Following up on a report last week, a bill has been introduced in the Senate by Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto [D-Nev.] that would criminalize robocalls, with the intention of putting perpetrators behind bars.
Senate Bill 1826, the “Deter Obnoxious, Nefarious, and Outrageous Telephone Calls Act of 2019” or DO NOT Call Act as it is cleverly named, was co-sponsored by Sen. Amy Klobuchar [D-Minn.], Sen. Chuck Schumer [D-N.Y.], and Sen. Maggie Hassan [D-N.H.].
The DO NOT Call Act is the latest in a series of bills that have been introduced in the House of Representatives and Senate aimed at eliminating robocalls. Most of those bills have clever names, too, such as the Protecting American Consumers from Robocalls Act, and the TRACED Act.
The objective of the DO NOT Call Act is to modify the penalties for violations under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. A person who is found to have willfully and knowingly violated the act can be imprisoned for up to one year. However, individuals who are deemed to be “aggravated offenders” such as someone who has previously been convicted or an individual found to have initiated more than 100,000 robocalls in a 24-hour period, 1,000,000 in a 30-day period, or 10,000,000 robocalls in a one-year period could face up to three years in prison.
The DO NOT Call Act also changes the definition of “call” to include a “message or other communication” and the definition of “initiate” to “the act of sending, making, or transmitting a call, message, or other communication, as applicable.”
Finally, the bill would double the penalty — to $20,000 — for individuals found to have used spoofed phone numbers when making robocalls.
