Robocall, election security bills head to House floor

A House panel on Wednesday voted to advance legislation aimed at protecting U.S. consumers from the billions of illegal robocalls made every year.

The Stopping Bad Robocalls Act had 152 co-sponsors and passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee, 49-0.

The bipartisan legislation takes aim at the illegal spam calls, often from scammers seeking to collect personal information on vulnerable consumers, by strengthening the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) ability to crack down on the problem.

It would require telephone carriers to implement technology that verifies caller identity without charging customers an extra fee.

The measure would also give the FCC more time to investigate and punish illegal robocalling operations, require the agency to pare down the list of companies that are allowed to use robocalling services, and raise the penalty for illegal robocallers to $10,000 per violation from $1,500.

A bipartisan amendment passed by the committee would establish a “hospital robocall protection group” to issue best practices for dealing with robocallers posing as hospitals, seeking to pull sensitive medical information from patients.

The act would also require the FCC to submit evidence of robocall violations to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for criminal prosecution and initiate a proceeding to protect customers from “one-ring” scams, which occur when fraudulent calls only ring once, encouraging the recipient to call back the number and potentially rack up fees.

The Senate last month voted 97-1 in favor of a similar anti-robocall bill that would also promote call authentication and blocking and help coordinate enforcement to increase prosecution of illegal robocallers.