be a shame to waste all that time between phone calls doing nothing. Maybe John Oliver could be persuaded to add a 100 more people and maybe another 435 people while he's at it?
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday March 17 2019, @01:42AM (1 child)
Why is it illegal for me to misrepresent myself to a business, but they can spoof their identity to get me to take their call?
If I make an "agreement" with a caller that they accept penalty of perjury for placing calls using fraudulent info, they weasel out that their call placing technology did not recognize it. Why doesn't that same paradigm hold for me if I rattle the cage of a businessman, and I missed a clause in his contract.
"By placing this call. You agree under penalty of perjury that all information is true and correct. Wilfully submitting incorrect informatation subject to $10,000 fine. Continuation of this call applied constitutes acceptance of these terms."
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 17 2019, @04:40AM
The problem there is the word "wilfully". It is very hard to prove wilfulness.
Instead the law should be such that any false information, willful nor not, brings down the fines hammer on the head of the person placing the call.
I.e., you pull an 'oops, sorry', you get fined too. You'll learn to be triple extra careful the next time.