New legislation would give the FCC authority to reduce spoofed calls and robocalls, potentially causing legitimate businesses to face more lawsuits and enforcement actions, according to a blog post from TCPAland.
11/20/2018 12:00
ACA International recently reported on the bipartisan proposed Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence (TRACED) Act, S. 3655, that would require call authentication and blocking adoption, among other changes, but may have adverse consequences for legitimate businesses and callers.
In a new blog post, Eric Troutman, partner at Womble Bond Dickinson, analyzes the proposed legislation and its impact on curbing robocalls as well as businesses and consumers.
“In fairness, the TRACED Act–proposed jointly by Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey, a Democrat, and Senator John Thune, a South Dakota Republican–is a good news/extremely bad news situation,” Troutman writes. “The good news is that it seeks to give the FCC the authority it has always needed–and never had–to require call identity validation and cut down on spoofed calls. That’s super critical stuff and a really big deal. The bad news is that it modifies the existing Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”) to encourage the FCC to bring more lawsuits against more businesses and gives the FCC an even heavier cudgel (sort of) to threaten folks with. It also requires the FCC to get together with the CFPB(!) and the DOJ to discuss why more regulators aren’t currently enforcing the TCPA and to encourage other agencies to get busy!"
"In other words, Congress is about to go ‘all in’ on the TCPA and encourage the FCC and other governmental agencies to enforce the statute right alongside private actors. This just at a time that the FCC is currently working on interpreting the reach of the TCPA in light of its recent failed power grab in expanding the statute.”
Read the complete post on TCPAland as well as ACA International’s coverage with comments from Leah Dempsey, vice president and senior counsel of federal advocacy.
ACA also encourages its members to continue report their experiences related to call blocking and call labeling on ACA’s online Call Blocking Intake Form.
Related Content from ACA International:
Legislation Aimed at Mitigating Robocall Scams Lacks Important Protections for Legitimate Calls
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