John Oliver Fights Automated Calls … Calling Ajit Pai and the FCC

The comedian John Oliver again attacks the Federal Communications Commission, this time calling for action against automated calls while launching his own wave of automated calls against FCC commissioners.

In a 17-minute segment yesterday on HBO's Last week tonightOliver describes the plague of automated calls and blames Pai for not doing more to stop them. Oliver finished the segment by announcing that he and his staff were sending automated calls every 90 minutes to the five FCC commissioners.

"Hi FCC, here 's John Customer Service," said Oliver' s recorded voice during the call. "Congratulations, you've just had a chance to reduce automated calls in America today … automated calls are incredibly boring, and the person who can stop them is you! You're talking again in 90 minutes – here's bagpipe music. "

Pai celebrated the loss of an FCC court in the Robocall case

Oliver pointed out that Pai opposed the FCC's anti-call rules of the Obama era and was "extremely happy when they were overthrown". Oliver was referring to a court decision issued in March 2018 in which federal judges said that a 2015 FCC order improperly treated all Americans with a smartphone as a caller to the caller. Pai praised the court 's decision, as we reported at the time.

Pai did not ignore the problem of automated calls. He publicly criticized operators for not quickly deploying the new Caller ID authentication technology, and threatened "regulatory intervention" if they did not do so by the end of the year. Pai's FCC also imposed heavy fines on robocallers and expanded the power of carriers to block automated calls.

Oliver argued that Pai had not done enough. He said the FCC "could require [carriers] to offer free call blocking services "and that Pai has so far simply invited the operators to adopt the caller authentication technology instead of forcing them to do it.

Oliver also mentioned an ongoing procedure in which the FCC could change the definition of automatic numbering. "What the experts really fear that Pai can do," Oliver said, "is bending to pressure from groups such as telemarketers and banks and is proposing a new, more precise definition of automatic dialing that would limit what would be considered a automated appeal. "This would limit consumers' right to sue appellants, Oliver said.

Robocalling the FCC is easy, says Oliver

In May 2017, Oliver invited viewers to file public comments against Pai's plan to remove network neutrality rules. The FCC website quickly broke down, but the FCC said it was the result of "several distributed denial of service attacks" and not because of Oliver's viewers. More than a year later, Pai admitted that the FCC had lied about the dismantling of his public comment system following DDoS attacks, but he criticized his former director of computer services for providing inaccurate information.

We contacted Pai 's office about Oliver' s latest cash game today, and we will update this story if we get an answer.

Oliver does not need the help of viewers to call the FCC. "This time, unlike our past encounters [with the FCC], I do not need to ask hordes of real people to bomb [the FCC] with messages, because with the miracle of phone calls, I can now do everything by myself, "Oliver said.

"It turns out that the robotic call is so easy that it only took our technician 15 minutes to figure out how to do it," Oliver said. He pointed out that "phone calls are now so economical and technology so widely available that almost everyone has the ability to spend a considerable number of calls". (We discussed this problem, focusing on the identity of the spoofed caller, in this function of 2017).

Under US law, political calls to landline phones are permitted without the prior consent of the recipient. Such calls to mobile phones require the prior express consent of the caller, but Oliver likely directed his automated calls to the commissioner's office phones.

S addressing FCC commissioners, Oliver said, "If you want to tell us that you do not consent to being called to the procedure, that's absolutely no problem." Simply write a certified letter to the FCC. Address that we buried in the first chapter of Moby Dick this is currently scrolling through the screen … find the address, write us a letter and we will stop the calls immediately. "