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the second provision we enforce is the truth in color i.d. act of 2009 and that is the act that says it's unlawful to spoof, falsify the caller i.d. information if the purpose of doing so is to defraud, cause harm or wrongfully obtain something of value. so those two things dove tailed with each other nicely because we see problems with both of those things. there is a huge number of illegal robocalls and that triggers the tcpa and the illegal robocallers, the worst of the worst, the ones that are out there trying to defraud consumers use spoofing as a way

to hide from law enforcement, to hide from consumers, finding out who they are and exercising their right to pursue legal remedies in court on the consumer level and hide from our carriers. our carrier allies that are trying to locate these guys and block them. so the fcc -- it's very important for us that we exercise both of those laws to the fullest extent. those are the tools that we have to take down illegal robocalls and that's pretty much what i do 24/7 when we're looking at cases that we take. that's our tool box. >> thank you. >> so i also work a lot on the telephone consumer act more on the policy implementation perspective and what folks may not know is robocall is a term of art under the fcc's rules and just say at the beginning not all robocalls are bad and there

are consumers that they want to get to express their consent and nevertheless, the tcpa and the commission's rules define for landline phone, they're pre-recorded and artificial voice messages and are also telemarketing. wireless is a little bit different. it's calls that leave auto dialed or pre-recorded voice messages or are made with an auto dialer and it doesn't matter if those calls are telemarketing or non-telemarketing so there is a distinction whether the call is to a landline or wireless phone ask it's somethi and it's something that we think a lot around. we work on the truth in caller i.d. act which is a little bit more. >> well, i don't think there's any additional statutes i have to add. you talk about the standards a bit later. >> sure. thank you. >> from the federal trade

commission, we can work the legal calls on the federal trade commission act and it's a discreet set of rules that govern telemarketing -- that are a part of the telemarketing sales role to prohibit virtually all robocalls unless the consumer has given express, written permission to that seller to receive a robocall. now -- and this is a tighter regulatory scheme than the do not call scheme because the consumer does not have to be on the national do not call registry for the robocall to be illegal, but i think a real difference between the fcc's regulatory scheme and the ftc is the definition of what is telemarketing. for us, with the federal trade commission it has to be the sale of the good or product or the solicitation of a donation. informational calls are not covered. so when michelle and kevin gave the example of the school call

and the doctor's office call. those are not telemarketing under the federal trade commission's rule and one difference on scope of coverage. calls that you sound board technology or avatar technology which we often see used for telefunders and those soliciting donations on behalf of others and the ftc permits those robocalls and they're not permitted. thank you. >> primary authority comes from unfair and deceptive practices act. we have the florida telemarketing act that we can enforce in court. we also have the ability to enter into federal court and enforce conditions of the tcpa and the tsr and we have partnered with the federal trade commission and have obtained successful results. >> great. thank you. well, clearly from what we heard this morning from chairman pie and acting chairman olhousen and

attorney general bondi's priority, certainly dealing with robocalls is at the top of the agenda of many federal and state officials. i'd like to hear from the panelists as to any new actions or initiatives the organizations have commenced to deal with unlawful robocalls including partnerships with each other or partnerships with industry, working with consumer advocates. just generally, are there new actions or initiatives they've undertaken that you'd like to highlight for the folks in attendance? >> i'll take a crack at that. >> sure. >> we've heard talk earlier today about a commission decision back last november and that was one of the first times the commission has really said the voice service providers are our partners in blocking illegal robocalls. if we can stop the robocalls before they ever reach consumers that's a win. so in november the consumer for

the first time said that voice providers can block calls that are highly likely to be illegal. how do we know they're highly likely to be illegal? the commission specified three categories of spoof calls where they found no legitimate robocaller. we heard about this already and the do not originate type of number. we do not make calls from this number, any call purporting to be from this number, enough so please block that source of calls. the second category is the caller i.d. of invalid phone numbers and think of the 000 area code. no legitimate number would want to call from this number. the numbers that haven't been allocated or assigned to anyone yet. again, no reason that a legitimate robocaller would want to make those calls. again, the commissioner in november said voice providers may although they don't have to

block these types of calls before they ever reach consumers. >> the commissioner is looking at others that highly indicate that they might be illegal. these are data analytics where, for example, someone spoofs my number and a voice provider is making a million in a couple of seconds. probably a good indication that that's a spoofer and the commission is developing a record around that and i want to make sure that my ability to make calls and the legitimate subscriber to make calls, and that's a big part of what we're looking at. >> i'm glad you asked that question. just this morning we filed a case against a master robocaller, and ftc against alliance security engaged and making directly and indirectly millions of robocalls including consumers on the do not call registry and using deceptive tactics to use home security

alarms and i suspect not a single person in this room that hasn't received that type of phone call. ian barlowe is one of the lead counsels. there's another case what we strategically identify as kingpins in the robocalling industry whether they're the dialers or voice blasters that are hosting these calls and pushing them out or the main sellers at the top of these affiliate telemarketing networks and we brought a series of these cases. hopefully no one in the room are familiar with them and they're well known in industry and our job, our role has been to strategically target them, identify them and impose as strong, civil injunctive relief. in most of these cases we successfully achieved bans and telemarketing bans. some of the defendants settled and they're banned from selling

home security alarm systems and in other instances, trying to achieve the strongest civil penalty amount as we can, one of the defendants in this case paid $300,000. speaking of partnerships. the state of florida has been a tremendous partner in the fraudulent telemarketing cases which causes enormous economic injury and we forged not just state and federal relationships, but also partnerships with our international colleagues who suffered the same impact of these awful telemarketing calls and with particular telemarketing out of india. >> so one of the things that we are interested in helping along is industry effort to implement shaken and stir. so call authentication. you heard a little bit about this, but essentially the idea is that a carrier and a phone

company can assign phone calls being made and it's a way for a company to vouch for it and this number, this call is coming from the number it says it is coming from. so they're able to include that signature on it. when it's received, whoever is receiving that, the phone company that's going to terminate that call or even the handset manufacturer can determine what to do with this call knowing they know it's from the number it says it's from or it can't be vouched for. so that leaves any person along that chain the ability to make those decisions so the phone companies can block it. a third party anti-spoofing organization can block that or the consumer could, receiving this information say there's no sort of vouching for this. i'm not going to accept this call. it also indicates where calls are verified and they try not to

be fraudulent. it would allow enforcement to trace back and find those people much more easily than the crept process allows. so what the fcc is interested in doing is making sure that these standards have been developed or they're being tested right now and we want to make sure that this process continued to move forward, that it can be deployed broadly or as quickly as possible to help people combat spoofing and illegal spoofing. so that's -- we have a record that's open on this. the north american numbering council is currently consulting on ways to make sure that we can set up the structures necessary to industry to coordinate and collaborate on this to move forward as quickly as we can. >> the florida attorney general's office has a special investigation unit where if we get a consumer complaint about a particular phone call we'll reach out to the carrier and

communicate what the consumer has told us via the complaint and try to have the phone number stopped. however, time is of the essence in these cases and these robocallers are very sophisticated. they change their phone numbers on a very consistent basis so we've had some success. we've also worked with other state agencies and we are constantly in communication with news scams because they're constantly changing and especially those that target veterans and those that target senior citizens within the state and outside and other groups that are sensitive and vulnerable to these types of scams. >> great. >> well, thank you, everyone. one question that had come up in the last panel or one point that came up in the last panel is the difference between unlawful robocalls and lawful robocalls. just curious as to what your organizations do to try to treat these calls differently and in your work. we'll start with denise. >> i think it's easy to

differentiate between the fraudulent telemarketing calls and those that are legitimate. the fraudulent telemarketing calls have consistent red flags and high pressure sales tactic and the offer will end soon and later, i couldn't cancel or get a refund and i could not get in contact with whatever good or service would be provided over the phone. so it is very easy for our investigators and staff to differentiate and sort out those that are, you know, really the fraudulent robocall versus those from legitimate businesses. >> can i say on our side, i mentioned earlier and empowering voice providers to block illegal robocalls. at the same time, call completion of the legitimate calls is also important to the fcc. so what we've done is encourage voice providers and you heard about this earlier to have a mechanism in place and to identify false positives and rectify that situation because no one wants your kid's robocall

to get blocked in the net. similarly you heard the reassigned database and that's an effort by the fcc to make sure that robocalls made by legitimate callers that are desired by consumers are still made and still received. so the mere fact that i give up my phone number to someone else should not mean that i have the phone number, and that's a big part of the initiative to make sure the good robocalls get to the right people even as we move forward to block the worse robocalls. >> i want to underscore from the federal trade commission, the definition of telemarketing is different so that the school call, the doctor calls are not telerobocalls. they're not illegal for purposes of the federal trade commission act, and i think that really is an important distinction. that's not what we're doing any law enforcement and nor would we

and the ftc doesn't distinguish a call to a wire line or a wireless one. those are just not relevant distinctions. i think the world of industry robocalls that are legitimate really is a fairly narrow slice and this is something i've talked to pace about and the ftc has no interest whatsoever in chilling that world, but i do think it's a relatively narrow set in the robocalls that are being placed. >> that's right. and that's certainly tracks what we see from the fcc's side, as well. to add to this, to the extent, the tcpa could potentially draw in more than say, the most abusive types of robocalls. we have the prosecutorial discretion, if you will, to decide what kind of cases to

take and me and my enforcement attorneys are not interested in taking cases against school districts that are, maybe, calling a little more than they should, and we don't have the time or resources to police non-problematic robocalls. so we really look at what are the consumers telling us are problematic robocalls and that's where we'll focus our efforts and that's the irs scams and the microsoft scams and the other, you know, the other -- my favorite are the carpet cleanings and roofing scams that show up quite frequently. we're going after the worst of the worst because they're the ones that need the most attention immediately. >> great. thank you, everyone. >> what would you say is the most important and most significant challenge your organization faces in dealing with illegal robocalls? >> i'll start with this. >> sure. >> spoofing is the gasoline on

the robocalling fire. it allows robocalls, illegal robocalls to thrive, to spread and it makes it very, very difficult for me to find the bad guys and take action against them. that is the most significant challenge for us is going through the process of identifying where those illegal robocalls come from. it's a laborious enforcement process. we have to send a daisy chain of subpoenas from the end recipients carrier, and there is no identifier that we can trust in the call stream information. that's changing which i'm very glad is happening with the shaken and stirred standard being rolled out and another significant change, and it has been folks like u.s. telecom that has gotten together their

trace back group and are now working together to save me, for example, five or six steps in the subpoena process. that group of carriers getting together and sharing information and tracing back the call as far as they can before letting us know, and referring it to us means that that's numerous carriers in the chain that i don't have to contact or subpoena or try to get information from because they've already done that work for me. that has been tremendously helpful, and i couldn't be happier at our continued partnership on that front. >> that has been enormously helpful and we encounter the exact same challenges and how do you work with that? >> i think you talk about challenge. so every month we have upwards

of 400,000 reports of unwanted calls. i'm not saying every one of those is an illegal call and one can presume the vast majority are and the tip of the iceberg and illegal calls received each month. every business day we're putting on public record the consumer reports of some 18,000 phone numbers. so that's a lot of information out there that's a lot of potential targets to work with. so the challenge in law enforcement in this area like in so many area, how do you strategically target so you are getting the biggest bang for the buck. one of the enormous challenge is this has been telemarketing from abroad and we see this in the irs scams and what we call the technical support scams and i am from microsoft and i'm from dell. your computer's infected. we met several times in india with indian authorities with stakeholders and industry

members as well as had a series of meetings here and we've actually been successful in shutting down some of those operations with the indian authorities and particularly with the department of justice here. there was a major crackdown, i think it was back in the fall of 2016 so there are ways to try to combat the illegal telemarketing from abroad and that will continue to pose a real challenge. >> so i think the challenge for sus when we turn our policy lens to one particular type of robocaller and spoofing and try to get a beat on that and robocallers hear about other areas and we hear about neighbors spoofing all of the time and that's a challenge to us and it's gratifying to see so many folks in the space come together and we never worked better than trying to solve the problem with federal partners, as well. a big part of what my bureau does is consumer outreach and it's a challenge to talk to consumers saying we're trying to help and trying to prevent

illegal robocalls and trying to trust that when a phone number pops up on your phone you know who that is and it's okay to pick that up and educate them if they're unsure about the caller to hang up and then google the phone number that came in to see if it's edgi if it's legitimate or not and letting them know what the best method is to protect themselves even if we're trying to work at a higher level to make things better in the future. >> i would echo everything that the panel has mentioned about sleuthing, the international presence and the outreach component. there's also the component of locating the actual rooms where the telemarketing calls are coming from. in central florida where i'm in sunny orlando, but in central florida we have conducted immediate access cases where we enter the telemarketing room and we actually see the

telemarketers set up in the room and we see the network systems that have been built in, but finding those actual roops can become a challenge because they create this web and this maze of shell companies. so from an enforcement point of view that can be a significant challenge, as well. >> thank you. the d.c. circuit issued a number of objections to the 2015, aspects against automatic dialing devices to make uninvited calls. i wonder if our colleagues can describe what the d.c. circuit held and if the panelists can speak to whether that decision is likely to have an impact on the government's ability to deal with unwanted robocalls or not. >> sure. i would say we're digesting the opinion here and on a higher

level the court ruled on a couple of things and the auto dialer which was relevant to wireless calls and the interpretation of the re-assigned numbers and finally revocation of consent and there was one other issue, as well. the d.c. circuit said the past ftc's decision or the interpretation of auto dialer was flawed and that was the big headline from the decision and secondly that the d.c. circuit reversed the past commission's decision on re-assigned numbers including a one-call safe harbor where one caller had one call to find out that a number's been reassigned and after that they're on the hook for liability so the d.c. circuit set that aside and the pass commission's decision on revocations of consent, finding that consumers have the right to revoke pass consent. so again, we're digesting that decision. it's somewhat complex. i think our view here is a lot

of the initiatives that we've taken at the fcc aren't dependent on any tcpa decision or interpretation. the court noted favorably with the re-assigned numbers voted on yesterday and likewise, caller i.d. authentication, and i would expect as the commission's digesting the decision and thinking about next steps these other efforts to protect consumers will proceed. >> the largest couple of cases that we have released in the past year, and the notice of apparent liability that actually proposed fines were based on the truth in caller i.d. act and not on the tcpa which was the focus of the court's action in its most recent decision. so in terms of putting folks like adrian abrahamovic out of business that court decision doesn't really affect our work

to enforce the spoofing laws and even the court's decision on -- we also cited abrahamovic for making illegal robocall, but those robe owe calocalls includ message and under the tcpa the auto dialer issue which is the key focus of the aca decision doesn't really enter into that. so we feel confident that we will continue to bring cases against the adrian abrahamovic's of the world when the mass spoofers and the mass robocallers were engaging in spoofing which violates a separate statute. you will see more from us even after this aca decision. >> thank you. turning to the possible solutions to overcoming

challenges that folks on the panel have mentioned and the changes in the law whether that's statute and regulation be helpful for you in your efforts to try to deal with unlawful robocalls and any of the panelists as to whether they think there are changes in statute and regulation that can be helpful and if so, how could they be helpful? >> so the ftc has been on record i think now, tom, for more than a decade for the repeal of the common carrier exception and it's obsolete and doesn't make sense in this day and age and it hasn't made sense in the last decade or more. it does impede or hinder our ability to go after some bad actors out there, particularly in the reselling market where we do see specific carriers that in effect are hosting robocallers that are placing illegal calls. we alsoen counter in our law enforcement work if they're not

actual carriers they'll purport to be carriers so it just raises our enforcement call singling after them and that's the big one from us. >> the fcc has been on record for a couple of improvements that would help in terms of enforcement. one is extending -- we have a one-year statute of limitations. so extending the statute of limitations to two years instead of one would be enormously helpful. previously, i talked about the difficulty in finding the bad guys when they use spoof numbers and pretty much all of the bad guys spoofed numbers and that slows down our ability to find them which means from a practical perspective, several months may go by even if they're notified from the robocall the day after it happens. it will take us some amount of time to figure out where the call came from and identify

untangled the nest of shell companies like lois mentioned and that eats into that one-year statute of limitations, but from a law enforcement perspective it really isn't. the other change that we have talked about pub luckilicly, anr the tcpa act, and this is just for the robocall violations of the tcpa, if that violator is not an authorization holder, a permit or license holder of the fcc the maximum enforcement action that we can take against that robocallers is to send them a citation which is effectively a legal warning letter, don't do this in the future or you'll get in trouble. the purpose for that as enacted by congress is to make sure that

folks who necessarily aren't well versed in sec law don't get swept up into the more nuanced portion of the communications act which makes sense, but at this point, it is so well known that robocalls are a problem and the targets that we are going after are so clearly and obviously intentionally violating the law that having a warning letter at the outset is really frustrating and it would be helpful to exempt as congress did in the spoofing context to exempt that part of the communications act from the citation requirement. >> thank you. one thing folks have noticed is many of the bad actors are located abroad. what are certain things that are imped ims impediments and are there things that can be done to overcome those obstacles and maybe you

can ask lois to respond to that first. >> we have the act and the ftc has tools that it can seek to obtain information on entities located offshore. so we can issue process and do parts of an investigation. obviously, where there are assets offshore that gets incredibly complicated. we tend, though to see even the indian telemarketers that are targeting u.s. citizens and canadians and others, we will see something in the u.s. and something that we can freeze as part of a federal district court proceeding and in some instances we have defendants who for a variety of reasons are willing to repatriate assets that are located offshore. we've had a fair amount of success, but there is no question this is a challenging

area. >> in terms of shaken and stirred, it should be possible if two countries have these systems in place and they can coordinate these systems appropriately. they should be able to work across borders and it should be able to have international calls be as well and it's something that we hope to see in the future. >> it has boon on it's very challenging when you identify a bad guy robocaller and determine that they are operating overseas. i don't think it's any secret there are some countries that we have great relations -- relationships with, in terms of the united states has a great back and forth and a cooperative relationship for law enforcement purposes and there are other countries for whom that is not at all the case.

and so we have been frustrated before tracing back calls to locations and countries that have a difficult or, you know, even overtly hostile relationship with the united states because there's, you know, practically speaking, very little chance that we are going to be able to persuade the lawmakers or authorities in those jurisdictions to go after their citizens, and help us in those investigations. so that becomes frustrating, but that's where cooperation with the ftc and other elements of the united states federal government, state department and other law enforcement agencies becomes extremely vital to have that communication back and forth. >> want to draw a perfect line. correct me if i'm wrong. much of what i would call the abusive telemarketing where they're selling home alarm systems, medical alert devices

and energy solar panels. i think most of that is emanating from the united states. that what we're seeing and the kingpin telemarketer robocall center might be from the philippines and nicaragua, but the core of that operation and the abuse of the telemarketing operation is in the united states where we see the significant international posts are seeing hard core telemarketing. >> thank you. >> another question that you heard a lot from the first panel about what industry is doing. i would like to hear from each of the panelists as to what's the most important thing that industry does to help you do your job and what could industry do different or better to help you protect consumers from illegal robocalls and maybe we can start at this end with

denise. i think the most helpful information is to help us locate the originating phone calls and to not allow those massive robocalls to keep going through the carrier system, but i, you know, the subpoena responses that we obtained from the companies, success in our investigation, i think more outreach in education to the consumers that there are different apps available and certain things to avoid when you get these robocalls would be helpful especially to those that are senior citizens and we see that in the state of florida where we have a great consumer population of senior citizens, they are not aware of the technology that is available and they're more trusting of people that call on the phone and speak to them. they're more likely to send money for the scams and they don't want to be rude and hang up the phone when they probably should. more outreach and informing consumers and their family members that those tools are out

there and available would greatly assist us from our enforce chlt sid enforcement side. >> one word, innovate. do what you do best. it is remarkable to see the proliferation of call blocking technology thoos have developed over the last several years and sitting from the ftc we're really proud of the role we played during the technological developments starting in the 2012 first robocall challenge. when i'm looking at people who visited recently, it's wonderful to tell us how we're doing and tell us how we can assist and the dynamic shift in the marketplace from just a few years ago when call blocking is illegal and we can't do it and just don't even say the words to now concerns with perhaps the unintended consequences of too

much call blocking. that is the dynamic marketplace and that's exactly what we of the to see happening. >> the call authentication standards are industry developed and that's one of the great things that's been happening in this field. as for what can be done, i think, it really is a matter of developments being tested and it's a matter of being deployed as fully and quickly as we can get them out there and making sure that industry is working together with each other and coordinating properly to bring that out that these systems are going to be out there and usable to a wide variety of actors. >> i think for us it's call blocking. we worked very well with industry and the telecom industry to encourage call blocking on objective bases, making sure that call blocking isn't sort of arbitrary that is based on good, objective criteria. at the same time the fcc has made call blocking optional and

one thing we're interested in hearing is what is difficult for with call blocking for some carrier? is it a cost issue? we would like to see more carriers block, and that's a big part of our work to determine how carriers view that and what may be some of the struggles they're facing as they implement blocking. >> and from my perspective on the enforcement side, the one thing the carriers in industry have done for us in the last few years is -- and can continue to do is work with us, continue to share information with us and continue to find new ways to combat an ever-evolving landscape of illegal activity. the fraudsters that we are up against are creative, they're highly skilled and very

adaptive. when you close off one way that they get in, they will explore and expand into another way and so that presents a challenge that will require law enforcement and industry and consumer groups all to work together. in this space, there's not one of those individual pieces that has all of the answers or has the ability to control the whole ecosystem and stop it. it really requires every, you know, consumers and government and industry all working together to solve the problem and to keep talking to each other about the new issues that are coming up when they come up so that we can tackle them immediately. >> thank you. one thing that has been mentioned a number of times on the panel is the value of partnerships whether that's federal federal and federal/state among government officials and i wonder if you

can talk about other things that governmental partners can do better or differently in the future to be more effective. we developed a great relationship with the federal trade commission. in my shop we do a lot of rule making and the ftc has been instrumental in offering comments on how to move forward. i think also doing outreach together is a really good idea. i think this is part of that. i think they have terrific outreach material and making sure that one federal government working for them, a lot of times we get questions do i file a complaint with the fcc or the ftc? >> i think we do a pretty good job at it. you know, i appreciate what mark says and other panelists here, but weave been working cooperatively with the fcc on this issue for however long.

state partners have been tremendous and they're monthly calls on what's happening on the telemarketing front, and it's a target-rich environment and we are all at the table. >> working with the federal trade commission has been a wonderful experience going into federal court and getting the exparte injunction and getting restitution for consumers. we are on the ground. weir the boots on the ground that can conduct the surveillance and look into the maze of shell companies and the bank accounts that exist and trying to track down the money so we can seize it and ultimately get it to the consumers and provide injunctive relief like a life-long telemarketing ban or making deceptive and misrepresentations

when it comes to selling on the tefrp and the partnership has been great. we are also come communication with the federal communications commission because their target, some are located in florida so we're in constant communication with the federal partners and we're looking at state regulators and we have the licensing arm of the telemarketing statue which is the department of agriculture and consumer services, so we're constantly, constantly working with them to stop the robocalls and i would mention that we're constantly sharing information with canada and federal partners and also various states. >> one question that comes up any time we're talking about consumer protection law is how we can work better with consumer advocates and other non-profit organizations, non-governmental organizations and the like. what is their role in dealing with unwanted robocalls, unlawful robocalls and are there

things that we can do better working with them to help consumers. i'll throw it out for any of the panelists to respond to. >> i'm sure they will have their own view, but i view them as the enormous resources. if i have questions about what's going on i ask them if there's a particular push i'd like them to assist with, i will readily turn to them and i hope and it's been my experience that they'll do the same with us. they have the ability to reach people through pipelines that we don't. we rely on them to do just that. >> i would echo that. we rely tremendously on consumer groups to help us. a lot of our proceedings are paper proceedings and so we depend on their submissions both on legal and policy questions, but in addition to informing our approximately see and law, it's

helpful in the outreach perspective and they help us to get the word out on what we're doing and we're hearing from them what consumers are experiencing every day so they're invaluable. >> consumer complaints drive what i do every day. we look at what consumers are talking about and what the problems they face. they file complaints with us. they file complaints with the ftc. we don't believe in forcing solutions for which there are no problems. we go after -- we go after what consumers tell us we need to go after. right now that's robocalls. what we hope to get the most out of consumer groups and out of consumers information is actionable intelligence, something that we can -- enough information that can start an investigation to solve that problem and find that bad guy

that's making hundreds of millions of illegal robocalls and our work with consumer advocacy groups has been very helpful. we've been able to say and explain, this is what we need in consumer complaints in order for us to pick it up and start the process. it had been great how receptive consumer groups have been and also working with folks who offer consumer solutions to the problems and folks like no more robe ow robo and they have interfaced daily saying hey, these are the patterns that we're seeing. those conversations help us -- help inform our enforcement efforts and make my job significantly easier. >> thank you. i guess we've got about ten minutes left and i'll pose one last question and let people elaborate on that, and the

question is just if each panelist can identify what is the most important thing they think the government could do to increase the prevalence of robocalls, unlawful or unwanted robocalls and i might as well start with denise this team and hear from the panelists what's the most important thing we can do to decrease the unlawful robocalls going forward? >> i think it's going after the kingpins of these industries that are very well known. they're connectors. they connect the different businesses to each other. they are very sophisticated and constantly have scams that are evolving. so targeting those individuals and going against them with the full force of the law that we can with the tools that we are provided and what remedies were provided under the law. it causes a deterrent effect. i remember we went -- they were selling robocalls and it was a medical device system and they

were calling nursing homeless and other senior citizens with information that said this is john from shipping and a family member or friend recommended you get this device. it's similar to a life alert device. it's not life alert and the consumer thought oh, my gosh, my family member thinks i need this and it's free as the robocall says and let me just give them the information and lo and behold we found out the consumer was charged a monthly fee and they were never told of it and when they tried to cancel they couldn't. we saw a large room with individuals on the phone with sophisticated dialing systems at their computer and their fingertips and we heard from the business owners that their marketing costs for these robocalls were so cheap that really, was there no incentive to stop, but when we went in with a receiver and with the attorneys from the federal trade commission and our office along with ag law which is the

criminal and they're with the department of agriculture consumer services and they have criminal powers, and they came in with us and if we showed them that we were serious about stopping this, and they didn't realize what they were doing was wrong because they were told something else from their bosses. so i think it really causes a deterrent effect when we go into these businesses and we seize the personal assets and business assets and later get a federal court order banning them from the industry and later it goes out into the internet and these people can never find jobs and they're not permitted under the order, but some will go out in the industry because that's all they know, but they are now tagged with our law enforcement efforts and they cannot find a job in the industry. from top to bottom, i think being aggressive with these robocallers and working with our partners and really taking a stand does cause a deterrent effect and i've seen it first hand.

>> so three pronged, one is sustained, relentless law enforcement and i want to tease that out when we're talking about abusive telemarketing and not the fraudulent. so the dish network case filed in 2009, it took years to get a litigated decision and the the $280 million civil penalty and it's on appeal. but -- but, the nature of the telemarketing setup there and the network and essentially you have a seller saying i'm not responsible for how my product is marketed or how my product is telemarketed and this is what we hear time and time again when we're hearing abusive telemarking and you have the dialer who says i don't know who is using my platform. it's actually easy to know or you have the reseller, unwanted call. it's not me. and if it's a home warranty, if it's a vacation, whatever.

you have the affiliate, and you have the person who is just doing the robocall say press one, if you want the home warranty meaning i don't know what i'm carrying with that and so on law enforcement part of our job at the ftc is to push the case law to develop more cases like this and the case you're referring to is life watch. again, the same type of affiliate telemarketing network where you have the seller saying i'm not responsible for how my product is marketed and there's greater clarity and greater deterrence is a top priority from where i sit. the other two areas are innovation, ensuring the marketplace ask to develop the tools that are needed and third prong is outreach and consumer education and you'll hear from matt wood on the next panel and the materials are first rate and

we partner with fcc and we partner with the states and the message is not just hang up if you don't recognize. the message is also here's information on call blocking tools out there. here thanks. >> i've been here talking about spoofing and efforts to combat spoofing so forgive me. feel free to accuse me of tunnel vision when i say i think that is one of the most important efforts. it does address some of the most egregious types of fraud and also just provides more information into the whole system that allows carriers, third-party developers, handset manufacturers and consumers themselves to deal with these problems firsthand. >> i agree with sherwin. i think the biggest thing is call authentication. in the interim we can facilitate call blocking, we can also do greater enforcement, but in the end spoofing is the big part of the problem. indeed third-party blocking apps

and devices are somewhat dependent on spoofing, not all of them, but spoofing is a way to evade some of that. it's longer term, but it strikes me that that call id authentication is really where everyone should be focused. >> i would echo the same thing, sherwin, if you are in a tunnel i'm in there with you because i 100% agree. rolling out call authentication is i think going to make the biggest difference in the government's ability to stamp out illegal, abusive robocalling and also the ability of the carriers to exercise, you know -- to aid their customers in blocking those calls that their customers also do not want. that is the biggest piece. and then the second piece is that in the meantime as, you know, mark was alluding to, in the meantime it's incumbent on all of us to continue to work together and bring the expertise

and the resources that each one of us has, consumers, government and industry together, to combat the problem while the technological upgrades are being -- are being completed. >> great. thank you very much. i think we are out of time. i want to thank all of our panelists for sharing their insights and information about all the fabulous work they're trying to do to deal with illegal robocalls and thank you very much. [ applause ] >> thank you, again, tom and all of our panel two panelists. our next featured speaker is ftc commissioner terrell mcsweeny. commissioner mcsweeny.

[ applause ] >> what a polite audience. thank you guys very much. i want to say first of all good morning and what a pleasure it is to be here this morning. thank you to the fcc for hosting this discussion and thanks very much to all of the federal trade commission staff who have been working tirelessly on this issue for a number of years. it's been a pleasure getting to know them while i've been at the ftc and they've really as i think you can see from the discussion on the last panel working collaboratively with the fcc, with state partners to fight the scourge of robocalls with the tools that they have. so i want to commend them for their efforts. i'm going to start with the usual disclaimer that i am giving you my own views not the official views of the ftc, but i think it is the official view of the ftc that robocalls are a top consumer complaint year over year and that we need to be using all of our tools in our toolbox to combat the problem.

i want to start just by noting, though, that the origins of some of our authorities in this area, you know, privacy and more specifically americans rights to win control over their data is once again in the news. it bears noting that the origin of the do not call registry stemmed from a bipartisan effort to protect americans' privacy in 2003. it unanimously passed the senate. at the time democrats and republicans came together to provide a way for people to protect themselves from unwanted intrusion of telemarketing calls. now, i recognize that we are here today because technology and scammers find ways around those protections and more on that in a minute, but i don't think that that makes the achievement of providing consumers with stronger protections any less notable. and if anything the news and events of the last week underscore that american consumers deserve stronger protections for their data. the technology we are all using in our daily lives is increasingly sophisticated and

the amount of data we are sharing is increasingly intimate. without proper protections, our own data can be and potentially is being used against us. the incentives in the marketplace drive through greater collection and use of the data and the fcc, the ftc and other expert consumer protection regulators all have a role to play in providing protections for consumers. but without stronger and -- without a stronger and more resilient framework, one that includes requiring often choices for the monetization of sensitive information american consumers will be left vulnerable at a time when we can least afford to be. i think american consumers need stronger protections for the digital age and those would include comprehensive data security and privacy laws, transparency and accountability for data brokers and rights for control over our data. it's time for democrats and republicans to come together again to make progress on a significant privacy issue just like they did 15 years ago.

so i'm happy to be here today to say that i think it's very encouraging to hear how the ftc, the fcc and our state partners are engaged in unrelenting enforcement efforts to shut down law violators that continue to flood our phones with illegal calls. here we can all agree that having as many law enforcement partners on the beat as possible to safeguard consumer privacy and protect consumers from fraud and abuse is a no-brainer. as we just heard, multiple enforcement partners leveraged different expertise, different jurisdictional authority and different resources to combat this threat. i'm particularly proud of the enforcement action the ftc announced today against home security installation company alliance security and it's telemarketers. according to our complaint the alliance defendants made at least 2 million illegal calls to consumers, violating the law is no way to sell security.

but as we know, even with many cops on the beat the calls keep coming. consumers need effective tools to stop the seemingly endless calls and they need meaningful choices to select the best tool for them. the good news is that today there are a growing number of call blocking tools and choices. when i first came to the commission in 2014 consumers had very few options to stop unwanted calls, but as a result of the federal trade commission's first robocall challenge, nomo robo was available for voice over ip home phones, which is a good start, but there are also very few options for wireless and little to no options being offered directly by the providers. after three more ftc challenges and continuous work with the industry and all of our partners, today the landscape is very different. a number of providers offer some types of call blocking services directly to their voice over ip or wireless customers or both

and wireless customers now have a number of call blocking apps to choose from. ctia who we will hear from on the next panel put out a list of over 40 apps for ios and android phones alone. so why aren't these tools having a greater impact and what can we do to help? well, first off, many consumers don't know that there are more tools available today to stop illegal or unwanted calls. we are working to change that. with today's event the upcoming expo next month and through our consumer education and i'm delighted that the ftc today is putting out additional consumer education materials through our office of consumer and business education. second, these tools aren't available to all consumers. not all providers offer call blocking solutions to their customers. why not? when consumers pay for phone service, shouldn't they be able to expect that they are getting the best available protection from illegal calls?

and finally consumers with traditional copper landlines still have very few options to stop illegal calls. there is no app for that. the best way to fill these gaps and what i'm excited to hear more about from the next panel is to empower and expect providers to deploy solutions at the network level that will reach every consumer. effective call blocking tools should be available to call consumers. and of course, trust must be restored to call err id information through adoption of the stir shaken framework for caller id authentication sooner rather than later. i know that the ftc stands ready to do our part and make sure that consumers understand these tools and how best to use them to protect themselves and with that i'm excited to turn it over to the next panel for a discussion of the solutions and tools that are available to consumers. thank you very much. [ applause ]

>> thank you, commissioner mcsweeny. as commissioner mcsweeney said, our third panel is entitled solutions and tools for consumers. it is being moderated by julie knapp who is chief of the fcc's office of engineering and technology. so i invite julie to come up and all of the panelists to come up as well. >> okay. and i will turn it over to julie.

>> i will just give everybody a minute to get settled. >> good morning, still morning. a lot of pressure on this panel because it's the last panel before lunch. so this panel is going to talk about some of the solutions. i know in my home when the phone rings the first thing we do is we listen for the announcement of the id. i get a lot of calls from unavailable and out of area and then when there is a number that you see perhaps in new york where you might have relatives and you wonder, you don't recognize the number, should i pick it up? maybe it's somebody calling about something has happened with my brother or sister. do i take a chance in not answering it?

so you go ahead sometimes and i know my wife will immediately say to me, why did you pick that up? so, you know, this panel is going to talk about some solutions and so the pressure is on for me if i don't have something good to say when i get home i might not get in the door. so obviously there is a lot of terrific work that's going on and just to start i'd like to have each of our panelists introduce themselves and say a little bit about their organizations and we will start with alex. >> thank you. my name is alex algard i'm here from hiya, i'm the ceo of the company, we are a seattle-based business and one of the business lines is to help our partners primarily wireless carriers and smartphone oems deal with this robocall play. we also have apps that we provide for direct download by consumers, but that's not as

significant part of our business. we have the largest team in the industry of data scientists and engineers that are dedicated to determining who are the bad callers, who are the good callers, which is equally important, and provide as much information at the fingertips of our user base so they can make informed decisions. >> i'm jim mceachern and here in with the industry solutions of alliance, in the context that shaken which is going to be discussed i think a little bit today came from the ipni task force which was a joint effort and i have personally been fortunate enough to have been involved in that activity since the very beginning when we decided it had to be called shaken because it wasn't stirred. >> hi, i'm alex quilici, we

supply the robocall index. which is our estimate what the world looks like in terms of robocalls every month. we've got interaction in terms of having blocked well over a billion calls at this point. >> hi, i'm margot saunders, i work with the national consumer law center, we are a national public interest law firm that represents consumers before congress and the federal agencies. >> i'm krista witanowski, i work for ctia. we represent the wireless industries from the carriers to the manufacturers and we've been working on fighting illegal robocalls for some time. we were significantly involved with the industry robocall strike force, we helped draft that report and after the strike force ended we took on the work and developed a ctia robocall working group that meets every week.

we are continuingly working on robocall abatement solutions. we are also a member of the fcc's nancy call authentication working group and we are working really hard right now on getting the governance structure for call authentication up and running so we can on board all the industry to fight that. and we're also a member of the fcc's consumer advisory committee who has made as ed bartholme had mentioned many recommendations on call blocking and call authentication in the last year. i am looking forward to talking about all the great tools that our own carrier members are doing and the wonderful app ecosystem that's out there represented today by the two alexes on the panel. really excited to hear about it. thanks. >> i'm nat wood from the federal trade commission where i lead the division of consumer and business education. it's our responsibility for letting regular people understand how to have better

experiences as consumers and to help businesses comply with consumer protection law and also be protected in the marketplace. >> so to kick it off, talk a little bit about how consumers protect themselves against robocalls and i thought maybe we would start a little bit on the government side and then we'll thread that in also as we are having our discussions. it is a privilege and honor to work so closely with ftc. terrific things happen, i think, when cross government agencies work together. this is a tough problem and we are all pulling together to solve it. there is some terrific information on-line at the fcc website, we have pamphlets in the back and for those watching over the web if you want to check it out it's the web address www.fcc.gov/robocalls. there is a lot of terrific information on there about what you can do as a consumer and the resources that are available.

i would just turn it over to nat to talk a little bit about what ftc is doing. >> what i would tell somebody who is frustrated by unwanted calls is that there are lots of great resources, i'm excited about this panel to hear more about the tools that industry is coming out with and where we are headed with call authentication. a few years ago it wasn't so easy to get this advice, but the services are really effective now and becoming more so all the time. we've put out some information today and for people that are in the room you can get this on the table, for people online you can go to ftc.gov/calls. the first thing you want to think about if you want to take advantage of call blocking technology right now is what kind of a phone you are using. if you have a mobile phone, you may want to download an app, some are free, some are provided through the carrier services and see -- the second thing you can do is see if there's built in features from your phone. if you have a landline, you may

need to buy a device and there are some that use black lists or white lists to limit the calls and make sure only calls you want are getting through. if you have internet phone and many people it's not that easy to tell, check with your carrier. it's a lot of the same sort of advice we give for people that have a mobile phone, there might be blocking services that either stop the calls or have the information show up about whether it's possibly a scam call or a telemarketer or possibly put those messages straight through to voicemail. so i hope you will check those resources out. the do not call registry still has some value, especially in signaling. it's not necessarily going to stop a lot of illegal robocalls, but you know that if you are on the national do not call registry and you get a call from somebody attempting to sell you

something that they are not respecting the registry. if they are not respecting that law you probably don't want to do business with them. if you get any sort of unwanted robocall, definitely hang up. there's no reason to stay on the line. and keeping yourself informed about the scams that are out there is always a good idea. one of the ways that you can do that is to go to ftc.gov/scams and sign up for scam alerts straight to your e-mail box. >> did you want to say something? >> the telephone consumer protection act not only provides the tools for public enforcement, government enforcement, against robocallers, but it also provides the ability of consumers to hire an attorney and bring an action against robocallers themselves and that's a very valuable tool that people should know about that they can go into court and get $500 for every illegal robocall that they received. >> i would be rich.

so let's hear a little bit -- i know there is a lot of activity that's been going on across industry and trying to develop solutions to prevent the calls from getting through, the illegal calls from getting through in the first place. so if we could hear a little bit from the service providers and what they are doing and, jim, maybe we will start with you. >> thanks. so like sherwin i have a little bit of tunnel vision around shaken, but i want to just step back and put that into perspective, it's not the first thing that the service providers have done. in a sense basic caller id is a tool for identifying robocalls, calls you don't want to receive, white list, black list built on that, anonymous call rejection, a number of services over the years. of course, a fact or easy spoofing undermine the effectiveness of those as we all see. and that led to the apps, either internal ones as a few service

providers have internal built apps and of course the third party ones that are represented here today. those help, but again, spoofing makes that -- it makes it harder for them to do their job and that's where shaking comes in. not as a solution, that's an important thing, it's shaken by itself is not a solution, it's an enabling technology that provides reliable information into these apps and can make them fundamentally more effective in the long-term and also help with the enforcement initiatives through the ability that it puts to trace the calls back to the origin in a reliable and -- reliable way. so it's a key enabler is a key thing, but in a long context. >> could i just follow up. could you say a little bit -- is this something that consumer needs to do with their provider and can you say a little bit more about what shaken is, if you are explaining it to a layperson?

>> you asked a rather long question, but -- so yes. so at its core shaken allows the originating service provider to sign the call and basically to attest to what they know. that's one of the key things. this, all calls that are assigned are not the same. if the service provider knows that that's your number then they can sign, this is your number. if they don't know it's your number but they know who originated this, this is my customer, i know who they are, i know how to find them if they do something bad, you can do a lower level, a partial attestation that says this is somewhat reliable and then you have the ones where it's a gateway coming in from who knows where, i don't have any idea, but i know where it entered my network which might be very useful both for call blocking and analytics engines and also for tracing. the other thing and then at the receiving end that information is verified, it's crypto graphically signed and verified so that you can't mess with it in between.

the other key thing is that when that is signed the service provider attaches a unique origination id which is just an opaque string that can be used again in trace back that allows you to identify when you go back to follow up that, yes, i now know exactly where that came from, not just a service provider. and so just cryptographically provides more information about the call, primarily to assist the analytics engines who then add that into the mix of what they already do. >> to help stem the tide. >> precisely. >> krista, maybe you can talk a little bit on the wireless side. >> sure. so since jim focused on call authentication and trace back which are important initiatives we are involved in i'm going to focus on the tools that our wireless carriers have in place now that are not dependent on a customer necessarily down loading an app and then i will get a little bit into the app ecosystem which has exploded over the last couple years.

so just a few examples. at&t to start they launched a product called at&t call protect. that was back in december 2016, it's a free network service, it allows customers that have iphones and hg voice enabled android handsets to automatically block suspected fraudulent calls. it flags suspected spam calls so the customer can then choose whether to answer it or not and using an interface provided by the at&t call protect act, they also have an app, customers can manually block an unlimited number of specific telephone numbers for 30-day intervals. you can download the app across the app ecosystem, app stores are on the at&t website. at&t on the wire line side also made call protect available to its ip wire line home phone users and alex from hiya will talk about this but they have

partnered with hiya through this initiative and they have blocked to date 3.5 billion unwanted robocalls. sprint offers a service as well, premium caller id service, this is on a subscription basis, it includes for android smart phones the ability not only to identify higher percentage of these nuisance calls but it's also an option to block them as well and they work with a company called sequent. t-mobile launched a product called scam id last year in 2017. this is automatic network-based, it's free for post paid t-mobile customers and metro pcs customers. it identifies calls from known scammers across all handset platforms on smart phones and feature phones. if a scam call is detected the caller id will display something called "scam likely" on the device, and this gives the customers the option to answer

or permanently block the number. there is another product called "scam block" that customers can choose to use, it's also free and that service will allow calls from known scammers blocked. t-mobile is working with a company called privacy star who also has an app in the app marketplace, they have blocked more than 3 billion scam calls tagged since the launch of the product. and verizon right now they are currently trialing a free robocall labeling solution, it's called "spam alerts" and this is for all wire line customers with caller id and this includes copper customers and fios digital voice customers. which is great. the feature is warning customers about robocalls and they also -- it's available to their entire wire lined customer base and a more robust version with

thousands of additional numbers is going to be in production in the next month. they have also worked with the company that you all know, nomo robo to develop a one click solution that simplifies fios digital voice customers ability to sign up for that third party blocking service and on the wireless side they offer all customers who subscribe to its caller name id service a feature at no additional charge that identifies the spam calls and displays the level of risk with a risk meter. they are working with a company called sequent. besides all those tools that our carriers are in play today, the app ecosystem has exploded in the last two years. in 2016 we studied across the board ios, android, windows and blackberry and at that time there were a lot of apps, over 85 call blocking or labeling

apps available, but we have recently went through and looked at it again and now there are 550 call blocking or labeling apps available. that is a 495% increase in those apps since we launched our website dedicated to educating consumers on this issue. so i think the marketplace is working with the amount of tools, we still need to work, we need to finish up our work on call authentication, that is key, but i think for now consumers have something to work with until we do finish that. >> i want to hear a little bit about the third party providers and then i want to ask some questions on the consumer side and also margot, your thoughts on the access to some of this. alex, maybe if you could talk a little bit about what you've been doing, what your products are. >> sure. so, again, our company is called hiya and we have apps that users can download directly on to either iphone or android. as krista said there is a lot of

choice for consumers, there is over 500 apps, i think you shared, which is pretty astounding. and i think the app stores are pretty effective in guiding consumers to which are the more effective versus the less effective apps. i'm not so concerned about that. i'm a little bit concerned. about the fact here in the u.s. market, because we work across borders, in the u.s. market the iphone is a bit crippled relative to what google has done on the android side. for all of us in the room, i could confidently say if you were to download an android app that is well rated you can probably avoid most nuisance calls right away. on iphone, if you're downloading an app you actually have to go through settings. i was just playing on my phone here, settings and a phone menu

and get down to call blocking identification to make this work. most consumers don't understand that. about half the u.s. market even though there are apps available for iphones, most consumers are unable to activate these services. that's a problem. others on the operator's side, we are very excited to be working with an announced partner and other folks as well. what i am concerned about there though is the industry's ability to find the right solutions. it certainly doesn't have to be ours. it's a competitive marketplace, there are other companies out there. maybe just to be a little bit controversial because i think this is such an important issue, i don't really care if we step on some toes because we have to solve this issue. >> as long as it's not mine. >> one is how soon the spoofing issue is huge. and there is a lot that can be

done to combat bad callers and spoofing as well. but how fast can we move along on this. i think jim and others are doing some great work. we're eager to see something coming out. i think that there's some talk about how soon can a governing authority be placed into action. we're very eagerly awaiting that. that is the foundation that will be that much stronger if the spoofing issue can be dealt with. the foundation that hundreds of companies are building their services on top of it. >> good. talk about e-mail. >> i want to talk about some of the other apps first and how e-mail differs. the basic goal of the app is to decide if a number is a bad guy. and not ring. that's the default to decide if a number is a bad guy.

e-mail, we took a slightly different approach. we didn't think hanging up was enough. when we detect somebody is a bad guy we've replaced your mobile voicemail and played the number is out of service tone. that stops them from making the call. we took the approach, like a lot of others, you want to try to block this at the source. carriers try to do it at the network level, we try to fool the bad guys. it's not just black and white and easy to say good guy bad guy. irs scammer is a bad guy and cvs telling you your prescription has arrived in a good guy but there's a huge amount in the middle where debt collectors that call 50 times or those whether they are wanted or not. we took an approach that says if we think it's in the middle we're not sure it's a bad guy, we route them to voicemail without ringing your phone. turns out that replacing your voicemail has nice effects. we can play the bad greeting and we can take the middle of the

road people, throw them into voicemail and let consumers decide what they want to do. >> there's pluses and minuses of having lots of things to choose from. on the one hand, it's great, you can sort through and the other is sometimes you're overwhelmed. anybody can comment on what the consumers' reactions, their experiences have been with this, are they effective? i stumped the panel. >> some have high ratings and i think some of the solutions rolled out by the carriers have been very effective. i think we heard staff that adds up to at least 6 billion phone calls i think from bad actors being blocked recently, so i think, you know, it's starting to work. there's a lot more work that needs to be done still. i am always concerned about maybe some actors, some

companies being overly aggressive and too quickly fighting the bad robocallers. basically what's needed is a scalp to ferret out the bad callers from the good ones. i am a bit concerned there might be too many solutions like a bazooka that can prevent good calls from getting through. >> one thing we were surprised to find out that consumers actually want the bazookas. as an antidote on our white list app we have a feature that if it's not in your contacts your phone won't ring. we did this as a setting. you have to find it. tap four things. not called white list, we named it badly. we put it out, does anybody want this? turns out at the rate it's going, more consumers will have that on in ourp app than off. that's a bazooka, which is, if

it's not somebody i know, send them to voicemail. >> i'll just note on our web page, the consumer tips page on our website, in order to help consumers parse through it, question listed the top apps, based on user ratings, number of downloads and most recent version date and i attached pdfs of the entire app system per platform. you know, i don't pick and choose and i don't want to, i want consumers to decide. there is a way to help consumers at least try some of the top-rated ones. >> whenever we give consumer advice we try to play out what we're saying to make sure it's useful. when call-blocking apps first started coming out, even after the fcc challenge we tested it to see if our general advice this was useful or not. my personal experience a few

years ago was downloading a third-party app but the call tried to ring through through through the app as opposed to through my regular phone app and ultimately we decided we weren't really ready for that. the fact we're saying now really people should check out these apps is kind of significant. there's a few ways people can sort out what's best to them. going to ctia's site to academic a list curated can be useful, also, going onto the app stores and type in your carrier with call blocking, you ought to be able to bring some up then. one of the things consumers tell us that their preferred price point is zero. the first place a lot of people are going to want to start is see what's offered through their carrier. i have been using one of the services we've been talking about offered through my carrier and, you know, it's night and day from what it was a if you years ago. now the call rings through my regular phone app, i'm using

ios, and labels some calls and blocks others and provides a lot of information. >> i know alex touched on it, a couple of you touched on it, how do you distinguish the bad actors, the things you want to block from the things that should get through? can you say a little bit again not for technical but for consumers about how does this work, so that i make sure, maybe some choose to take the bazooka, but others, you know, like i talked about, maybe this is a call i really wanted to have come through. how do you sort those things? >> we're looking at over 30 and our team in seattle has a whole set of advanced algorithms to use machine techniques, to in a real-time

basis detect or assign a reputation to the caller. it's a very -- it's really a daunting technical challenge. one of the things i'm excited about we don't actually have a so-called blacklist. we are looking at every call as an event on its own. depending what else we've seen on the network we may choose to assign the call a bad or good reputation. the worst kind of reputation is resulting in the call being blocked. very few calls result in being blocked with that reputation. those are, of course, get a lot of attention and rightfully so because those calls can be dangerous. that's a fake irs agent demanding money and we're seeing the big rise in that volume. i think we're seeing a 1200% increase this year compared to last year in the irs scamming. there's all these shades of gray.

then there's calls we consider to be spammy or a nuisance nature. it's very subjective. who considers that call nuisance. i mean, your party affiliation, fund-raising calls are coming through, there's a 50-50 chance the person wants to receive that call from the party. i think there's been some instance here about school alerts and so forth, of course, that's important to receive those notifications. given our company is premised fighting these bad calls, i think i can say more comfortably, there's other examples, too, debt collectors. i changed my credit card recently and had our service blocked out the debt collector getting through to me, either my service would have been terminated or my credit rating would have gone down the tubes.

it's important that some of these calls get through. 2 million people employed in call centers in the u.s., never mind outside, and, you know, a lot of these people are doing important work and they need to get through to consumers. we take this false- positive thing very seriously. our reported false-positive rate is .01%. we're very proud of that. >> i'm particularly interested in what are the sorts of things, if you're a service provider, that are the clues that this is an unwanted call or illegal call? >> i'm not going to talk about specific clues but step back and talk about how to approach this solution problem to be effective. the key thing is how do you identify the bad actors and how do you identify the good actors who might look a little bit like bad actors if you're not doing the right thing. shaken will help a little bit with that, but it doesn't solve it because, as they say,

dr. evil can get a phone number and it will be fully attested and it's still dr. evil. it doesn't mean it's a bad call. that's part of it. it's not all of it. you can also be assured, that as soon as we work out some technique to differentiate good and bad actors, they're going to change the techniques. spoofing works today but when it stops working, they will go to something else. that's the bad news if you will. the good news where that goes, you need to have the stakeholders in the key segments, in the shaken ecosystem and the stakeholders in the call blocking apps and users that want to get through and stakeholders have to work together to identify the techniques. that's not a one shot thing because as soon as it starts to work they will change. that's why you need to make sure that structure is flexible, ongoing, so that when they try something

different you come back, look at it, work out what needs to be done and change the way you're doing it on a time scale consistent with their time scale. that flexibility and quick response of all the stakeholders is key and if you have that, you're well positioned. if you don't have that, it's going to end badly. >> go ahead. >> so we behaved somewhat similar to hiya, in that we have what we call a dynamic blacklist and white list. a dynamic blacklist is a whole bunch of factors, behaviors of a given number, that makes us believe this particular call from this number is a bad thing and we focus a lot of efforts on the good calls to let them through, cvs calling with their pharmacy prescription. is a good example of that. we built some technology we call audio fingerprinting that looks at the voicemails and audios left by a given number and time and from that we can actually tell when another number is leaving something similar, is it good or bad. a particular number called, we

know that's cvs, another call leaves the same sort of message, and know that's a cvs number. for us it's the content of the interactions and the key in determining whether good, bad or in between. >> i want to talk a little bit about the difference between good and bad. i think that there may be some difference of opinion on which group different callers fit. looking at u mail's robocall index, the top 20 robocallers in february in the nation, 16 of them were debt collectors. they're not two of them were -- would look like scammers. 16 were debt collectors. according to many debt collectors' manuals, they will call as many as ten times a day to collect each account. many student loan borrowers have eight accounts, so they're subject to getting 80 calls a

day from a debt collector. is that debt collector a good or a bad guy? i'll just leave it at that. >> depends whether there is a debt. >> even if there is a debt, 80 calls a day may be too much. >> yeah. absolutely. anybody else on the distinction? the solutions i mentioned from the start, the number looks like it comes from new york, spoofing, are the things we've been talking about effective against spoofing? how does that come into play? >> there's a bit of a myth out there nothing can be done against spoofing until shaken takes place, is fully implemented. i think we need to get it in place as quickly as possible. we're seeing almost 30% of nuisance calls today are the

so-called neighbor spoofing scam. these are typically scam calls. if you're not familiar with it, it is basically, these bad actors call you, whatever number you have, and the original number has the same six digits in the beginning. sometimes they replicate your own number and they call you from your own number and people are curious to see who's calling. usually, it's the first six digits. we have techniques to ferret that out. the clumsy technique would be to block any call that comes in from the first six digits. you might block out people who happen to randomly have a similar phone number to you. i can't tell you what technique

we're using ball game if any of those guys are watching this video -- >> i'm sure they wouldn't. >> that technique would no longer be effective. that is an example of spoofing where actually, you know, if you're smart about how you go about it you can actually block out those calls. >> to build on alex point you can do a lot without shaken, the way i look at shaken is, again, very effective techniques that have been built today but in many sense because of spoofing the foundation has weaknesses an what shaken is doing is providing a firm foundation for those things. they will be the same apps but do a more powerful assessment. talking about as an enabler. we don't have to wait for it but i'm sure it will help. the sooner it's there. >> so two comments. we're already seeing the neighborhood spoofers get smarter to change the definition of a neighborhood. it used to be your first six digits had to match. only the last four would be

different. then we saw the five digits and then four digits would match. it's a hard problem. i think what's happened with our user base, they're deciding i would just rather white list. say there's too many of those calls getting through, i don't want them anymore, i'm going to restrict them in my contacts an everybody else who calls me i want to hear from again i put in my contacts. consumers are taking it in their own hands in dealing with that problem. >> let's talk about the progress on caller id authentication. we've been touching on this. where are we on that and what's involved in accomplishing it? go ahead. >> it's again, step back. it was in january of 2017, it was published. shortly after that, they partnered with new star to provide a test bed, a shaken test bed, available to the

industry. that is continuing to be available at no cost as of today. we've had, as of recently, we had over a half-dozen vendors or providers who completed testing, we have a similar number who are actively in the process of testing as well as others who are watching and getting ready. all of that is proceeding in terms of the infrastructure to deploy that. in terms of the governance authority we issued the governance, shaken governance framework document about the middle of last year and our intention when we did that, frankly by about now we would have the governance set up and beginning to get the processes in place. i talked about the need for the various stakeholders to share information and work together, to work out how we respond to that and that's the kind of thing that would do. to be honest, the trust anchor notice of inquiry kind of slowed

that down a little bit. we're not set up and running now. we're hoping as the cada working group finishes up its work over the next month or so that will get that process up and running. really, the key thing here is because of that need for all the stakeholders to be involved, to understand each other's problems and perspectives and be prepared for reacting to the bad guys, you need the governance authority up and running almost before you actually have it deployed in the network. you don't want to deploy it and then try to figure out how to manage the thing after the fact. it's moving forward. we want it to move forward faster. >> i would just add, so we have the framework developed. the testing is being done. i encourage all carriers to get on board if you haven't tested already. as far as the nancy's work,

we're working towards that report with our recommendations by may of this year and i'm hopeful that the fcc takes the recommendation whatever it is, because we haven't finished it, to set up that governing structure as quickly as possible to get this going. >> so, i think we heard this question on the last panel which was really focused i think more on the enforcement side, what we do after it happens and just to discourage it through enforcement. what from your perspective can the government do to encourage continued development of solutions across the board, to anyone? >> i was going to say, i think what the goal should be is a vibrant ecosystem of different apps. i mean, carriers should do what they can do. you really want a bunch of different apps because that's where the innovation is taking place. not just our app, but i look at all apps all the time

and there's interesting ideas how to get better at stopping these calls. the question becomes, how do you get that ecosystem. the main way is providing access to the platforms, driving the carriers to open more things up to the apps to have the data they use or network elements they can use to drive the hand set makers and carriers to make it easy to sign up and use these apps like alex gave a great example on the iphone, where it's a bear to turn on blocking, he left out that apple has a fixed list, up to a million and a half numbers to load into the app to the iphone to say block these things. that's a crazy way to do it versus android which lets apps get into the middle of a call and hang up. so getting the government to push these folks into driving an ecosystem would be really good for everybody. you never know where the next

great solution is going to be. >> it's interesting to me that the engineers think the fix is with the engineering and the lawyers think the fix is with the law. >> welcome to my life. >> actually, as a lawyer i think the fix is with the engineering. but the law still has a very important place. >> of course. >> as was mentioned in the previous panel, there was a decision last week by the dc circuit court that really throws the definition of auto dialer back to the fcc. that is a really critical question that will have tremendous ramifications about what types of calls are considered covered by that consumer protection law. if the fcc moves forward as the calling industry would like it to and does not include within that definition many of the call -- many of the types of equipment that are currently generating the calls, then those

calls won't be covered by that law and all of the human -- all of the calls on which a human is actually talking to the receiver, the person who is getting the call, there will be no coverage, no ability -- no requirement that the consumer has to consent. much more importantly, no ability of the consumer to say "stop calling me" and have a law require that that caller stop calling. as i described a minute ago with the debt collection calls, the ability to -- for a consumer to be able to say stop calling for these automated calls is really a critical consumer protection, whether that caller is in the white list or the gray list or the black list. the ftc rules, which are also very important, do not cover these robocalls that have a human at the end. they only cover prerecorded and

artificial voice. so the whole burden really will be on the federal communications commission to make sure to cover these calls so the consumers have some ability to control them. >> got it. >> i don't have an opinion on enforcement, but i think in terms of what the fcc and ftc have been doing, as a newcomer to d.c., i mean we're pretty much holed up in our little tech bubble, and on the west coast most of the time. it has been really nice to see what an effective spark was -- you know, took place a couple of years ago here and, you know, it has stoked all sorts of good conversation around spoofing and, you know, action is taking place now. i am a little bit concerned about there being maybe too much discourse about coverage or, you know, the ability to -- to detect these bad callers and

maybe not as much on -- on the false positives. we're taking a very long-term view at this, and i ultimately want there to be as much innovation and, you know, solutions available to customers. but, you know, i think there was an example just recently with self-driving car, you know, hitting someone and now that's you know, shut down innovation for, you know, temporarily for self-driving cars. i can think of, you know, all sorts of awful scenarios that would take place if too many calls are blocked, and i'm not going to give specific examples but they are, you know, some of them are actually life or death. i don't think that it is necessarily government's role to enforce how this happens, but i think just elevating the cost of false positives more into the discussion i think would be

really healthy to make sure that, you know, innovation will continue in the long run as rapidly as possible. >> yeah. >> information sharing is really important and valuable. i think a specific area where continuing to have a conversation among industry and industry associations and government will be in the labelling of calls. there's been some really interesting work that's going on. it will be even more important as the new call authentication standards come into effect so that people understand that if they get a green or a yellow or a red what that means and they not be unique across every type of device. the other kind of information sharing that's really important is the actual data about calls and what people are reporting. we're really happy that we've been able to take the information that people report to us. it is really important that if people have a bad experience, experience a scammy call to report it to ftc.gov/complaint.

they can always report unwanted calls if they're on the national do not call registry, do not ca call.gov and we're making that information available as we mentioned earlier on a daily basis to help make the algorithm smarter, better inform the black lists. you know, both types of information sharing are really important. >> good. we're down to the last few minutes we're scheduled for our panel. any final thoughts that you wanted to add that we didn't cover? >> i'm just glad the lawyers and the engineers are all on the same panels. >> well, just ask one -- go ahead. >> just say that it is really exciting, the amount of innovation. lois and i go back to having worked on the national do not call registry which is now more than 15 years ago. we get it. it doesn't stop unwanted calls now. but we feel like we've come into an area where there's a lot of really promising technologies that are doing that and are

going to do it even better. so we hope people, you know, regular people will take advantage of those and check out some of these apps and services and devices. if they go to ftc.gov/calls they can learn how to do it and go to places like ctia and check out some of the apps and the app stores, and they're going to give them a good result. >> i would just say the work is not done and we're going to continue working at it with partnership with the fcc, ftc, the wire line, wireless industry, everyone at this table, the third party app developers. unfortunately, the illegal robocallers are going to keep at it, and so we can't just sit on our laurels even after call authentication gets up and running, even with the 550 apps out there, we got to keep fighting every day. >> go ahead. >> i would actually support that totally. this is a long haul. it will get better, it probably will unfortunately take longer than we would like.

we need to keep at it. one of the things that i always push when people talk about solutions to this problem, i think it is the wrong mindset. this is a long struggle we need to keep working at. again, it will get better but it will never be, quote, unquote, solved. so let's keep going. >> i won't yield until it gets solved. it will be an ongoing battle. i want to thank the panelists, and it is encouraging, all of the work that has been done. there's progress being made. i know we're still, you know, working to try to have the numbers turn in the opposite direction. >> that we can do. >> it just underscores the importance i think of government, industry, third-party providers and all of the stakeholders, the consumer interest as well, all pulling together to tackle this problem. so thank you. give you a round of applause. [ applause ]

later this afternoon, here on c-span 3, a discussion on human trafficking in the travel tourism industries and ways to combat it. that's from the commission on security and cooperation in europe. it's scheduled to begin at 3:00 p.m. eastern with live coverage here on c-span 3. online at cspan.org and on the c-span radio app. >> connect with c-span, to personalize the information you get from us. just go to cspan.org/connect. sign up for the e-mail. the program guide is a daily e-mail with the most updated prime time schedule and upcoming live coverage. word-for-word gives you the most interesting daily video highlight in their own words with no commentary. the book tv newsletter sent weekly is an insider's look at upcoming authors and book

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