#235: Hasta La Vista, Robocalls?!

Tech Policy Podcast

TechFreedom

Technology

4.8 • 45 Ratings

🗓️ 6 August 2018

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The FCC welcomed Comments on how to interpret what an Automatic Telephone Dialing Systems(ATDS) is under the TCPA, which targets telephone solicitations that rely upon equipment that have the capacity to store or produce numbers using a random or sequential number generator, and to dial those numbers without human intervention. This comes after the ACC International v. FCC ruling where the FCC’s interpretation of an ATDS in its’ 2015 Declaratory Ruling and Order was held as overly broad. That interpretation encompassed all technology with both the present and theoretical capacity as an ATDS, which meant smartphones would be viewed as an ATDS. Will the FCC revert back to a broader interpretation or will the narrower approach prevail? Today we welcome Charlie Kennedy, Adjunct Fellow for TechFreedom, and Jim Dunstan, General Counsel for TechFreedom, to discuss which interpretation of an ATDS is best for both consumers and businesses. For more info, see TechFreedom’s statement on the issue, and the comments we filed with the FCC.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the tech policy podcast. I'm Ashken Kazarian. On today's show, we're going to talk about the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 and all the ramifications that are happening with it today.
0:20.2	Joining me, I have Jim Dunstan, General Counsel of Tech Freedom.
0:24.7	Jim, thank you for joining me.
0:25.8	Great to be back.
0:26.9	And the first time on the show, Charlie Kennedy, adjunct fellow at Tech Freedom.
0:32.5	Charlie, we're really excited to have you here.
0:34.4	Great.
0:34.7	Good to be here.
0:35.7	So, guys, TCPA was past the year I was born,
0:39.7	so I know very little about it, even though I had 27 years to figure it out. Why is it crucial for us
0:46.3	to know what it is? Well, the TCPA is what Congress came up with to try to regulate what was
0:51.2	a really kind of dire problem, circa 1991, which is that telemarketers
0:58.3	had discovered dialing technologies that could actually generate numbers randomly or in sequence.
1:04.9	And what that means is that you can put an algorithm into a device.
1:09.8	And the algorithm just knows what the format of the numbering plan is.
1:14.5	The 10 number format, it knows what the area codes are,
1:18.1	it knows what the central office codes are.
1:19.8	So it just starts cranking out numbers randomly or in sequence.
1:24.4	It's a very simple algorithm.
1:26.4	And what the FCC, excuse me, what Congress was concerned about
1:30.1	was that when you do that, you pick up 911 numbers,
1:34.8	you pick up numbers of hospitals,
	...

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