FCC proposal would punish international callers – TechCrunch

While the FCC and Congress are setting new rules to ban (if all goes well) automated calls forever, there are short-term solutions that can help in the interim – a solution that can happen in a few weeks. A new proposal from the FCC allows the agency to tackle scams from abroad or use other methods to evade current spoofing laws.

The rule is not entirely new in that it follows Ray Baum's law, which was pbaded last year and which, among other things, consolidates the law of truth in the identity of the caller.

Previously, the latter law prohibited the fraudulent machining of numbers, a practice that greatly simplified the calls, but it only applied to calls from the country. This has opened a huge loophole for fraudsters, who do not lack the means to make international calls. Ray Baum's law amends these rules to specifically prohibit the usurpation of international identities, as well as paging techniques using modern infrastructure like VoIP.

But making it illegal does not necessarily allow the FCC to attack criminals. If nothing in the official rules of the agency formally states how to locate and take action against those who violate the new law, it does not have the power to do so. This is the purpose of this new rule.

President Ajit Pai's proposal will be made public later this week and put to the vote at the FCC's August 1 public meeting. If pbaded, the agency will be able to do what it did with the US appellants, except abroad.

Naturally tracking down fraudsters in a foreign country – and perhaps not a country too friendly – is a beast very different from capturing and imposing national operations. An FCC official at a news conference about the new rules described operations as extremely complex, involving multiple front companies and sophisticated darkening techniques. (The FTC has encountered similar difficulties.)

But many robocallers may have worked so far, baduming, rightly, that they were essentially safe from prosecution by the US authorities. Once impunity is no longer guaranteed, continued operations may be considered unnecessary risk (some hope), and some scammers may lose their means and move on.

In terms of longer-term solutions, operators are working to put in place a new system to block automated calls more fully, although some fear that it may not be enabled by default or not bill the service. A summit will be held on Thursday where industry progress and intentions will be measured.