A ds would be derived through crowd sourcing. I went this to last numbers to reach vulnerable individuals while other calls are either blocked or forwarded to Family Member or other trusted third parties. Importantly, such blacklist and wait list can be implemented either by telephone providers themselves or their providers cooperate by making it possible i can numbers chosen third parties to that phone calls than they can be competing on who does the best job of filtering out unwanted calls. This does however require phone companies provide suitable interfaces to do that good i appreciate your richest in this topic and look forward to your questions on technology. Thank you very much, professor. Or a much appreciate your testimony. Ms. Greisman. Thank you very much chairman im a Ranking Member mccaskill members of the committee. Im delighted to discuss the ftcs spurt to fight Illegal Robocalls and im pleased to say to master next to professor schulzrinne has been a vital role of the fcc appeared tackling robocalls and unwanted telemarketing that target seniors at the top rarity for the ftc. 11 years ago the commission established that donotcall registry to create a tool for can arrest you protect privacy against unwanted calls. I believe the program has been highly effective reducing calls from legitimate telemarketers for several years ago as he referred to, the landscape started to shift in a very troubling way that robocalls are on the rise. In 2009, ftc received 60,000 complaints about robocalls each month. Currently we get approximately 150,000 complaints each month from a dramatic increase. Major technological joes changes and services have led to lower costs and improve service is for can rumors. Unfortunately fraudsters have taken advantage of the same lower costs which brought faster and cheaper automated dialing platforms. Fraudsters have also further weighted caller i. D. Spoofing in which induces the consumer to pick up the phone while enabling the scammer to hide anywhere in the world with its identity and location. And sure, back or so taken advantage of the relatively cheap and scalable Business Model and used it to last tens of millions of robocalls over the course of one day at a cost of less than 1 cent per call. Its bad enough robocalls and a consumers privacy and our legal. Coupled with the illegal privacy invasion however we all too often see the color space goods and services riddled with fraud. Ftc continues to step up one recent initiatives. For example were shut down a major robocall operation to rip. Seniors by telling them they were eligible to receive a free medical alert system offered by a Family Member or friend. Seniors who pressed one were transferred to a live operator to set the medical alert device is approved by the American Heart Association or the American Diabetes association. We alleged that claims to be false and that is precisely the type of robocall referred to earlier in the state of florida was a coplaintiff in the case. Another case of 10 state attorneys general including missouri, indiana, North Carolina and florida, the ftc sued the telemark sued the telemark or come up a generator that provided the names, telephone numbers and also the companies that help the telemarketers to its caller i. D. To hide its identity. The entities were responsible for blasting millions of robocalls attempting to sell a cruise to the bahamas or the coronation mistake in the federal and International Partners is as strong as ever. While the ftc has no criminal enforcement of already im happy to report the individuals sued by the ftc for placing Illegal Robocalls have been prosecuted criminally by department of justice. Still when a Law Enforcement not enough. Weve committed to stimulating Technological Solutions by issuing no less than four challenges, challenging entrepreneurs to develop solutions such as roboCall Blocking services before she can invade our privacy and spew her lies. Our first contest takes place in august. The content of robocalls humanity strikes back. The title says it all. We think these have been very successful as attested to by the fact one of our winners of the first contest brought his product to the market place six months after winning. No more robo has 170,000 prescribers and reports about 24 million calls. The ftc plays a leadership role to stimulate ongoing robust dialogue with technical experts, academics and Industry Groups and i want to underscore the work is international in scope good members of the london action plan and the abuse special Interest Group are meeting in dublin, ireland as we spake for the Consumer Protection issue is robocalls present. Finally i want to assure you of our ongoing and sustained commitment to protect Consumer Privacy and hauled telemarketing fraud by enforcing the donotcall registry and tackling Illegal Robocalls. I look forward to your questions. Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Mr. Dandurand. I take this opportunity and thank senator collins and my friend ricky and Committee MemberClaire Mccaskill for inviting us this afternoon. I apologize for being a bit redundant. The Attorney Generals Office has a division dedicated entirely to do responding to complaints from consumers or the Consumer Protection division receives complaints about a wide radius and then fraud such as illegal that collecting practices and identity theft. However, number one complaint and senator mccaskill indicated by a significant margin is about unwanted and illegal telemarketing calls. In 2014 the vast majority of complaints are office received our 52 dozen calls received were about illegal telemarketing in the next highest category of complaint was 1200. As most states missouris no call allows individuals who dont want to be called to register the residential and cell phone numbers on the no call list. Every day are no call universities complain from people, many seniors abused or harassed the telemarketers have no respect for the law or privacy of those favorite minds. Last month the office received a complaint from an 80yearold woman in st. Louis who received a call from someone telling her shes eligible for a back brace paid for by medicare. The caller was able to get that magic card number which is her Social Security number and date of birth. After hanging up the song she realized something was not right in the site are off the spirit we also receive complaints about robocalls which specifically target seniors. For example, the Senior Consumer is eligible for a free medical alert bracelet and will provide identifying information. For some technologies such as caller i. D. Help address unwanted calls, even then technologies may be asked weighted. For example, caller i. D. Spoofing happens when the caller falsifies the name and telephone number. On the caller i. D. Information to disguise the true identity as you have seen senator collins be victimized here before we started today. One of the most frequent spoofing concerns from seniors as the caller i. D. Relate the letters ssi as the identity. Seniors only the call is coming from Social Security administration. Upon answering the call the consumer is asked questions designed to elicit personal information. Our office is fighting back in the courtroom could be obtained more than 600,000 for illegal conduct and significantly obtained court orders prohibiting 20 telemarketers simply seen another call in the state of missouri. They are clever and they are relentless. Unfortunately senator mccaskill told us a minute ago that often comes thus frustrating that old arcade game walkable. We shut them down in them down and they pop up in other states have different identities. Then you resort to make calls from overseas locations nullifying our ability to obtain jurisdiction over them. This is a battle which must be fought on many fronts and we need the help of private industry including Telephone Service providers to create solutions to deter unwanted calls. As you know, technologies exist to reduce the number of robocalls to consumer phones. Call blocker filter incoming marketing calls before they reach the can immerse phones. Bester manically reduced number of unwanted unwanted calls a person receives. Yet major phone carriers have resisted allowing customers to have access to Call Blocking technologies claiming federal law prohibit that. A quote from the telecom rep at a july 10, 2013 subcommittee protection hearing the current Legal Framework does not allow phone companies to decide which call should be allowed to go through and which call should be blocked. If so that should be changed. But that the only thing stopping, we should clarify the law and give them such power. That is why last fall attorney general greg seller within senator donnelly his friends was joined by 37 other attorneys general reference before to the fcc which is attached to my testimony as exhibita. We are thankful encouraged by the fact chairman wheeler agrees and response to the letter chairman wheeler submitted a proposal to protect americans from unwanted calls thomas and messages in telemarketing calls and it looks like the ftc will provide clarity on the issue based on chairman wheelers request. They will vote at the commissions open meeting june 18th. Our office is encouraged by the progress we made and recognize challenges that need to be addressed. Consumers have made it clear they are fed up with unwanted telemarketing calls they receive mms research and apply new technologies to help on a first to keep up with the illegal robocallers. Telephone carriers are anemic addition to help their own customers for calls that month the carriers are on board we can make a difference in the lives of consumers by giving them power to stop the telemarketing phone calls at their inception. Where we dont share the interpretation of the rule of law to the extent there is any ambiguity regarding the Legal Authority to honor its customers request that they block unwanted calls for they arrive, we request clarity on the issue. Thank you for the opportunity to testify here today. Thank you for your testimony as well. Ms. Blase, as i mentioned, you kept a robocall log that you shared with the committee. Its extraordinary how many calls he received. You are very surprised about listing all of them and that in many cases you would get repeated calls. You would hang up in the person would call back again. I am curious whether you felt when you didnt answer some of these calls that the individuals had information about io that made the call more convincing and might be more persuasive to an individual who is less sophisticated than you are in dealing with these calls. Chairman collins, the only time i felt they had information about me specifically was the business calls because they got information somewhere that i have a business. So they assume i take credit card and they assume i would have an atm board want to buy one from a business. I can only suspect it came from the sales and use tax are met i have to have to run my business or from a directory that is put out. Ive had a lot of trouble with the business direct resending meetings every year say if you dont return the information confirming who you are or what you do, we had to drop you from the list. I say great, drop it. Every year i get the same one they describe my business is something that is nothing like. I suspect they are getting my number from the business less which i suspect got it from the state. But i dont know that. Not everyone has seen the call log you put together over a months time. Could you describe in a little bit of detail the number of calls you receive in the type of calls. It is a big long list. Something like 70 for like 70 for calls i put in my testimony. Since i sent this to you, the same caller that called five times in one day when i did not in there has called me back another couple of times. And this is just in a months time. This is just one month time. I started keeping this blog on the fifth of may. You are registered on the donotcall list . Yes. You get 70 calls and a months time despite being on the list which says nothing about the efficacy of the donotcall list. Professor, i understand some commercial carriers are hesitant to offer robocall filters because of a concern they cannot legally block a call under their common carrier obligations and has been discussed today, the sec chairman has released a proposal intended to clarify the legal issue and gathered the dispute over the legal issue and make clear the robocall filters are legal. In the event the fcc accepts the chairmans proposal, are their robocall filters available now for consumers that could be put in place immediately by commercial carriers by the Telephone Companies to help protect consumers . Chairman colin, there are three types of solutions deployed immediately or within a matter of months are short of a year. One which was already mentioned by thirdparty services that essentially rely on a specific feature called simultaneous ringing at some both systems provide a more robust solution that allows the consumer to filter calls. The solution currently is only applicable to more modern phone system typically provided by the Cable Companies or some of the fiberbased phone services by traditional phone companies. The second one i see as particularly promising is the phone companies would provide external interfaces, application programming interfaces which would allow the dirt parties to decide on consumers chosen by the can humor which calls to block, redirect or redirect to a third party, for example. The third type of solution i mention whidbey apps you can install on your smartphone i would lock it currently. These apps if yes, but because they have to work a little bit on the side are not only well integrated into the tasting phone devices, they dont work all that well. With the cooperation of carriers, these downloadable apps can work much better than they do today. Just the fourth when a cad in five believe the kind of wholesale prevention of numbers spoofing could also be the job of enforcement much easier because it would need much more difficult for illegal telemarketers to spoof nonexisting numbers which is quite common today. Thank you. The point is that technology does exist to deal with the problem. Senator mccaskill. Thank you, senator collins. Professor, is there any law we made for the encryption to ensure validity of the caller i. D. . Cannot be done without any kind of change in federal law . I am not a lawyer, but my sense is adding cybersecurity and this is an example of that to technology does not generally require additional authorization just like things dont need to ask for permission of the fdic or comptroller of the currency to a protection to websites. Indeed longer term we need to reverse the discussion, namely what obligations do they have to protect it . I think, you know, i will follow up with the fcc and make sure i am hope wayne along with the clarification that there is no barrier to the common carriers suffer to help consumers block this call that they would also do what they can to encourage the encryption possibility. I think it is a twofold problem. One is make sure the caller i. D. Is to assess the days and being able to block the calls. Deputy attorney general, i know your office has done great work in this area and i made and 28 telemarketers. As you know, i am an old prosecutor. Are we going to have to start putting people in jail . The people doing that, the reason it is waccamaw was because they dont fear any authority at this point. They are fearless of authorities. If we began picking off and i know is that likely we are going to get u. S. Attorneys office ball then on this and i am painfully aware of the limitations of your office in terms of criminal prosecutions. But are there laws in missouri you think currently would allow you to put these people in prison . I dont think we have laws that give the Attorney Generals Office initial jurisdictional im trying to think they could be prosecuted under stealing by the sea. Protection laws are there. Can prove the intent rather than a simple violation that makes it more difficult. Right now it is difficult. The feds have been helpful in that regard and are multistate efforts to criminally prosecute folks said doj is assisting in that regard. We are fairly well handicapped without additional criminal jurors diction a nasty note that its hard to come by. Im not even saying i am for that. I am saying we might want to look at what state statutes can be utilized in the communication you have with local prosecutors to help facilitate them bringing these cases. I do think the more people criminally prosecuted here, the more quickly you will claim some of this up. Let me ask you this. Does that work when he began his 28 telemarketers . Do they fail . Have you got them coming out . We havent caught the same named companies twice, but we believe they changed the name of the outfit and move somewhere else or they just networked and state to state until they get another state and continue to do this. The waccamaw theory is truly, truly difficult to get a grip on. What about cooperation from the common carriers. You are at our hearing in 2013 and you know i dont get this candidly. Any carrier forget about cut your bill in half. Forget about can you hear me. Look at my network and how good it is. I dont think they could handle the business they would get. I dont get why they have been dragging their feet and why it will take the fcc clarified this is not a problem. Do you believe that the fcc goes the way we hope they vote tomorrow that will see a land rush of carriers coming to the forefront a mass, we will offer the service to our customers because primus in canada does it now at no charge. Id like to be cautiously optimistic not hold my breath on that. For years as you know weve been firmly urging carriers to do just that. The ftc formally commenti