State Bills to Combat Caller-ID Spoofing Get Bipartisan 'Groundswell'
Democratic and GOP lawmakers are linking arms to support state bills to combat caller ID spoofing, with some measures getting nearly unanimous floor votes this session. Lawmakers in at least 10 states including California, Connecticut, Minnesota, Mississippi and Virginia are trying to combat robocalls through legislation (see map). Spoofing is “completely irritating” and is happening with increasing frequency, said Minnesota state Rep. Julie Sandstede (D) in an interview.
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Lawmakers are clearing anti-spoofing bills by wide margins. Virginia’s HB-2600 passed the Senate 40-0 Thursday after a nearly unanimously House OK (see 1902050049). Mississippi senators voted 51-0 Wednesday to pass SB-2744, upping fines and allowing businesses to add their numbers to the no-call list, after the House voted 110-6 earlier for HB-763, which makes spoofing illegal under the state’s Telephone Solicitation Act. The Connecticut Joint Committee on Energy and Technology scheduled a Tuesday hearing on SB-225 to expand types of prohibited calls.
More states are moving bills after seeing a “groundswell of grassroots reaction” to call spoofing, which has “become an incredible nuisance and hassle,” disrupting legitimate calls and increasing minutes used on consumer plans, said National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates President Elin Swanson Katz. In a frequently partisan America, it’s an “issue everyone can agree on,” she said. Increasing reliance on cellphones and the larger privacy discussion is also probably driving interest in such bills, she said. There's a federal effort to combat robocalls, but people want action now and states can be “incubators for ideas” that can be adopted nationally, Katz said. The FCC sometimes acts here on a bipartisan basis (see 1902140039).
Sandstede’s one-page bill in Minnesota would restrict telemarketers from blocking their identity or spoofing a local number, leaving it up to consumers whether to accept the call. The state representative proposed HF-639 after a constituent in the realty industry explained he must answer calls from local numbers to do business but has found that many are telemarketers with spoofed numbers. Sandstede said she once got repeated calls on the House floor from a number that looked like a family member's but was really a telemarketer.
“We have divided government in many ways, but this is not a partisan issue,” said the Minnesota Democrat, saying she’s confident HF-639 will get a hearing. The House member counts three Democrats and three Republicans as co-sponsors; a similar bill by three Democrats and two Republicans is pending in the Senate. “This is about people doing business in the 21st century” and “having lives,” Sandstede said. She would “love to see this done at the national level,” but given other federal priorities, it “may be easier to get across the line at the state level.”
Mississippi legislation will give the Public Service Commission “the tools” to take on spoofers, PSC Chairman Brandon Presley told us at the NARUC conference in Washington. Noting multiple bills, Presley predicted “the strongest one is going to pass.” Already pursuing telemarketers for no-call violations (see 1803290033), he's “for whatever are the strongest, most robust, most punitive telemarketing laws.” Carriers and the federal government must do more to combat robocalls, he said. “It’s going to take an all-hands-on-deck approach.”
Illinois has at least five bills. “The robocall problem has reached such alarming levels -- according to experts 47.8 billion robocalls in 2018 -- that we support any effort, in Illinois or nationally, to fight this nuisance,” emailed an Illinois Citizens Utility Board spokesperson. “Caller ID spoofing is a particularly malicious strategy employed by illegal robocallers. Scam artists use it for one reason: To trick us into picking up so they can try to bilk us.”
The Ohio legislature had call-spoofing bills last year in both chambers; they never got floor votes but had support from Mike DeWine (R), who was then Ohio’s attorney general and now is its governor (see 1812040048). The Ohio Consumers’ Counsel supported the measures and “would welcome more consumer protection against deceptive telemarketers,” a spokesperson emailed. DeWine’s office didn’t comment.
Many bills target requirements to telemarketers. But California’s SB-208 -- awaiting votes in three committees -- would set a July 1 deadline for telecom providers to implement Secure Telephony Identity Revisited (Stir) and Secure Handling of Asserted information Using Tokens (Shaken) protocols. USTelecom and CTIA didn’t comment.