Increased robocalls across the nation have become more than an annoyance and now can be characterized as a threat to American consumerism, said U.S. Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR), Republican leader of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee.
“I have done 20 town halls in my district so far this year and I can’t think of a time that this question didn’t come up about what we are doing to stop robocalls,” said Rep. Walden during the committee’s April 30 hearing on the topic. “This has escalated to a real problem for consumers and they’ve had it. And they’ve rightfully had it and we’ve had it. So you’re seeing an all-hands-on-deck approach here.”
Rep. Walden called for public-private partnerships between industry, consumer groups and the government to create more friction against the criminals making robocalls.
“… I call them criminals because that’s what they are – and the more focused public-private partnerships amongst industry, consumer groups, and the government are in rooting out this problem, I think we can make real strides here in helping American consumers,” he said.
American consumers in one year received 2.4 billion robocalls a month, the congressman said, and in 2019 almost half the calls made to cell phones in the United States are expected to be spam.
Rep. Walden said robocalls originate from bad actors who use autodialing technology to scam consumers by maliciously masking their caller ID information.
“I believe it is important to state that we make a clear distinction in targeting those parties that have malicious intent as opposed to those who do not,” he said. “Our clearest and quickest path for enacting law is to go after those that have malicious intent. To go beyond that, we will undermine services that many Americans depend upon every day.”