[House Hearing, 116 Congress] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office] LEGISLATING TO STOP THE ONSLAUGHT OF ANNOYING ROBOCALLS ======================================================================= HEARING BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMUNICATIONS AND TECHNOLOGY OF THE COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION __________ APRIL 30, 2019 __________ Serial No. 116-26 [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Printed for the use of the Committee on Energy and Commerce govinfo.gov/committee/house-energy energycommerce.house.gov ______ U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 39-858 PDF WASHINGTON : 2020 COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE FRANK PALLONE, Jr., New Jersey Chairman BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois GREG WALDEN, Oregon ANNA G. ESHOO, California Ranking Member ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York FRED UPTON, Michigan DIANA DeGETTE, Colorado JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois MIKE DOYLE, Pennsylvania MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas JAN SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois STEVE SCALISE, Louisiana G. K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina ROBERT E. LATTA, Ohio DORIS O. MATSUI, California CATHY McMORRIS RODGERS, Washington KATHY CASTOR, Florida BRETT GUTHRIE, Kentucky JOHN P. SARBANES, Maryland PETE OLSON, Texas JERRY McNERNEY, California DAVID B. McKINLEY, West Virginia PETER WELCH, Vermont ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois BEN RAY LUJAN, New Mexico H. MORGAN GRIFFITH, Virginia PAUL TONKO, New York GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida YVETTE D. CLARKE, New York, Vice BILL JOHNSON, Ohio Chair BILLY LONG, Missouri DAVID LOEBSACK, Iowa LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana KURT SCHRADER, Oregon BILL FLORES, Texas JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III, SUSAN W. BROOKS, Indiana Massachusetts MARKWAYNE MULLIN, Oklahoma TONY CARDENAS, California RICHARD HUDSON, North Carolina RAUL RUIZ, California TIM WALBERG, Michigan SCOTT H. PETERS, California EARL L. ``BUDDY'' CARTER, Georgia DEBBIE DINGELL, Michigan JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina MARC A. VEASEY, Texas GREG GIANFORTE, Montana ANN M. KUSTER, New Hampshire ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois NANETTE DIAZ BARRAGAN, California A. DONALD McEACHIN, Virginia LISA BLUNT ROCHESTER, Delaware DARREN SOTO, Florida TOM O'HALLERAN, Arizona ------ Professional Staff JEFFREY C. CARROLL, Staff Director TIFFANY GUARASCIO, Deputy Staff Director MIKE BLOOMQUIST, Minority Staff Director Subcommittee on Communications and Technology MIKE DOYLE, Pennsylvania Chairman JERRY McNERNEY, California ROBERT E. LATTA, Ohio YVETTE D. CLARKE, New York Ranking Member DAVID LOEBSACK, Iowa JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois MARC A. VEASEY, Texas STEVE SCALISE, Louisiana A. DONALD McEACHIN, Virginia PETE OLSON, Texas DARREN SOTO, Florida ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois TOM O'HALLERAN, Arizona GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida ANNA G. ESHOO, California BILL JOHNSON, Ohio DIANA DeGETTE, Colorado BILLY LONG, Missouri G. K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina BILL FLORES, Texas DORIS O. MATSUI, California, Vice SUSAN W. BROOKS, Indiana Chair TIM WALBERG, Michigan PETER WELCH, Vermont GREG GIANFORTE, Montana BEN RAY LUJAN, New Mexico GREG WALDEN, Oregon (ex officio) KURT SCHRADER, Oregon TONY CARDENAS, California DEBBIE DINGELL, Michigan FRANK PALLONE, Jr., New Jersey (ex officio) C O N T E N T S ---------- Page Hon. Mike Doyle, a Representative in Congress from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, opening statement................ 1 Prepared statement........................................... 3 Hon. Robert E. Latta, a Representative in Congress from the State of Ohio, opening statement..................................... 4 Prepared statement........................................... 5 Hon. Frank Pallone, Jr., a Representative in Congress from the State of New Jersey, opening statement......................... 6 Prepared statement........................................... 8 Hon. Greg Walden, a Representative in Congress from the State of Oregon, opening statement...................................... 9 Prepared statement........................................... 10 Witnesses Dave Summitt, Chief Information Security Officer for the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute, and Fellow, Institute of Critical Infrastructure Technology................ 11 Prepared statement........................................... 14 Margot Saunders, Senior Counsel, National Consumer Law Center.... 20 Prepared statement........................................... 22 Patrick Halley, Senior Vice President, Advocacy and Regulatory Affairs, USTelecom-The Broadband Association................... 50 Prepared statement........................................... 52 Answers to submitted questions............................... 117 Aaron Foss, Founder, Nomorobo.................................... 59 Prepared statement........................................... 61 Submitted Material H.R. 946, the Stopping Bad Robocalls Act \1\ Discussion Draft, H.R. ___, the Support Tools to Obliterate Pesky Robocalls Act \1\ H.R. 1421, the Help Americans Never Get Unwanted Phone calls Act of 2019 \1\ H.R. 2355, the Regulatory Oversight Barring Obnoxious Calls and Texts Act of 2019 \1\ H.R. 721, the Spam Calls Task Force Act of 2019 \1\ H.R. 2298, the Repeated Objectionable Bothering Of Consumers On Phones Act \1\ H.R. 1575, the Robocall Enforcement Enhancement Act of 2019 \1\ Letter of April 29, 2019, from Meredith Attwell Baker, President and Chief Executive Officer, CTIA, to Mr. Latta, submitted by Mr. Latta...................................................... 97 Letter of April 29, 2019, from Matthew M. Polka, President and Chief Executive Officer, America's Communications Association, to Mr. Doyle and Mr. Latta, submitted by Mr. Latta............. 98 Letter of April 29, 2019, from Jonathan Bullock, Vice President, Corporate Development and Government, Hotwire Communications, et al., to Mr. Doyle and Mr. Latta, submitted by Mr. Latta..... 99 Letter of April 29, 2019, from ACA International, et al., to Mr. Doyle and Mr. Latta, submitted by Mr. Doyle.................... 101 ---------- \1\ Legislation discussed during the hearing has been retained in committee files and also is available at https://docs.house.gov/ Committee/Calendar/ByEvent.aspx?EventID=109357. Letter of April 29, 2019, from Maureen Mahoney, Policy Analyst, and George P. Slover, Senior Policy Counsel, Consumer Reports, to Mr. Doyle and Mr. Latta, submitted by Mr. Doyle............. 103 Letter of April 29, 2019, from Marc Rotenberg, President, Electronic Privacy Information Center, et al., to Mr. Doyle and Mr. Latta, submitted by Mr. Doyle.............................. 105 Letter of April 29, 2019, from Brad Thaler, Vice President of Legislative Affairs, National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions, to Mr. Doyle and Mr. Latta, submitted by Mr. Doyle.......................................................... 107 Letter of April 29, 2019, from Mark Neeb, Chief Executive Officer, ACA International, to Mr. Doyle and Mr. Latta, submitted by Mr. Doyle......................................... 109 Report of ACA International, ``The Impact of Call-blocking and Labeling Technologies on the Accounts Receivable Industry,'' submitted by Mr. Doyle......................................... 114 Letter of April 30, 2019, from Hon. Jefferson Van Drew, a Representative in Congress from the State of New Jersey, to the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, submitted by Mr. Doyle.......................................................... 116 LEGISLATING TO STOP THE ONSLAUGHT OF ANNOYING ROBOCALLS ---------- TUESDAY, APRIL 30, 2019 House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, Committee on Energy and Commerce, Washington, DC. The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:01 a.m., in the John D. Dingell Room 2123, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Mike Doyle (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Members present: Representatives Doyle, McNerney, Clarke, Loebsack, Veasey, McEachin, Soto, O'Halleran, Eshoo, DeGette, Butterfield, Matsui, Welch, Cardenas, Dingell, Pallone (ex officio), Latta (subcommittee ranking member), Shimkus, Olson, Kinzinger, Bilirakis, Johnson, Long, Flores, Brooks, Walberg, Gianforte, and Walden (ex officio). Staff present: AJ Brown, Counsel; Jeffrey C. Carroll, Staff Director; Jennifer Epperson, FCC Detailee; Evan Gilbert, Deputy Press Secretary; Waverly Gordon, Deputy Chief Counsel; Tiffany Guarascio, Deputy Staff Director; Alex Hoehn-Saric, Chief Counsel, Communications and Consumer Protection; Jerry Leverich, Senior Counsel; Dan Miller, Policy Analyst; Phil Murphy, Policy Coordinator; Alivia Roberts, Press Assistant; Andrew Souvall, Director of Communications, Outreach, and Member Services; Mike Bloomquist, Minority Staff Director; Robin Colwell, Minority Chief Counsel, Communications and Technology; Jordan Davis, Minority Senior Advisor; Kristine Fargotstein, Minority Detailee, Communications and Technology; Margaret Tucker Fogarty, Minority Staff Assistant; Peter Kielty, Minority General Counsel; Tim Kurth, Minority Deputy Chief Counsel, Communications and Technology. Mr. Doyle. The Subcommittee on Communications and Technology will now come to order. The Chair recognizes himself for 5 minutes. OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MIKE DOYLE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA Well, I want to welcome everyone to today's legislative hearing on solutions to a problem that we all have firsthand experience with: illegal robocalls. Today's hearing will examine the onslaught of illegal robocalls and seven legislative proposals to help address this harmful, predatory, and extremely annoying practice. Among the bills we will consider today is Chairman Pallone's Stopping Bad Robocalls Act, which I support and am an original cosponsor of along with many members of this committee. This bill offers a comprehensive set of solutions that I believe can help seriously reduce the numbers of robocalls that consumers receive. We will also consider Ranking Member Latta's STOP Robocalls Act which I have also agreed to cosponsor. While I have some concerns about this bill, Ranking Member Latta and I have agreed to work together to resolve these issues in order to advance this legislation. We will also be considering two bills from Congresswoman Eshoo, the HANGUP Act and the ROBO Calls and Texts Act, as well as Congressman Crist's Spam Calls Task Force Act of 2019 and Congresswoman Speier's ROBOCOP Act and Congressman Van Drew's Robocall Enforcement Enhancement Act of 2019. I want to thank our panel of witnesses for appearing before us today to testify about this important issue and the legislation that is before this subcommittee. Unwanted robocalls and texts are the top consumer complaint received by the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission. According to the FCC's report on robocalls, consumer complaints to the FCC have increased from 150,000 a year in 2016 to 230,000 in 2018. The Federal Trade Commission, which administers the Do Not Call Registry, received nearly 3.8 million complaints regarding robocalls last year alone. As might be expected, the number of robocalls has exploded as well, topping out at nearly 48 billion, with a B, last year, a 57 percent increase in volume from the year before, according to the YouMail Robocall Index. That number is estimated to increase to 60 billion by the end of this year. And while some of these calls constituted legitimate alerts and reminders, those calls accounted for only 20 percent of the total amount of robocalls. In the month of March alone, phones in my hometown of Pittsburgh received an estimated 37 million robocalls which was an eight percent increase in the number of calls we received the month before. The problem has gotten so bad that you can watch videos on the internet of people getting robocalls while they are in the middle of making a video complaining about robocalls. One of my favorites is of AT&T's CEO getting a robocall in the middle of an interview, showing that truly no one is immune to this nuisance. Many phone service providers have begun making robocall blocking technologies like Mr. Foss' Nomorobo service available to their customers, and I applaud the efforts of those to offer these services to customers for free. I encourage all phone service providers to make these services available to their customers free of charge. I believe that Congress and the FCC have an obligation to work with phone providers and their customers whether they may be institutions like the Moffitt Cancer Center, which is with us today to talk about this issue, or individual consumers, to not only help with the deployment of blocking technologies, but to work on addressing the underlying shortcomings of the law and our Nation's telecommunications infrastructure to help stem the tide of this harmful and predatory practice. Thank you. I look forward to the testimony of the witnesses, and I yield the balance of my time to Congresswoman Eshoo. [The prepared statement of Mr. Doyle follows:] Prepared Statement of Hon. Mike Doyle Welcome everyone to today's legislative hearing on solutions to a problem that we've all had first-hand experience with, illegal robocalls. Today's hearing will examine the onslaught of illegal robocalls and seven legislative proposals to help address this harmful, predatory, and extremely annoying practice. Among the bills we will consider today is Chairman Pallone's Stopping Bad Robocalls Act, which I support and am an original cosponsor of, along with many members of the committee. This bill offers a comprehensive set of solutions that I believe can help seriously reduce the number of robocalls consumers receive. We will also consider Ranking Member Latta's Stop Robocalls Act, which I have also agreed to cosponsor. While I have some concerns about the bill, Ranking Member Latta and I have agreed to work together to resolve these issues in order to advance this legislation. We will also be considering two bills from Congresswoman Eshoo, the Hang Up Act and the ROBO Calls and Texts Act. As well as Congressman Crist's Spam Calls Task Force Act of 2019, Congresswoman Speier's ROBOCOP Act, and Congressman Van Drew's Robocall Enforcement Enhancement Act of 2019. I'd like to thank our panel of witnesses for appearing before us today to testify about this important issue and the legislation before the subcommittee. Unwanted robocalls and texts are the top consumer complaint received by the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission. According to the FCC's Report on Robocalls, consumer complaints to the FCC have increased from 150,000 a year in 2016 to 230,000 in 2018. The Federal Trade Commission, which administers the Do Not Call Registry, received nearly 3.8 million complaints regarding robocalls last year alone. As might be expected, the number of robocalls has exploded as well, topping out at nearly 48 billion last year, a 57 percent increase in volume from the year before, according to the ``you-mail'' robocall index. That number is estimated to increase to 60 billion by the end of this year. And while some of these calls constituted legitimate alerts and reminders, those calls accounted for only 20 percent of the total amount of robocalls. In the month of March alone, phones in my home town of Pittsburgh received an estimated 37 million robocalls, which was an 8 percent increase in the number of calls we received the month before. The problem has gotten so bad that you can watch videos on the Internet of people getting robocalls while they are in the middle of making videos complaining about them. One of my favorites is of AT&T's CEO getting robocalled in the middle of an interview, showing that truly no one is immune to this nuisance. Many phone services providers have begun making robocalling blocking technologies, like Mr. Foss' Nomorobo service, available to their customers, and I applaud the efforts of those who offer these services to customers for free. I encourage all phone service providers to make these services available to their customers free of charge. I believe that Congress and the FCC have an obligation to work with phone providers and their customers, whether they be institutions like the Cancer Moffitt Center, which is with us today to talk about this issue, or individual consumers, to not only help with the deployment of blocking technologies, but to work on addressing the underlying shortcomings of the law and our Nation's telecommunications infrastructure, to help stem the tide of this harmful and predatory practice. Thank you and I look forward to the testimony of our witnesses. Ms. Eshoo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for yielding time to me, and thank you for considering two of my bills during today's hearing, the HANGUP Act and the ROBO Calls and Texts Act. Millions of students, veterans, farmers, and homeowners have loans owed to or guaranteed by the Federal Government. In 2015, Congress created a loophole that allows companies collecting this debt to robocall borrowers without consent. The HANGUP Act is bipartisan, bicameral legislation that repeals this loophole, ensuring that all Americans are protected from these abusive robocalls. Very importantly, last Wednesday, a Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decision strengthened the need for the HANGUP Act because the Court found the 2015 loophole to be unconstitutional, so we have an opportunity here. My other bill, the ROBO Calls and Texts Act, creates a division at the FCC to ensure that the Commission is responsive to the millions of requests that they do something and it compels them to act to adopt technological standards to combat robocalls. So, I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for yielding the time to me and for taking up two of my bills. Yield back. Mr. Doyle. I thank the gentlelady. The Chair now recognizes my friend, Mr. Latta, the ranking member for the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, for 5 minutes for his opening statement. OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT E. LATTA, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OHIO Mr. Latta. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And good morning and welcome to our panel of witnesses. Like many of my colleagues on this subcommittee, today's hearing addresses one of the top issues I hear about from my constituents when I am back home in Ohio. In fact, some of my constituents are getting so many unlawful robocalls they have stopped answering their phones. After listening to these concerns, I introduced a bill with the chairman, the gentleman from Pennsylvania, that we will be discussing today, called the Support Tools to Obliterate Pesky Robocalls Act, or STOP Robocalls Act. Our bill would give us additional tools in our robocall toolbox to go after the bad actors. The STOP Robocalls Act would help terminate illegal call operations by streamlining the process for private entities to share information with the Federal Communications Commission about scams and further industry efforts to trace back the source of unwanted robocalls. In addition to going after the root of the problem, our bill would also protect consumers by providing easier access to illegal robocall blocking technology. Our bill distinguishes between legitimate and illegitimate callers and recognizes that we need to go after the bad actors. I hope that the focus of today's hearing is also on how we need to stop illegal, unwanted robocalls. While we all get annoyed by the overwhelming number of unlawful calls we receive, we also rely on our phone system for many valuable, proconsumer messages. Emergency personnel use voice services to provide evacuation notices and alerts during severe weather and other dangerous situations. Schools use voice and text services to notify parents of changes in the school schedule. And although Ohio doesn't declare as many snow days as DC, parents like knowing when school is closing early or canceled. Financial services also use voice and text services to alert consumers to potentially unauthorized activity in their bank account. And the medical community uses voice and text services to follow-up with patients with important information and checkups after operations and remind patients of prescriptions refills, or even to confirm doctors' appointments. But bad actors have also figured out how to take advantage of the phone system and technology that legitimate entities use to share important messages and instead manipulate the technology to trick and deceive consumers. These scammers deliberately falsify their caller ID information to hoax consumers into thinking they are getting a call from their bank or the IRS or make the call appear that it is coming from someone in their neighborhood. This tactic known as ``neighborhood spoofing'' assumes that we are all likely to answer a phone call that appears to be local and is a key driver behind unwanted calls and texts to both wireline and wireless phones. Furthermore, this type of fraudulent spoofing results in real financial harm. Scammers trick consumers into answering these calls and then use deceptive tactics to convince people, often vulnerable and trusting senior citizens, to hand over their personal information or to purchase fake goods and services. We want to make sure that we are preserving consumers' access to desirable and, at times, lifesaving calls and text messages while also protecting them from bad actors who fraudulently spoof caller ID information to make illegal robocalls. At best, Americans find these robocalls pesky, and at worst, these illegal calls scam hardworking Americans out of their life savings. Congress, the FCC, and the FTC have made tremendous progress working with industry to help reduce the number of illegal robocalls Americans receive. Industry has also been actively working to protect consumers from unwanted robocalls by developing a set of procedures to authenticate caller ID information associated with telephone calls to combat unlawful caller ID spoofing. Last Congress, when I served as the chairman of the Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection Subcommittee, we held a hearing on the options and strategies that the Government and industry were employing to fight robocalls and caller ID spoofing and to provide consumers with the tools to protect themselves. We learned of tools available to empower consumers and discuss how consumer education was a key in keeping to prevent people from falling victim. However, as technology continues to evolve, so do the tactics that bad actors use to illegally spoof numbers and make fraudulent robocalls. But despite our progress thus far, more work remains to be done to protect the American consumer. I am glad we are discussing several legislative proposals today that would do just that. I look forward to hearing from the witnesses and thank the chairman for working with me on the STOP Robocalls Act and for holding today's hearing. And with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time. [The prepared statement of Mr. Latta follows:] Prepared Statement of Hon. Robert E. Latta Good morning and welcome to our panel of witnesses. Like many of my colleagues on this subcommittee, today's hearing addresses one of the top issues I hear about from my constituents when I am back home in Ohio. In fact, some of my constituents are getting so many unlawful robocalls that they have stopped answering their phones. After listening to these concerns, I introduced a bill with Chairman Doyle that we will be discussing today called the Support Tools to Obliterate Pesky Robocalls Act or STOP Robocalls Act. Our bill would give us additional tools in our robocall toolbox to go after bad actors. The STOP Robocalls Act would help terminate illegal call operations by streamlining the process for private entities to share information with the Federal Communications Commission about scams, and further industry efforts to trace back the source of unwanted robocalls. In addition to going after the root of the problem, our bill would also protect consumers by providing easier access to illegal robocall blocking technology. Our bill distinguishes between legitimate and illegitimate callers and recognizes that we need to go after the bad actors. I hope that the focus of today's hearing is also on how we need to stop illegal, unwanted robocalls. While we all get annoyed by the overwhelming number of unlawful calls we receive, we also rely on our phone system for many valuable, proconsumer messages. Emergency personnel use voice services to provide evacuation notifications and alerts during severe weather and other dangerous situations. Schools use voice and text services to notify parents of changes in the school schedule--and although Ohio doesn't declare as many snow days as DC- parents like knowing when school is closing early or canceled. Financial services also use voice and text services to alert consumers to potentially unauthorized activity in their bank account. And, the medical community uses voice and text services to follow up with patients with important information and check-ups after operations, remind patients of prescription refills, or even to confirm doctor's appointments. But, bad actors have also figured out how to take advantage of the phone system and technology that legitimate entities use to share important messages, and instead manipulate the technology to trick and deceive consumers. These scammers deliberately falsify their caller ID information to hoax consumers into thinking that they are getting a call from their bank or IRS, or make the call appear that it is coming from someone in their neighborhood. This tactic, known as ``neighborhood spoofing,'' assumes that we are more likely to answer a phone call that appears to be local, and is a key driver behind unwanted calls and texts to both wireline and wireless phones. Furthermore, this type of fraudulent spoofing results in real financial harm. Scammers trick consumers into answering these calls and then use deceptive tactics to convince people-- often vulnerable and trusting senior citizens--to hand over their personal information or to purchase fake goods and services. We want to make sure that we are preserving consumers' access to desirable, and at times, life-saving calls and text messages while also protecting them from bad actors who fraudulently spoof caller ID information to make illegal robocalls. At best, Americans find these robocalls pesky, and at worst, these illegal calls scam hard-working Americans out of their life savings. Congress, the FCC, and the FTC have made tremendous progress working with industry to help reduce the number of illegal robocalls Americans receive. Industry has also been actively working to protect consumers from unwanted robocalls by developing a set of procedures to authenticate caller ID information associated with telephone calls to combat unlawful caller ID spoofing. Last Congress, when I served as chairman of the Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection subcommittee, we held a hearing on the options and strategies that the Government and industry were employing to fight robocalls and caller ID spoofing and provide consumers with tools to protect themselves. We learned of tools available to empower consumers and discussed how consumer education was key in helping to prevent people from falling victim. However, as technology continues to evolve, so do the tactics that bad actors use to illegally spoof numbers and make fraudulent robocalls. Despite our progress thus far, more work remains to be done to protect American consumers. I am glad we are discussing several legislative proposals today that would do just that. I look forward to hearing from the witnesses, and I thank the chairman for working with me on the STOP Robocalls Act and for holding today's hearing. With that I yield back. Mr. Doyle. I thank the gentleman. The Chair now recognizes Mr. Pallone, chairman of the full committee, for 5 minutes for his opening statement. OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. FRANK PALLONE, Jr., A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY Mr. Pallone. Thank you, Chairman Doyle. One of this committee's top priorities is putting consumers first, and one of the things I hear most from consumers back home is that they are sick and tired of robocalls. Consumers today are facing more robocalls than ever. Government data from 2017 shows that New Jerseyans filed more complaints with the National Do Not Call Registry per capita than any other State about robocalls. And it is getting so bad that some experts estimate that almost half of all calls to our cell phones this year will be robocalls. And we all know how annoying these calls are, but they are more insidious than that. Robocalls are not just being made for telemarketing, some callers are trying to defraud hardworking Americans and seniors in particular. In some instances, criminals are pestering consumers with one-ring calls hoping that they will call the number back and incur excessive charges. And Congress has taken bipartisan action in the past to help put consumers back in control of their cell phones. In 1991, Congress passed the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and then later authorized the Do Not Call Registry, but as technology has evolved robocalls and the threats they impose have simply increased. It is easier than ever for someone to begin making robocalls. Bad actors only need a smartphone with a few select applications to make spoofed robocalls. This means that existing approaches to stopping these calls may not work anymore. And so, we need to implement new call authenticity technologies to clear these unwanted calls from our phone lines. Regulators in industry need better tools to protect consumers and once again it is time for Congress to act. Earlier this year, I introduced the Stopping Bad Robocalls Act to turn the tide in the fight against robocalls. And there is no one silver bullet and that is why it is so important that we address this problem for every side. We have a number of bills that are being considered today, as the chairman said, in this legislative hearing. But with regard to my bill, the Stopping Bad Robocalls Act, it would require that carriers implement new call authenticity technologies to help ensure that consumers know who is on the other end of the line when they pick up the phone and implementing these technological solutions would also help consumers control who can reach them more generally. My bill would also update the legal definition of autodialer to make sure that callers can't use new technologies to get around the longstanding consumer protections against robocalls. The FCC is currently studying how it could address its own interpretation of the term ``autodialer,'' and as part of that proceeding the FCC could begin to fix the problem on its own. And when coming to a resolution, I would urge the Commission to put consumers first in this matter so that Congress doesn't have to redo its work. I am hopeful the Commission will do that and, after all, they took a very proconsumer approach to revision that I included in this legislation last Congress, and that provision requires the FCC to implement a reassigned number database to ensure that when a consumer gets a new telephone number, they aren't receiving the robocalls from the person that had the number before. In December, the FCC adopted an order to implement a reassigned number database much like the one that is in my bill and I applaud this action and I look forward to the FCC getting this database operational as quickly as possible. So, as I said, we have six bills today. There are some from Democrats, some from Republicans. One of the bills before us was introduced by the Subcommittee Ranking Member Latta. We look forward to discussing how to move bipartisan legislation forward. And we also have proposals from Representatives Van Drew, Crist, and Speier that help push the conversation forward, and we have two bills introduced by Representative Eshoo as well. So, I look forward to working in a bipartisan fashion to finally stop the onslaught of these annoying calls and appreciate the fact that we have so many Members that are trying to address this. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Unless anyone else wants my minute--and I don't think so. Thank you. [The prepared statement of Mr. Pallone follows:] Prepared Statement of Hon. Frank Pallone, Jr. One of this committee's top priorities is putting consumers first--and one of the things I hear most from consumers back home is that they are sick and tired of robocalls. Consumers today are facing more robocalls than ever. Government data from 2017 shows that New Jerseyans filed more complaints with the National Do Not Call Registry per capita than any other State about robocalls. It is getting so bad that some experts estimate that almost half of all calls to our cell phones this year will be robocalls. We all know how annoying these calls are, but they are more insidious than that. Robocalls are not just being made for telemarketing, some callers are trying to defraud hard working Americans and seniors. In some instances, criminals are pestering consumers with one-ring calls hoping that they will call the number back and incur excessive charges. Congress has taken bipartisan action in the past to help put consumers back in control of their cell phones. In 1991, Congress passed the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and then later authorized the Do Not Call Registry. But as technology has evolved, robocalls, and the threat they impose, have increased. It is easier than ever for someone to begin making robocalls. Bad actors only need a smartphone with a few select applications to make spoofed robocalls. This means that existing approaches to stop these calls may not work anymore. We need to implement new call authentication technologies to clear these unwanted calls from our phone lines. Regulators and industry need better tools to protect consumers, and once again, it is time for Congress act. Earlier this year I introduced the Stopping Bad Robocalls Act to turn the tide in the fight to against robocalls. There's no one silver bullet, and that's why it is so important that we address this problem from every side. For example, the Stopping Bad Robocalls Act would require that carriers implement new call authentication technologies to help ensure that consumers know who is on the other end of the line when they pick up the phone. Implementing these technological solutions would also help consumers control who can reach them more generally. My bill would also update the legal definition of autodialer to make sure that callers can't use new technologies to get around the long-standing consumer protections against robocalls. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is currently studying how it could address its own interpretation of the term autodialer, and as part of that proceeding, the FCC could begin to fix the problem on its own. When coming to a resolution, I would urge the Commission to put consumers first in this matter so that Congress doesn't have to redo its work. I am hopeful the Commission will do just that, after all they took a proconsumer approach to a provision I included in this legislation last Congress. That provision required the FCC to implement a reassigned number database to ensure that when a consumer gets a new telephone number, they aren't receiving the robocalls from the person that had the number before. In December the FCC adopted an order to implement a reassigned number database much like the one in my bill. I applaud this action, and I look forward to the FCC getting this database operational as quickly as possible. Other than my bill, we will be discussing six other proposals today from both Democrats and Republicans. One of the bills before us was introduced by Subcommittee Ranking Member Latta. I look forward to hearing about his bill and discussing how to move bipartisan legislation forward quickly. We also have proposals from Representatives Van Drew, Crist, and Speier that help push the conversation forward. Additionally, we will discuss two bills introduced by Representative Eshoo.I look forward to working in a bipartisan fashion to finally stop the onslaught of these annoying calls. Mr. Doyle. The gentleman yields back. The Chair now recognizes Mr. Walden, the ranking member of the full committee, for 5 minutes for his opening statement. OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. GREG WALDEN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OREGON Mr. Walden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks for having this hearing. And I want to thank our panelists for being here today to help inform our work. Nothing brings us, Democrats and Republicans, together faster or stronger than I think this issue and so we look forward to working with all of you to get results. You know, I have done 20 town halls in my district so far this year, and I can't think of a time that this question didn't come up about what are you doing to stop robocalls and these unwanted cell calls. And usually in the middle of those town halls I would get one of those as well, one of those calls. And so, I didn't answer it by the way, but I let them go to voice mail and if they don't leave a message they don't exist in my world. So, I am all for going after these like I was for going after those people that did the pop-up ads, remember those? When you try and open a software--now we are seeing who is old here, but the pop-up ads that would occur anytime you opened up your computer. I was for the death penalty for those people, because you couldn't get anything done. And this has escalated to the same place, I think, for consumers, and they have had it and they have rightfully had it, and we have had it. And so, you are seeing an all-hands-on-deck approach here. Now, last Congress, we passed the RAY BAUM'S Act that gave the FCC some additional authority in this space as well and that was a big bipartisan bill we joined together. I know, Mr. Chairman, we are going to have the FCC fully before the committee. This would be a good topic to raise with them as well because I know Chairman Pai and others are clearly involved in this. But we all benefit by the hearing today. It was a year ago almost to the day that we held a hearing on this very topic, and I think maybe, Mr. Foss, you were here for that. And we appreciated your testimony at that time and we shared several ideas on how industry could do more in this area to stop this scourge, and our consumers should take and make use of the solutions that our really bright innovators are putting forward. We will soon, as I say, have the FCC before us. I am pleased we have these bills, a wide range assortment of different legislative initiatives here to go after this issue, so I am pleased that we've got a lot of options before us. As we work to make this a bipartisan success, I know it can be under the chairman's leadership, I do not want to build a false expectation that these bills will end the problem, because that is part of what we learned out of the testimony from the hearing a year ago, is just how difficult this is because of its international component. Subcommittee members here know better than many on how communications and technologies are constantly evolving. The bad actors' tricks evolved beyond our Do Not Call Registry and will likely figure out an avenue beyond our next effort, so we have got to stay vigilant. However, the more friction we create against these criminals, and I call them criminals because they are, and the more focused, public-private partnerships amongst industry, consumer groups, and government are in rooting out the problems, I think we can make some real strides here and gain in helping American consumers. Lastly, while engagement of law enforcement is beyond the purview of our committee, that is an avenue worth pursuing as well as I look forward to the bills being considered today being further strengthened by a dialogue with our friends in the Senate who have also sought to engage the powers of the Attorney General. So again, I want to thank our witnesses. I want to thank the chairman of the subcommittee and the full committee for having this hearing today. And if there are Members on our side that would like to use my last minute and a half or so, I would be happy to yield. And if not, Mr. Chairman, we can get on with the hearing. So, I yield back, and thank you again. [The prepared statement of Mr. Walden follows:] Prepared Statement of Hon. Greg Walden Let me welcome the witnesses to the panel today. All of you here care deeply about the proposals before us, and all are working very hard to address this scourge--that has grown from an annoyance to a sincere peril--in your respective areas. In the 20 townhalls I've held across my district, it seemed like inevitably someone would ask ``can't something be done about robocalls?'' I share their frustration and remain committed to working with the chairman to address these calls with action from Congress. You would be hard pressed to find a technology that's more personal than a telephone. Whether it's the cell phone in your pocket, or for some, a landline at home, voice communications on these devices is still an important way in which we connect to one another. Yet that personal connection is being violated by bad actors using technology to hide their tracks. They should be treated and prosecuted for what they are, criminals. These criminal parties have done significant harm to Americans both personally and professionally. First, as we seek a successful effort on this legislation, I believe it is important to state that we make a clear distinction in targeting those parties that have malicious intent as opposed to those who do not. Our clearest and quickest path for enacting law is to go after those that have malicious intent. To go beyond that, we will undermine services that many Americans depend upon every day. Second, I want to put an emphasis on thanking the chairman for the process we are vetting these bills under today. By putting our teams together, it is a welcome return to the process we operated under with our friends last Congress that led to many bipartisan successes, one of which specifically sought to address malicious spoofing. As part of RAY BAUM's Act last Congress we provided the FCC more authority to go after bad actors who utilize calls and texts. A bipartisan process matters. We all benefit from hearing and debating each other's ideas. Such vetting gives us the opportunity to get to the heart of the problem, and not error on the side of cutting off legitimate use of these technologies, such as protecting the anonymity of a shelter assisting at-risk individuals, alerting you to a fraudulent use of your credit card, or providing you the simple convenience of interacting with your ride-share service. Almost a year ago to the day, we held a hearing on combating illegal and fraudulent robocalls and spoofing. We shared several ideas on how industry can do its part to address this scourge, and how consumers should make use of the solutions. We will soon have the FCC before the committee, and we will gain by their technical insight before we mark-up. I'm pleased that the bills we review today seek to lock in those objectives. As we highlighted then, we owe it to our constituents to present all options available to them. As we work to make this a bipartisan success, and I know it can be under the chairman's leadership, I do not want to build a false expectation that these bills will end the problem. Subcommittee members here know better than many how communications and technologies are constantly evolving. The bad actors' tricks evolved beyond our Do Not Call registry and will likely figure out an avenue beyond our next effort. However, the more friction we create against these criminals, and the more focused public-private partnerships amongst industry, consumer groups, and government are in rooting out the problems, we can make great strides in regaining American's confidence in their communications. Lastly, while engagement of law enforcement is beyond the purview of this committee, that is an avenue worth pursuing as well and I look forward to the bills being considered today being further strengthened by a dialogue with our friends in the Senate who have also sought to engage the powers of the Attorney General. Thank you again for my colleagues and the witness panel, and I look forward to another bipartisan bicameral success originating from this committee. Mr. Doyle. The gentleman yields back. The Chair would like to remind Members that, pursuant to committee rules, all Members' written opening statements shall be made part of the record. So, I would now like to introduce our witnesses for today's hearing. Mr. Dave Summitt, chief information security officer for the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute and Fellow for the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology, welcome. Ms. Margot Saunders, senior counsel, National Consumer Law Center, welcome. Mr. Patrick Halley, senior vice president, Advocacy and Regulatory Affairs, USTelecom and The Broadband Association, welcome, sir. And, Mr. Aaron Foss, founder of Nomorobo, thank you for being here today. We look forward to your testimony. At this time, the Chair will now recognize each witness for 5 minutes to provide their opening statement, but before we begin, I would like to explain the lighting system. In front of you is a series of lights. The light will initially be green at the start of your opening statement. The light will turn yellow when you have 1 minute remaining, and please wrap up your testimony. At that point the light will turn red when your time expires. And with that, Mr. Summitt, you are now recognized for 5 minutes, and make sure your microphone is turned on, sir. STATEMENTS OF DAVE SUMMITT, CHIEF INFORMATION SECURITY OFFICER, H. LEE MOFFITT CANCER CENTER & RESEARCH INSTITUTE, AND FELLOW, INSTITUTE OF CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE TECHNOLOGY; MARGOT SAUNDERS, SENIOR COUNSEL, NATIONAL CONSUMER LAW CENTER; PATRICK HALLEY, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, ADVOCACY AND REGULATORY AFFAIRS, USTELECOM-THE BROADBAND ASSOCIATION; AND AARON FOSS, FOUNDER, NOMOROBO STATEMENT OF DAVE SUMMITT Mr. Summitt. Thank you, Chairman Doyle and members of the committee. It is truly a privilege to be here and been invited to give such hopefully compelling information for you to act upon the problem we are seeing today. My name is Dave Summitt. I am the chief information security officer for Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida. Moffitt is a highly recognized and, in my opinion, one of the most elite hospital, cancer hospital and care in the world. They treat 60,000 individuals on an annual basis at Moffitt, which makes them the third busiest hospital in the Nation. In addition, they are a National Cancer Institute Comprehensive Care Center, one of three--of 49, and it is truly an honor to be part of that organization. So why I am here today is to bring more of a consumer business portion to this problem because it is a significant problem. And when I first started hearing about and getting excited, really, about what is being proposed here for stopping robocalls, one of the first things that popped into my mind was I am not sure that the general population and the powers that be that can have some say into this is understanding the real severity level of this and that is why I want to try to bring this home. As large as we are and as much as we go through, and myself being head of the cyber operations at Moffitt trying to protect our patients and our organization and our applications, to give kind of an idea of the extent of this problem we process approximately 3 million malicious events every month at Moffitt on our network. When the telecom starts being part of this, it is just inundating as even more and it is a very bad problem. These aren't just robocalls for annoyance. And as much as all of the bills so far as addressing this problem of annoyance, this goes much deeper. It is now starting to impact patient care at facilities and healthcare across the Nation. In my efforts of trying to raise awareness of what you are doing with our healthcare community, I used our Critical Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Centers, which was stood up by the Government for purposes of reaching our critical infrastructure. Healthcare is one of the 16 critical infrastructure sectors, and because of that I got a lot of information back from various healthcare organizations across the Nation saying we have a problem and behind what I am bringing to you today is that 18 additional healthcare organizations have backed what we are trying to do and support you with doing. And inside my written testimony, you will see all 18 of these. For an example of our problem, before I came last week, I had our telecommunications people pull our logs. We ended up with 6,600 calls in a 90-day period that were of either malicious intent or identified themselves as someone they are not. And the point I want to make about these 6,600 calls, these were calls that were called to us from the outside of our organization using our ID, our caller ID, to get into the organization. So, when you are sitting here and you are in a healthcare situation and you are seeing a phone call come in from someone inside our organization, you are going to pick that thing up. And that is the intent of what they are trying to do in reaching us. If they get legitimacy behind the caller ID, chances are they are going to pick up the phone. Sixty-six hundred of them in a 90-day period. That equated--I also pulled the logs of how long it took for those calls to last, 65 hours of time was taken just for those 6,600 calls. That is just one area of these calls that have been coming in. The other calls that we are having now and we have seen a ramp-up going on is that not only are they calling our organization with it, but they are calling our community. They are calling other people outside of our organization using our ID, using our name, and not only that but they are calling these people in our communities and patients. When they pick up the phone and they see it is from Moffitt Cancer Center they are being identified on the other end as Moffitt Cancer Center employees. So, if you can imagine, if they happen to get a hold of one of our patients and it is called Moffitt Cancer Center, they are absolutely going to answer that phone. And they are extracting information that can be detrimental to those patients. [The prepared statement of Mr. Summitt follows:] [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Mr. Doyle. Well, thank you, Mr. Summitt. Ms. Saunders, you are recognized for 5 minutes. STATEMENT OF MARGOT SAUNDERS Ms. Saunders. Thank you, Chairman Doyle, Mr. Latta, and members of the committee. I appreciate the opportunity to testify today on behalf of the low-income consumers of the National Consumer Law Center and three other national groups. We are here today specifically in strong support of H.R. 946. Last month, as you know, Americans received 5.2 billion robocalls, the majority of which are not overt scams but they are unwanted calls made at the behest of American businesses engaged in telemarketing and collecting debts. Passage of 946 will stop these unwanted robocalls. American businesses are responsible for most of the intrusive telemarketing calls selling car insurance, health insurance, car warranties, home security systems, resort vacations and the like. And more and different American corporations make billions of robocalls to collect debts. Credit card companies admit to making three to five calls per account per day. Debt collectors admit to making a billion debt collection calls every year. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act was supposed to protect us from unwanted robocalls simply by requiring that all automated calls can only be made to cell phones with consent or prerecorded calls engaged in telemarketing must have written consent when they are made to land lines. But the recent escalation in robocalls is likely due to the anticipated caller-friendly response by the FCC, by the Federal Communications Commission, to loosen restriction on robocalls, which is evidenced by the chart that I have on page 8 of my testimony, that followed the recent decision by the DC Circuit Court in ACA v. FCC that, among other things, sent back to the FCC what the technical definition of an automated dialer is. The calling industry's response to this decision illustrated by the request of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, joined by 16 national industries, requested the FCC to loosen restrictions on robocalls. The Chamber and the other callers are pushing the FCC and the courts to interpret the definition of autodialer in such a way that it will not cover any systems currently in use. This is not supported by either the statute, the logic, or the legislative history. If their requests are granted, the number of automated calls will skyrocket and there will be no protections whatsoever against automated texts. And we may not be even able to tell callers to stop calling once we have given them our consent initially. The FCC has the authority to interpret these issues correctly, but Congress can protect consumers unequivocally by passing H.R. 946. For example, one clarification that 946 would make is defining autodialer to include the automated text messaging system that last year was found by the Third Circuit that sent 27,000 unwanted text messages to one consumer to not be a covered autodialer. Or the 56 million automated calls by Hilton Grand Vacations that were to sell vacations to consumers where the Hilton claims these were not covered by the TCPA so that consent is not required. Other sections of 946 are also essential. We really support the authentication requirements, the wrong number rules, the limiting of exemptions and strengthening enforcement. But here is the dynamic. Passage of H.R. 946 will clearly and unequivocally address the problem of unwanted robocalls. The robocallers, the telemarketers, the debt collectors, and others will object strenuously. It is up to Congress to protect us and to protect the integrity of the American telephone system from the scourge of unwanted robocalls. I would be happy to answer any questions. Thank you. [The prepared statement of Ms. Saunders follows:] [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Mr. Doyle. Thank you, Ms. Saunders. Mr. Halley, you are now recognized for 5 minutes. STATEMENT OF PATRICK HALLEY Mr. Halley. Thank you. Chairman Doyle, Ranking Member Latta, members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. My name is Patrick Halley. I am a senior vice president of Regulatory Affairs and Advocacy at USTelecom-The Broadband Association. Illegal robocalls are a major problem and it is timely and appropriate that this committee is laser-focused on potential solutions. USTelecom and our members share your commitment to doing everything we can to eliminate bad actors. Beyond the daily deluge of calls, consumer business and government agency numbers are being spoofed without their knowledge. And while I don't pretend to be as important as the Moffitt Cancer Center, in the last 3 weeks my number has been spoofed on multiple occasions resulting in calls and voice mails from angry people demanding that I stop calling them. Calls I never made, so I understand this on a personal level. Along with our members, USTelecom is working daily to enhance our knowledge about the calls that traverse our networks in order to block illegal calls and provide consumers with better information. Our efforts are designed to empower consumers by providing more information about the identity of callers and enabling them to block the calls that they do not want to receive. Why do we do this? Because consumers demand it. Because it undoubtedly reduces the ability of fraudsters to achieve their objectives and because it increases the confidence of consumers and businesses that rely on our networks. The idea that people aren't answering phone calls is not good for anybody including our members and consumers and businesses. In addition to improving the consumer experience, we are equally focused on facilitating coordination with Federal and State enforcement authorities including the FCC, the FTC, and State Attorneys General. By helping law enforcement agencies quickly identify the source of illegal callers, together we can bring criminals to justice. Those who blatantly disobey the law and who enable fraudulent activity need to go to jail. As the subcommittee considers potential legislative solutions, I would like to highlight three areas where our members are taking the lead in addressing the scourge of illegal robocalls. First, industry has undertaken considerable efforts to deploy call authentication technologies, commonly referred to as STIR/SHAKEN, that will substantially diminish the ability of illegal robocallers to spoof caller ID information. Companies of all types and sizes are deploying these standards into their IP networks today and will continue to do so throughout 2019. Once deployed, consumers will have more information about caller identity and the types of calls that they are receiving and carriers will be able to more accurately identify the source of calls which will improve call traceback efforts. Testing of the new technology and products is well underway. Second, more tools are available today than ever before for consumers to mitigate illegal or unwanted robocalls. A significant number of voice providers are increasingly integrating these tools into their networks and hundreds of applications are available to consumers on their smartphone. Importantly, facilities-based providers are increasingly developing robocall mitigation tools themselves including directly into their networks. For example, AT&T's Call Protect Service automatically blocks suspected fraudulent calls, and Verizon provides a Spam Alert service for wire line customers and has also rolled out free spam alerting and call blocking tools to wireless customers. Carriers including USTelecom members, CenturyLink, Windstream, Frontier, Consolidated, and others are also deploying a variety of additional tools across their TDM and IP networks, including anonymous call rejection and no solicitation services. Multiple providers also work with companies like Nomorobo with a one-click solution to facilitate their customers' ability to use third-party call blocking services. Third, USTelecom's Industry Traceback Group is expanding its efforts to identify the source of illegal robocalls and working in close coordination with Federal and State agencies on enforcement efforts. There are currently 27 members of the Traceback Group including traditional wireline phone companies, wholesale carriers, wireless providers, and cable companies, so it is an industrywide effort. The members also include foreign carriers and non-traditional voice providers. Recently, we significantly enhanced our ability to trace back calls by automating the process. The time it now takes to trace back an illegal robocall has been reduced from weeks to days, sometimes even hours. And while our members will continue being vigilant and proactive to combat illegal robocalls, we will need to continue our collaborative approach with our partners in government. We welcome the opportunity to work with Congress on additional ways we can stop these illegal scammers at the source and bring them to justice. Thank you and I look forward to answering your questions. [The prepared statement of Mr. Halley follows:] [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Mr. Doyle. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Halley. Mr. Foss, you are now recognized for 5 minutes. STATEMENT OF AARON FOSS Mr. Foss. Chairman Doyle, Ranking Member Latta, members of the committee, thank you for giving me the opportunity to appear before you today. My name is Aaron Foss and I am the founder of Nomorobo. Six years ago, my idea for stopping robocalls was chosen as the winner of the FTC's Robocall Challenge and since then we have stopped over 1 billion robocalls from reaching Americans, and that is billion with a B. We have prevented hundreds of millions of dollars from being stolen from Americans and I can only imagine how many life savings are still intact thanks to Nomorobo. And as proud as I am of that number, I know it is just a drop in the bucket in solving this enormous problem. Billions of illegal robocalls are made every month, and there seems to be no end in sight. Mr. Latta mentioned that the FTC received 3.8 million complaints every year. We stop that many robocalls every day and a half, right, and on a best guess we are protecting less than one percent of all phone lines in the United States. I am going to keep my remarks brief because I would really like to get down to the important task at hand which is having a meaningful conversation about stopping the robocall epidemic. So, I just want to start by stepping back in time and looking at how far we have come. When I first started Nomorobo, the industry said it wouldn't work. We would block too many good calls; the scammers would change tactics. Back then, the carriers weren't even sure that they could block robocalls due to FCC regulations. But we proved that robocall blocking does indeed work and today we are protecting millions of people each and every day from getting scammed and annoyed by robocalls. It is well understood now that a phone number reputation system is vital to stopping the robocall problem and yet robocalls are still at unprecedented levels. More still needs to be done. On April 15th, this year, Tax Day, we decided to change the game again, so we released a full, a real-time feed of all of the active IRS callback scammers, for free, to the carriers. We are publicly showing the scammers' phone numbers along with the recordings and transcriptions of the message that they are currently pushing out right now. We are encouraging all companies to use this data to put an end to one of the longest-running and most notorious robocall scams of all time. If the industry uses this data, in theory we can eliminate the IRS callback scams right now. And to launch it, we took out a full-page ad in the New York Times. What better way to tell the world about a new product. We agonized over every word in this ad, but specifically the headline, right, ``We can win the war against robocalls,'' and the ``we'' refers to all of us in this room today, phone companies, robocall blocking companies, lawmakers, regulators. If we work together it can be done. So, I am going to end with a rather radical suggestion for every lawmaker in this room. Every day I am asked, right, what kind of laws can be made? Do we need more of them? What should we do? So, I would just like to propose that we change the laws around sales robocalls from an opt-out system into an opt-in. Right now, you have to take action if you don't want to get the calls. But I believe that you should actually have to take action if you do want to receive them from certain parties, with the obvious exceptions. In order to make sales robocalls you must have the current owners' express written permission. It doesn't matter if the call is being made to a mobile or a landline, a residential or a business one. It doesn't matter if your number is on the Do Not Call Registry or not. I sometimes get robocalls on my Skype line, right, over-the-top services are now getting attacked by these robocall problems. If you don't have the consent, the answer is no. You can't legally call that person with a prerecorded message. But, honestly, this isn't the big problem. It is not with the legal robocallers, it is with the criminals. Mr. Walden said that. These are criminals. Criminals don't obey the law. So, I thank you again for this opportunity to talk about this huge problem. I have a ton of experience in this area and use me as a resource today or tomorrow or next week. Ask me anything. I am in the trenches each and every day fighting this battle for all Americans. Thank you. [The prepared statement of Mr. Foss follows:] [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Mr. Doyle. Thank you, Mr. Foss. During your testimony, Mr. Soto got a robocall, so there is no escaping it. I will now recognize myself for 5 minutes for questions. Mr. Summitt, let me start with you. In your testimony you talked about the very real risks that your organization faces on a regular basis from spoofed calls and how these calls are not only used to get members of your organization to pick up the phone, but also to give away sensitive information. And worse yet, the credibility of your organization is also being undermined by spoofers using your phone number and name to make unknowing call recipients do the same. Do you feel like the members of your organization and the patients that you treat are losing faith in the integrity and effectiveness of our Nation's phone system? Mr. Summitt. Yes, sir. I do. And the reason I say that is because if I am a consumer or I am a patient at Moffitt and I am receiving a phone call that is not Moffitt, I am losing faith and trust in the system. I am losing the potential faith in my provider that somehow data has been leaked or worse, and now I am picking up the phone and giving away additional information by thinking I am speaking to someone who I am legitimately doing work with. It is very much a serious problem. Mr. Doyle. Thank you. Mr. Foss, do you think it would be helpful for consumers if the phone carriers offered services like yours in an opt-out basis? Mr. Foss. Absolutely, yes. Mr. Doyle. Yes. And so, the people understand that, you know, what kinds of consumers do you think would most benefit from the technology that you and others have created that wouldn't benefit from it if the service was only available in an opt-in basis? Mr. Foss. Sure. So to start this conversation, let's just look at the spectrum of robocalls, right. Here are the illegal scams, right, the fake IRS and the fake Social Security. We can all agree that those completely need to be eliminated from the network. On the other side, it is the good robocalls--the police, the fire, the schools--we can all agree that those need to be allowed through. And if we just look at--and the middle part is that gray area, right. These are the debt collection calls. These are the telemarketers. Let's leave those out of this whole discussion. On this side of the obvious bad robocalls, they should never be allowed on the network. They should be kept off the network, ingress, egress, built in at the level. We don't need to be telling people that this call is a spam-likely call. We just need to make sure that they never get through. That is even what we did with our new product to the carriers with the IRS calls. It is roughly about 50 numbers that are active every single day. Those numbers should be blocked from the network immediately. We are providing recordings, transcriptions, we have proof that that is it. Why that can't be provided on an opt-out basis, right, protect the network that way? If you actually want to get these calls, turn it off. I think that would be a great step forward. Mr. Doyle. Thank you. Ms. Saunders, part of the narrative about robocalls that frustrates so many people is the notion that these calls are coming from overseas and efforts to shut them down are like playing Whac-A-Mole. However, in your testimony, you say that a large proportion of these illegal robocalls consumers receive are ultimately from or on behalf of large, well-established American companies. I think we all agree that fraudulent calls should be blocked, but I am curious why we receive so many illegal calls from established domestic companies and why those companies are not being held accountable under current law. Why is that? Ms. Saunders. So I appreciate the question. The issue I think nobody disagrees with what Mr. Foss says, and I just want to emphasize that the reason I am not emphasizing scam calls is because everyone else is. I am just trying to focus on the other calls. What I tried to show in my testimony, exhaustively, through many, many cases, is the number of calls that are made by existing American companies. And they obviously are making money from making these calls. They are making money through telemarketing or debt collection and they are choosing to continue making the calls regardless of whether or not the law, they are violating the law, because they think they can either argue in court that the law does not apply to them or convince the FCC that the law should not be interpreted in a way that it applies. According to the YouMail statistics, which I quote on Footnote 7, only 47 percent of the robocalls currently made are scams. The rest are robocalls, some proportion of those are the wanted robocalls, which we all agree. But there is a lot of-- there are 20, 30, 40 percent of calls that are unwanted that still need to be addressed and need to be addressed through the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Mr. Doyle. You think Chairman Pallone's Stopping Bad Robocalls Act would reduce the number of those calls? Ms. Saunders. Yes, sir. Mr. Doyle. Thank you. Mr. Halley, I just have a couple seconds. I understand you are a Caps fan. I was wondering if you were at the game last Wednesday. Mr. Halley. I was and so were some of your staff. Mr. Doyle. How did that game--see, at least in Pittsburgh when we get eliminated in the first round we just lose the first four games and it is not as painful as when the Caps take you seven games and then lose in double overtime. Yes, I just thought I would bring that up. Mr. Halley. I don't want to get into a debate with you about the Caps or the Penguins, so let's leave that alone. Mr. Doyle. OK. I will yield back my time. Now I yield 5 minutes to our ranking member, Mr. Latta, for 5 minutes. Mr. Latta. Well, again, thanks very much, Mr. Chairman, for holding today's hearing. Thanks again to our witnesses for being here. Mr. Halley, if I could start my questions with you, can carriers currently offer their consumers tools to block robocalls? Mr. Halley. They can and they do. Mr. Latta. OK, thank you. And how are those tools offered to consumers? Mr. Halley. Sure. You know, some of them are sort of, for example, with Nomorobo a lot of our companies have initiated a capability where a customer can just online click a button and it essentially activates the Nomorobo service. Some of them are building those solutions directly into the network, but, you know, through traditional marketing information they make that information available to companies. USTelecom also makes information available on our website about different solutions. Mr. Latta. Do consumers take the additional effort to opt- in to these services and, if so, what is the adoption rate of those services? Mr. Halley. So they definitely do. I cannot give you a specific answer in terms of the actual adoption rate other than I can tell you given the distaste and concerns that consumers have they are increasingly adopting those services. Mr. Latta. And the bill that we have introduced in the STOP Robocalls Act carriers would have the ability to provide call blocking technology as the default standard. Would this help in our fight against the bad actors out there? Mr. Halley. So I think the ability for carriers to sort of on a default basis be able to block certain calls would have a positive effect. At the same time, I think there are some concerns about liability. This is a highly litigious area, obviously, and sort of the concerns about blocking certain calls on an opt-out basis could be an issue. So I think if we were going to do that it would be helpful if there was sort of a safe harbor that says, you know, if you are blocking calls because they are not authenticated or if you are blocking calls because they are known to be fraudulent because of certain best practices or lists, et cetera, then, sure, as long as there is a safe harbor I think that would be a good thing. Mr. Latta. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask for unanimous consent to enter into the record letters from CTIA and the American Cable Association for supporting this opt-out approach in the STOP Robocalls Act. Mr. Doyle. Without objection, so ordered. [The information appears at the conclusion of the hearing.] Mr. Latta. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Summitt, in your testimony you mentioned that bad actors have fraudulently used healthcare organizations' names when making illegal robocalls and have even spoofed the phone numbers of these organizations to scam victims out of their personal information. I have heard of instances where private entities who experienced similar situations have shared information with Federal authorities to be helpful in investigating and stopping bad actors. The STOP Robocalls Act would help streamline this process so there is an easy way for entities whose names and numbers are being spoofed can alert the correct authorities. Do you think a process that is described in our bill would be beneficial in protecting consumers and patients? Mr. Summitt. Absolutely. I am in full agreement of that and, in fact, there is a whole movement in our cyber area as well across the Nation in collaborative work in sharing data with different places. This falls under that very same concept and it works. And if we had a method to where we could immediately call someone within the telecom community to help us put down some of these calls that would be one of the best things that we could possibly do. At present, I can give you an example and have in my testimony where we have tried to call our carrier and we do not get assistance. Mr. Latta. OK, thank you. Mr. Halley, industry has already done a lot in this space outside of STIR/SHAKEN and the traceback initiative. Would this help existing efforts in rooting out the bad actors? Mr. Halley. Absolutely. The more information we have about the identity and how to contact different carriers to make sure that we can effectively trace back calls and get to the source of the calls would be helpful. Mr. Latta. OK, let me follow up. On the traceback, Mr. Halley, on this initiative I just mentioned, I understand that USTelecom manages the traceback process. Can you briefly describe that process? Mr. Halley. Sure, I would be happy to. So I think one thing that is important to understand is, you know, if I am a, you know, I have an AT&T subscriber in Silver Spring, Maryland and I am going to call my mom who is a Spectrum subscriber in Port Orange, Florida, it is not the case that a call just goes from one carrier and--boom--it just ends up with the other carrier, right. There are often multiple carriers, transit companies involved. So, I will initiate a call which will be handed off to one carrier who will then hand it off to another carrier and then it will ultimately arrive at the final destination. So, the traceback process is all about figuring out who the source of the call was. And the way we do that is we identify, OK, this number was dialed, this was terminated at this number. Who did the call come from upstream? And once we identify that person, we then identify who did the call come from prior to that upstream, all the way back to the source of the original call. And so, what we are able to do is determine, based on who was called and the number that they were called at, who was the actual carrier that originated that call and therefore who was the source of that call. And that is extremely helpful and we work every day with the FTC and the FCC and States to help them with information about who are enabling these calls from a carrier side and from the actual source. Mr. Latta. Well, thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, my time has expired and I yield back. Mr. Doyle. The gentleman yields back. The Chair now recognizes Mr. McNerney for 5 minutes. Mr. McNerney. I thank the chairman for holding this hearing and I thank the witnesses this morning. Your testimony is very, very good and very informative. Mr. Summitt, despite the growing attention on the annoying and abusive problem of robocalls, the number is actually increasing. We have been hearing that. I am hearing it from my constituents. As we move forward with these bills, it is important to understand what is driving this increase. Would you say that the increase in fraudulent robotics, robocalls is due to the success in these calls in scamming money and getting more money? Do you think that is why we are seeing the increase or that is part of it? Mr. Summitt. The tactics are getting more sophisticated. If I can reach the masses with legitimacy, I am going to have a better result. And I can tell you, I entered the healthcare field from a Defense Department career after 21 years and I have been in the healthcare field for 8 years. When I entered that I was actually manager of a telecom of another hospital system. I did not see this problem 8 years ago. If it was there, it was very low. Now we are in a time where it is so bad that we are impacting patient care. Mr. McNerney. It must be that these folks are making money doing it. Mr. Summitt. They are making money and they are doing it on the backs of our patients and other consumers and in that process they are hurting us very, very badly. Permit me for a moment, but one of the things that I am hearing here, we have capabilities today. Our technology today can do things to help put this down and I am asking for that to be pushed forward faster than what it is. When Mr. Halley's describing going from carrier to carrier to carrier and you have the traceback function, there is already the admission that we have the capability to know where these phone calls come from. It can be done. Why are we not pushing this forward at every phone call and making that part of the protocol of the communications that go from carrier to carrier to carrier? And when I receive that on the end and I am getting a phone call from the U.S. Department of Justice, why am I not expecting for that phone call to be actually from the U.S. Department of Justice? Mr. McNerney. OK, thank you. Mr. Halley, following up on the chairman's comments on the threat that these phone calls are making our phone system obsolete, do you expect to see technological strides in curbing unwanted phone calls coming in time to prevent the loss of faith in our Nation's phone system? Mr. Halley. I do. I think we are doing everything we possibly can as an industry in close collaboration with government to address this problem. As has been stated, there is no--by the chairman--there is no silver bullet. This is going to require a combination of efforts from call-blocking services to traceback efforts and to, you know, authentication of the calls so that we know when a call is being made it is a real number not a spoof number. And if we can do that, we can, you know, we can address the fact and figure out how to deal with calls that are being spoofed, including blocking them. So, there are a lot of things that are being done that will do this in a timely manner. Mr. McNerney. So with the STIR/SHAKEN technology that should allow consumers to see the ID of the phone call that is coming in, how much does a consumer need to get involved to protect themselves using that technology? Mr. Halley. So it should be transparent to the consumers. This is just a very technological protocol that is sort of in the background. And what it will do, just to be clear, is it will provide information about the authenticity of the call in the sense that the call is a real number that has been dialed and it has been verified. It is not a number that has been spoofed. It doesn't in and of itself block the call, right. It is just providing more information. It is providing the carriers more information so that they can determine, you know, what policies they are going to adopt with respect to calls that are not authenticated and it is going to provide more information to third-party analytics providers and ultimately to consumers so they can know---- Mr. McNerney. The consumer is going to need to know what is going on so they can decide which phone calls to answer. Mr. Halley. Absolutely. And there is going to be a consumer information component to all that too as to what it means when they are getting different information about what kind of a call it is. Mr. McNerney. Mr. Foss, do you believe that the Government and innovators have the tools to keep ahead of this arms race? Mr. Foss. That is a good question, right? Like technology always outpaces legislation and regulation, right, it has to, so these criminals are always going to be one step ahead. Our system is very adaptive, right, again we just saw the rise in neighbor spoofing a couple of years ago. When we first started out it was purely a blacklist system. Blacklisting doesn't work against the neighbor spoofing, right, those calls that look like they are coming from your area code and exchange. So, I think that third-party providers like us, the carriers, all the organizations, if we had the framework to be able to do pieces of that then we can stay ahead of the changes, because I can guarantee, right, the only constant is change itself. The only thing I can guarantee about robocallers is that they won't stop, right. They will just keep on changing their tactics until they get through no matter what anybody does. Mr. McNerney. OK, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Doyle. The gentleman yields back. The Chair now recognizes Mr. Johnson for 5 minutes. Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate you having this hearing today. It is a very important subject. Mr. Halley, do I have that right? Halley, is that the right pronunciation? Mr. Halley. Halley, like Valley with an H. Mr. Johnson. Halley, OK. You know, unwanted calls are not the only type of unwanted communications that people receive. I am sure every one of us in this room receives hundreds of thousands of emails per year that are unwanted and some might even be from scammers and fraudsters. What makes the phone system different and makes people more vulnerable to falling victim to these scams? Mr. Halley. I think there is, you know, first of all, it is real time, right, so you don't have the opportunity to just, you know, decide whether or not you are going to ignore it, which is fairly easy in an email. And it is also just a highly personal communication, right, when somebody is calling sometimes with information about you specifically designed to trick you into doing something, right. And so, there is just a certain element of the types of communications you get on a phone that are just fundamentally different than over via email. Mr. Johnson. OK. Continuing with you, Mr. Halley, I think we can all agree that we want to go after bad actors and ensure that legitimate business communications can continue while the FCC and industry considers how to implement STIR/SHAKEN and call blocking and labeling technologies. Do you see any value for consumers in having the ability to receive information about their healthcare, updates about their financial situation, or things like school closings that could potentially be mislabeled or blocked if analytics don't work properly for call blocking and labeling technologies? Mr. Halley. Yes. I think it is important that all the work we do here, while we are getting smarter and smarter about the types of calls that are going over our networks and the analytics providers get better and better every single day, we do have to be careful not to block legitimate calls for certain. Mr. Johnson. OK. Are there steps carriers are taking to ensure that calls are not mislabeled or improperly blocked? Mr. Halley. Absolutely, on a daily basis. I can tell you that Mr. Foss' companies and others in the space, the analytics companies, work regularly to determine how to ensure that we are blocking the calls that should be blocked, but not blocking the calls that should get through. Mr. Johnson. OK. What is the current process for unblocking or fixing mislabeled calls? Mr. Halley. Sure. All the members that we work with have a process in place where a legitimate business can contact them to, you know, essentially protest the fact that a call is being blocked and try to make sure that the numbers that are being blocked are unblocked. I will say it is a subjective process, right. I think we need to be careful because we absolutely don't want to block calls that are legitimate and that might be from a school or a bank alerting me to a fraud or anything else that is positive. Just because somebody comes to a carrier and says, ``Hey, that was a legitimate call, unblock me,'' we have to be careful, right. And so, we have a process in place to figure out how to handle that. Mr. Johnson. I can tell you, you know, from a personal note, even something as simple as a potential scam or fraud alert on a call is very, very helpful to me. I mean I am not going to call out my carrier in a public hearing like this, but I can tell you that I have probably over the last 3 months begun to get alerts on certain phone numbers from my carrier saying, ``Hey, we think this is a scam or a fraud alert.'' And I can ignore that call and, you know, throw it aside. I don't worry about it. So, I can tell you that that is at a minimum is helpful to me. Continuing on, Mr. Halley, how does call blocking and labeling from carriers, such as many of your members, differ from call blocking and labeling from third-party app providers like that of Mr. Foss' company, Nomorobo? Mr. Halley. Sure. So I think ultimately the technology behind call blocking and call labeling is similar whether it is something that is being done in a carrier network and, in fact, our carriers are working with third-party analytics companies to build these capabilities directly into our networks. I don't think there is technologically a difference, it is just a question of how it is being implemented. I don't know if you want to---- Mr. Foss. Yes, if I could chime in. Yes, absolutely. Nobody wants the good calls stopped, right, nobody. We all want the bad calls stopped to all those pieces working together, right. In theory, everybody should have the same data like, you know, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, everybody can go and look back and say that was a robocall. The thing that we think that is going to be the main thing is detecting those very, very quickly. So, there is the question, right, if we had a kind of a head-to-head, right, who is detecting them quicker or who is more accurate and things like that again working together that is ultimately where this comes in. Mr. Johnson. Well, as an IT guy, I can tell you I am extremely inquisitive about the technology that lets you identify what those potential robocalls are, but we can't get into it now because my time has expired. Mr. Chairman, I yield back. Mr. Doyle. I thank the gentleman and he yields back. The Chair now recognizes Mr. Loebsack for 5 minutes. Mr. Loebsack. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I do want to thank Chairman Doyle and Ranking Member Latta for convening this hearing today, and also want to thank all these great witnesses here. This is obviously a huge problem for our constituents. Like one of our other Members, Mr. Walden, he mentioned he had 20 town halls. I have had 20 Coffees with your Congressman. I can't say that in every single one this has come up, but in most of them it has especially in a place like Iowa where we have an aging population. I am aging myself and so I get a disproportionate number of these damn calls as well. And, you know, I have--I sit here and I think, well, I have a cell number that I didn't think anybody had. I am a Member of Congress. How did this happen? Well, they can get through to all of us. That is the thing. It is just quite amazing. And we have got to have this relief, there is no doubt about it, because I do hear about this all the time. And it is a bipartisan problem because every one of our constituents, you know, could potentially be faced with this problem going forward. I am glad that we have got a lot of these bills that we are talking about today. And it does seem like there are some technological limitations to the scope of these bills, so I do want to raise the question of what to do for the folks who don't have the latest and greatest technology, whether that means cell phones and smartphones with screens or home phones with some form of digital output. It strikes me that the Americans who are likely to lack these new technologies are likely to be older and potentially more vulnerable to the very sorts of criminals who call with a bogus story about owing taxes to the IRS or claim of a loved one in jeopardy or whatever the case may be. So, to that point I have a couple questions for everybody. I am not going to pick out anyone in particular, I will just let you folks go at it. I do want to discuss the challenges and limitations for implementing STIR/SHAKEN to the widest possible consumer base. I understand that gateways might be helpful on older networks. How could the use of gateways help make sure that rural customers in particular get access to these new ways to stop robocalls? And I will just open that up to the panel and let you folks jump in. Mr. Halley. So I think it is one of the limitations on the STIR/SHAKEN framework is that as it is currently designed, the STIR/SHAKEN standard works for IP traffic. It doesn't work for the TDM, you know, traffic that is the older copper networks and so that could have an impact on folks who are more dependent on the traditional telephone, you know, copper line telephone service. With that being said, that is the current limitation on the standard and it is also important--two of the things I mentioned in my testimony, you know, no solicitation services or anonymous call rejection services, those will work over anything whether it is a TDM network or an IP network. And so, services like that if the number, if somebody has purposely masked their caller ID the call doesn't get through. Or if somebody doesn't go through the process of there is a human element before somebody actually it rings, there is a step has to be taken that this is, in fact, a real call. So, there are things that can still be done to address that kind of traffic even though the current STIR/SHAKEN standard wouldn't be effective. Mr. Loebsack. Anyone else? Yes, go ahead, Mr. Summitt. Mr. Summitt. Yes, implementing STIR/SHAKEN in our organization would require us to basically redo our front end of our telecommunications system because we are not up to speed with that new technology. And we have looked into it, but the point is we are just one organization across the Nation to get this implemented and for every dollar I spend in trying to protect our organization or redoing infrastructure is a dollar away from care and research. Mr. Loebsack. Anybody else? Yes, go ahead. Mr. Foss. For our solution, right, we piggyback right now off of simultaneous ring. It is available in theory on TDM, on IP, on mobile, on landline, right. We like the idea of being completely backwards-compatible. In theory, instead of like a gateway we could somehow do the STIR/SHAKEN lookup on behalf of the technologies and the carriers that can't support that. How that would play out, not exactly sure. But it is absolutely, I think, important to--everybody just looks at the latest and greatest. You know, you have the brand- new, you know, fancy cell phones, but there are still tons of landlines and those are sometimes even more vital than even the mobile lines. Mr. Loebsack. That is right. Ms. Saunders, do you have anything you want to say? Ms. Saunders. The only thing I would like to point out, if I might, is that STIR/SHAKEN is a critically needed technology but it will not take care of all the problems of identifying who the callers are. As was explained in an article in the New York Times just last week, callers also have the ability to buy hundreds of phone numbers that are essentially anonymous. And when one number is caught by this technology, they just switch to another phone number. Mr. Loebsack. And I see my time is up. I apologize I have to interrupt, but I don't want us ever to forget about rural folks and older folks. Thank you very much and I yield back. Thank you. Mr. Doyle. The gentleman yields back. The Chair now recognizes Mr. Kinzinger for 5 minutes. Mr. Kinzinger. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you all for being here and hopefully this won't take the whole time. Mr. Summitt, you mentioned cases of criminals disrupting hospital business operations and committing financial fraud including by robocallers using spoofed numbers identical to the hospitals in order to gain sensitive patient information, which is not only bad at face value but it erodes trust between patients and their healthcare providers. As you put it, these calls are identified as a reputable source such as law enforcement or a government entity which is what heightens the likelihood of success. I don't mean to put you on the spot, but Mr. Engel and I this year introduced a bill on 9-1-1 swatting. It is the Anti- Swatting Act. You may know that swatting is a hoax on an emergency services dispatcher using a form of spoofing. These perpetrators will call police forces and in some cases a SWAT team to a target's home and there have been cases where there have been tragic loss of life. And I have actually been a victim of swatting myself, early on. I want to keep the theme today of moving with narrow, effective legislation aimed at bad actors, but public safety testified last year in support of this legislation because it would clearly define perpetrators for the criminals that they are. Have you had a chance to review that legislation? It is fine if you have not, but, if so, would you have any issue with something like that moving along with some of the others here today? Mr. Summitt. And I apologize, I have not reviewed that specific one. Mr. Kinzinger. That is fine. Mr. Summitt. I have read every one being presented to here and but I have not read that one, but I would be in support of something to do that. And the other thing I just want to quickly say about all this, it is--I am not necessarily saying that we need to dump all this back on the telecoms, but I am saying we have technologies today that can and why are we not putting into place giving the callee, the recipient, enough information to know whether I want to answer this phone call or not. Again, if I see that caller ID, fine. It is my choice whether to answer that call or not. But I need to know that is who the person is. By protecting--and the arguments have been there are some legitimate reasons why they shouldn't be known, fine, let's put those as anonymized or restricted and it still gives me the responsibility to say I am going to answer or not that call. Mr. Kinzinger. Thank you. Mr. Halley, your written testimony states that fines are sufficient to curb the scourge or, I'm sorry, insufficient to curb the scourge of robocalls. Why do you think fines are not enough to curb these bad actors, and is it that fines could be steeper but enforcement is difficult or what do you attribute that to? Mr. Halley. Sure. I think what you have heard today is that there are sort of a range of different types of robocalls, right. Mr. Long. Pull your microphone closer. Mr. Halley. Sure. I think what you have heard today is that there are range of different types or robocalls, some that are, you know, from businesses who are conducting business for legitimate reasons, and then you have a significant portion of which are just blatantly illegal, and then some cases blatantly trying to commit a fraud. As Mr. Foss said, they don't care what the law is. And we can talk all we want about how the TCPA should be interpreted, et cetera, but they are not going to pay attention. They are just going to dial millions and billions of robocalls. And so, the point there is, you know, we can double or even triple the fine under the act for those types of calls. They don't care. Mr. Kinzinger. Yes. You are never going to be able to track it down. Mr. Halley. So, we have to take these people and figure out how to put them in jail rather than impose fines on them. Mr. Kinzinger. OK, so when we are going after these actors I understand that the authorities they only have a statute of limitation of about a year, I guess, to actually bring charges. What are your thoughts, you kind of went into this, on how to increase that time of statute of limitations so the good guys can do all they can to go after these folks, and what are the benefits or risk of expanding any statute of limitations? Mr. Halley. I think we are supportive of expanding. There are different bills that have different, whether it is 2, 3, or 4 years, et cetera, and some of the bills handle it differently. But as a general matter, we think that making sure the FCC, the FTC, State AGs, have sufficient amount of time to go back and take action against bad actors is important. And as technology is developing, and I completely agree with what you said that there are solutions and we are working every day to implement them, sometimes the actual legal process just takes a long time. And so I think we are in favor of enhancing the statute of limitations. Mr. Kinzinger. Excellent. Thank you all for being here and I yield back, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Doyle. The gentleman yields back. The Chair now recognizes Mr. McEachin for 5 minutes. Mr. McEachin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you and Chairman Pallone for convening today's hearing on this issue that is--that all of our constituents care deeply about. Today, unwanted robocalls are not only ubiquitous and a nuisance, they can be predatory. While some actors rely on robocalls to provide important information about appointments, school closures, and other matters, spam and phishing calls remain a problem. And as we have already heard today, we have got steps that providers can take to mitigate these spam calls on their own. SHAKEN/STIR technology and other innovative products like Nomorobo that aim to verify and authenticate calls are offering a promising start. As Mr. Loebsack identified, we have some concerns about rural areas. And I want to start off, I guess, by asking Mr. Halley--is it, did I say that right, ``Hailey''? Mr. Halley. Hailey, Halley, whatever you want is fine with me. Mr. McEachin. Well, how---- Mr. Halley. Valley with an H. Mr. McEachin. Well, how does your daddy pronounce it? Mr. Halley, thank you, sir. Are there models in Europe that we could be looking at that would allow us to use technology like SHAKEN/STIR in rural areas that are copper-dependent, as you suggested that is a current limitation of the technology now. How do we expand it into rural areas? What can we do? It is my understanding there might be models in Europe that we could emulate. Mr. Halley. So I don't know the answer to that question, unfortunately, but I would be happy to answer that after the hearing. I don't know if anyone else knows about European? Mr. McEachin. I was going to turn to Mr. Foss. I thought in sort of your piggyback on there that you suggested there are some ways that Nomorobo can be adapted to I think you said older technologies. You may not have said ``older technologies'' but that is what I heard. Is that correct? Mr. Foss. Yes, absolutely. And again, if we are at the network level, right, as Mr. Halley was saying is that each call is kind of passed throughout the different levels of the network, right. If we had something that was again a spam scam filtering at the network level, even higher up, right, those results would trickle down to all of the phones in the network whether it is rural, whether it is landline, whether it is mobile and absolutely protect those constituents. Mr. McEachin. Now what can we do here in the Congress to help provide an atmosphere to allow that type of technology to move forward? Because you look at my district, I represent the 4th district of Virginia and yes, we have good urban populations and centers, but we also have wide swathes of rural Virginia which we tend to call Southside Virginia. How do we make, get that technology spread to Southside Virginia which is again mostly rural? Mr. Foss. Sure. So why don't I tell you about the difficulties that I have when we talk to some of the carriers, right, what are some of the objections, what are some of the things that they are concerned about. And again, Mr. Halley knows it, right. Number one is, are we only blocking the calls that should be blocked, right. So again, if you were to use our entire database, right, the 1\1/2\ million numbers that we have there, are there a swath of robocallers in there that should or should not be blocked? It is up for debate, right, that we are an editorial service, our users say that we do not, you know, they do not want to get these calls, therefore they are hiring us, right. If there were things like safe harbor, if there was more on the legal side, right, that is even with our IRS offering, we are making a transcription and a recording, you know, today what that number is, the message that is being pushed out, that should give the carriers enough confidence to be able to say, ``Yes, we can shut this down at the network level.'' And again, Mr. Halley can probably shed some light on that of if there was a safe harbor, if there was something where, you know, using a data provider like us or their own internal things and they go and do this that there wouldn't be the legal ramifications if something did go wrong. Our false positive is, last month was 0.07 percent, right, less than a tenth of a percent. Our users know that it is very accurate. Our accuracy was over 97 percent, right, we only missed like 3 percent of those calls. But that would be what I would think if the carriers, whenever we go to a carrier and say, ``Hey, go and integrate this,'' they are definitely worried what happens if we stop good calls. We know the answer that you are not going to, but I think that that would give the industry more impetus or more encouragement to use services like us. Mr. McEachin. I appreciate you and I appreciate you all being here today. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. Mr. Doyle. The gentleman yields back. The Chair now recognizes Mr. Bilirakis for 5 minutes. Mr. Bilirakis. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I really appreciate you holding this hearing. This is something that is affecting all of us, but particularly our seniors what they are going through. Inexcusable what is happening, particularly, Mr. Summitt, your testimony with regard to Moffitt which is in my area. Sixty-six hundred calls in 90 days and that information, I mean and our patients, cancer patients, you know, they are being, again, tricked into these calls and they are giving the information. I mean I would give information out too if Moffitt were calling me. I would think it would be legitimate. So we have got to do something, and I appreciate you holding the hearing. And we are doing something, we are responding, so I appreciate it, in a bipartisan fashion. At the same time, again, Mr. Foss, at the same time, I do have concerns about legitimate, consented robocalls being inadvertently blocked. How often do legitimate calls inadvertently get blocked and how quickly can they be identified and remediated? Again, I am concerned about the healthcare related robocalls where you remind an individual that their healthcare appointment is the following day or what have you. So, if you can give me an answer I would appreciate that. Mr. Foss. Yes, absolutely. So the other piece about like modern robocall blocking, we keep on saying the word ``blocking'' and ``stopping'' and, you know, the stopping at the network level, right, never letting those calls even get through, those should be for the ones that we are 100 percent guaranteed, we have proof, we have recordings, we have transcriptions, those can be stopped at the network level. Even with Nomorobo, so on our landline product, if you are on our list you get a challenge question. It is called a captcha. You have to--it says this phone is protected by Nomorobo, please type the number 72, 6, right, humans can always get through. If a doctor's office is calling with a person that accidentally gets on, they can actually get through. It rings the number. On mobile, we actually, since we are an app, we don't block the call. It just gets sent directly to voice mail, at which point even like with some of the newer phones it shows the transcription right there. So, the risk of that message not getting through is actually incredibly small. Mr. Bilirakis. OK, very good. Again, I appreciate the approach of better information sharing between FCC and industry in Mr. Latta's STOP Robocalls Act. I would like to work with him, he is a good friend, on more specific public-private partnership ideas as it continues through the process. Mr. Foss, does your company have a working relationship with the Federal Communications Commission or the FTC to notify appropriate officials when you have specific identified bad actor, a bad actor, so they may review it for potential charges? If not, is this something you would consider? Mr. Foss. Yes, absolutely. So, our genesis, right, I won a competition from the FTC, right. We as a company, me as an individual, we owe them kind of a debt of gratitude. We are always willing to work with FTC, FCC, and law enforcement just in general. So, I can say that when we will detect a scam that is, let's say it is purporting to be from the FTC or from Social Security Administration or the IRS and things, we will reach out proactively to those organizations. Right now, with the IRS one, we are making that automated. They can go and see the numbers that are actually going and doing that. What we found also works even better is working in reverse. So, think about the way that law enforcement has traditionally gone after these robocallers, right. They have to get subpoenas and subpoenas and kind of follow the traceback and going back and forth, and by that point the trail kind of goes cold. I was on a panel with Consumer Reports and one of the attorney generals said that it sometimes takes up to 50 subpoenas to get one of these. What I encourage any law enforcement that reach out to us is we will tell you right now the calls that are coming through, right. You want to know the calls that are being made to people in Florida. You want to know the ones that are purporting to come from Florida or Texas or do you want IRS calls that are hitting people in Florida. We have a honey pot, right, we have a quarter of a million phone lines that belong to us. We regularly send in real time those calls to law enforcement, so I have no idea what they do, right. Do they answer them? Do they trace them back? Do they--I don't know. But those kinds of partnerships and those kinds of teamwork, again, as part of that. And I have gone on record, right, there are a lot of public records where we have helped with a lot of those cases, gotten them shut down based on the data that we provided to law enforcement. And again, we don't charge for any of that. That is just kind of part of our job is what we think. Mr. Halley. If I could just add one thing to that which is that one of the reasons we set up the USTelecom Industry Traceback Group is to avoid the 50-subpoena problem. So, what we are able to do is rather than having somebody have to go to each individual carrier who may be in the call path and subpoena each of them individually, because the Communications Act provides for this we can do the whole traceback from involving every single carrier who is involved in that call without having to go through a subpoena for each one of them. And we work very closely daily with the FCC and the FTC to provide referrals and provide that kind of information specifically to address that problem. Mr. Bilirakis. Very good, thank you. I appreciate it, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. Mr. Doyle. The gentleman yields back. The Chair now recognizes Mr. Pallone for 5 minutes. Mr. Pallone. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to start with Mr. Summitt. In your written testimony you note that Moffitt employees receive 6,600 external calls identified as coming from one of Moffitt's own internal numbers. And if I am understanding you correctly, you mean that Moffitt got 6,600 calls that were spoofed in what would seem to be an effort to trick employees at your hospital into believing that they were speaking to another employee when, in fact, it was a fraudster on the other end of the line; is that correct? Yes? Mr. Summitt. Yes, sir. That is correct. Mr. Pallone. Can you explain why this spoofing of this type poses such a problem for your institution and for the security of a patient's information? Mr. Summitt. Sure. There is a wide variety of those types of calls coming in and, quite frankly, when I mentioned this to our telecom people and we were reviewing the logs, they kind of chuckled because this is just one area and it is more than 6,600 of these calls. This is just one identifying themselves as Moffitt coming into Moffitt. So, the reason this is dangerous is that internally if we are looking at our caller ID and we see someone from Moffitt calling, we are going to pick that phone call up. They have already won the first step in attempting to get information. And what they are doing is several different ranges of schemes going on. It will either be until I try to identify someone else in Moffitt that they can potentially get to by asking for a doctor by name and the location he is located in or a researcher by name to get into the research area, or they are actually asking information about patients and their patient information and their insurance information. Mr. Pallone. All right. Well, I appreciate that. Now, Mr. Halley, your association, The Broadband Association has been in the forefront of bringing the telecom industry together to work on the robocalls problem. Under my bill, the Stopping Bad Robocalls Act, the FTC would issue rules requiring carriers to adopt call authentication technology like SHAKEN and STIR, and that tech would hopefully make it substantially more difficult for spoofing to continue on the scale that we are seeing today. So, can you explain how call authentication tech works and how it would help fix the robocall problem, please? Mr. Halley. Yes, I would be happy to. And I am a telecom lawyer not an engineer, and luckily the people who are in charge of the STIR/SHAKEN protocol are all really smart engineers. At a high level it involves inserting information into the headers involving calls and the exchange of tokens, essentially, between companies as call traffic, as a call traverses through multiple networks. And in a nutshell what it enables functionally is that when a call is originated, that originating carrier who is generating that call is able to authenticate that the call is being made with a real number that is not a spoofed number. And then that carrier is telling everybody else in the chain, this is a legitimate call from a real telephone number that hasn't been spoofed. And as long as everybody else in the call path has also implemented that protocol, it will continue to be passed from one carrier to the next with that information all the way to the end recipient. Mr. Pallone. Well, thank you. And then my last question is to Ms. Saunders about autodialer. The FCC is currently considering how to interpret the definition of an autodialer that Congress adopted in '91. And, in my opinion, it is critical that the FCC put consumers first to ensure that robocallers aren't given a loophole to make more calls. So, let me ask Ms. Saunders, what is the most important thing the FCC needs to understand when it comes to clarifying the definition of an autodialer and why is it important that we get our call authentication requirements right and we get this technology deployed? Ms. Saunders. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act is a consumer protection act. And given that, the FCC which implements the act should be required to implement its regulations and its interpretations to protect consumers, not to protect robodialers. The FCC currently has before it, dozens of petitions as I have mentioned requesting a loosening of the interpretations of autodialers in such a way that no autodialers currently being used would be covered. So I think it is essential that the FCC remember that fact. It is clear from the litigation from the courts that there is a perfectly legitimate way to interpret autodialer to cover the autodialers that are being used so that consumers continue to be protected. Mr. Pallone. All right, thank you so much and I thank the panel. I thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Doyle. The gentleman yields back. The Chair now recognizes Mr. Long for 5 minutes. Mr. Long. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks for holding this hearing. Whenever people come up to me at home, there are two things that they want to tell me, which the other side of the aisle won't understand one of these things, the other one they can relate to. But they say, ``Keep supporting Trump. Stick behind Trump. Support the President.'' That is always pretty much to a person what they say. The second thing that they say is, ``When are you going to do something about these robocalls?'' So, it might be different in other districts across the aisle, but that is the two questions. I imagine they probably get that second question. And my staff yesterday when they were preparing for this hearing, they had a question for me. They said, ``We are doing the robocall deal tomorrow. Tell us about some of the robocalls that you get.'' Well, the thought that popped into my mind was Elizabeth Barrett Browning's, ``How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.'' How do I get robocalls? Let me count the ways. We all get a ton of robocalls. But I have a question for everyone on the panel if you can help me with this, because this is a robocall that I get. It has slowed down a little recently, but the total call, it is always a voice mail and it starts by ``Or,'' with the word ``Or,'' ``Or to be placed on our Do Not Call list, press 2.'' Can any of you enlighten me what they are getting at or what they want? Or I have never pressed 2, I have always just pressed block call on my iPhone. But are you all familiar with that call and what is the scam? Ms. Saunders. So the Do Not Call Registry, which is a part of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, requires that telemarketers ask--first of all, it prohibits calls unless you have consented in writing to the calls. But it also requires that they ask you if you want to be placed on their internal Do Not Call list. And if you answer yes, then they are required to put you on that list and prohibited from calling you again. You are smart to not press 2, because that just alerts them that you actually are a live person and that they will call you again. Mr. Long. Well, that is all they are phishing for is the fact that you are---- Ms. Saunders. Yes, they are phishing, because they are obviously already not complying with the law or they wouldn't have---- Mr. Long. Well, there is no message. There is no, like, you know, for life insurance, a million dollars' worth of life insurance for a dollar a day, you know, press 1 to hear about that. The whole message is, ``Or to be placed on our Do Not Call list, press 2.'' And I was just---- Mr. Foss. Yes. So my thought here is that your--since you are saying it is going to voice mail, your voice mail message is probably pretty long. And so those autodialers will start playing the message when it detects, when it thinks that a person has picked up and said hello, and that is when it will start playing the message. So if your message is, you know, ``Hi, I am not here right now. If you need to reach me go over to here''---- Mr. Long. I don't think I have a message. I think my mine is an auto message, but anyway. Mr. Foss. Well, whatever it may be, right? So that actually, if you answered that call you actually might find out the whole thing right there. This is the thing. Everybody thinks that these robocallers are like super smart and things. On the business side they absolutely are. On the blasting these calls out, it is just, you know---- Mr. Long. While I have your microphone turned on there, on your Nomorobo what regulatory authority do you operate under? Mr. Foss. We don't, actually, right, there are none because we are a third-party service that the consumer is getting into a relationship directly with us. Mr. Long. And again, I know you have been asked this before, but how do you ensure legitimate calls go through with your service? Mr. Foss. Yes, so is it perfect? Absolutely not, right, our false positive last month was less than a tenth of a percent. And then we will go in, if we get reports then it will get on to our white list, our black list is automated. But, effectively, if the consumer doesn't like what we are doing, right, they cancel the service. They don't use it anymore. Mr. Long. And I think for Mr. Halley if they would have, if the staff would have just put on your card ``Hal Lee,'' like Hal was your first name, Lee was your last name, everybody wouldn't have had a problem. But I recommend that for next time. But, Mr. Summitt, before I run out of time here, I appreciate very much what you do in the cancer world. From a father of a Hodgkin's lymphoma survivor, I know how important those calls are that you get and how frightening it is when you are first diagnosed and you are expecting a call from the hospital. Do you have any cause or should we have any cause for concern that when the hospital is calling to set up an appointment that we get that call instead of thinking that it is, you know, it may say your name on there and we think, well, that is a scam because we have heard it is a scam. Is there anything that we need to be cautious of or anything that we would vote on that we need to be sure and protect that your calls to remind people of appointments will get through? Mr. Summitt. And I appreciate that question because that is one of our concerns is that I am afraid that if you are expecting a call from us and it turns out to be someone else and you have given away information, then I am just--then that problem is just going to add more to your problems that you have. And my concern is that those calls if it continues, they are going to stop. So, my recommendation on anyone receiving any call from a healthcare organization is to call back the organization and make sure that it is a legitimate call. Mr. Long. OK, thank you. Mr. Chairman, I am out of time. But if you want me to say anything later, just press 2. Mr. Doyle. I thank the gentleman. I polled our side. No one has ever got that first question asked of them. The Chair now recognizes Mr. Veasey for 5 minutes. Mr. Veasey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You know, one of the things that I have noticed that I thought was very interesting is that there are a lot of recommendations on here that would ask for providers and for telephone companies to make certain provisions that would make consumers less subject to these calls, requiring voice service providers to provide free effective caller ID authentication for all calls, requiring telephone companies to provide free call blocking services, establish an unblocking system that consumers can control calls, and submit regularly to the FCC about the implementation of some of these consumer protections. But the question that I wanted to ask you is that when other industries like, for instance, in the alcohol industry where they have taken on, you know, anti-drunk driving, anti, you know, binging campaigns where tobacco companies have been required to make certain advertisements and what have you in efforts to prevent, you know, teens from smoking and to make their products, you know, less likely to fall into the hands of underage smokers, do you think that requiring telecom companies, not telecom companies but telemarketing companies, to maybe step up in this area and put money behind some of these campaigns dealing with call blocking and what have you would be a more effective way to go? Ms. Saunders. Is that for me? Mr. Veasey. Yes. Ms. Saunders. I appreciate the question. I think if we are unable to get telemarketers to comply with the law to even get consent before they call, I doubt whether we would actually be successful in getting them to pay the system to block their calls. I represent low-income consumers and I am very aware of the potential cost on small phone companies and their necessity of transferring those costs to the lowest income consumers who then would have trouble even affording their telephone. We have not previously discussed this, but one idea that we have had, and I speak for a number of consumer groups, is that in recognition of the fact that my telephone is only useful if I can call many other people, the telephone system in the United States has long had a Universal Service Fund under which all telephone users contribute a small amount to support small telephone users' development and it has been used in a variety of ways. We would suggest that the Universal Service Fund be investigated as a potential source of money for those very small companies or very poor phone companies to help them pay for the technology that would allow them to implement these protections. Because the entire system is only as strong as its weakest link and until we get all the systems in the country up to the same level, we are all vulnerable. Mr. Veasey. You know, I know that there have been certain States, my colleague here to the left, Representative Clarke, I know that her State of New York, that they have passed State legislation or attempted to pass State legislation to deal with this issue. My question is that with this being an interstate commerce issue, is having a Federal law something that is really going to be required to really clamp down on this even more or do you think State laws on their own are effective? Ms. Saunders. So I have been involved with your colleagues in New York in working on the New York law. There are many similarities between that law and Mr. Pallone's law, bill, or I should say between the bills. I do think that unquestionably a Federal bill will be the fastest and most efficient way to deal with this problem. Mr. Halley. I would agree with that. Whether it is in this context or another context, as a general matter on these sort of interstate communication services if we can have one national Federal framework to govern these issues I think that is ideal, so I would agree with my colleague. Mr. Veasey. And in closing with my last question here, until we can get these companies to, you know, to clean up their act and pass laws to prevent them from doing the spoofing and the unwanted calls, do you think that there needs to be more of a public education campaign? One of the areas that really concerns me is senior, or senior citizens. I know that, you know, they obviously get targeted all the time. I know my grandmother died earlier this year. She was 106, she died earlier this year and, you know, she got numerous calls like all the time from telecom companies. Is there--but I don't see much out there as far as advertisements or public service announcements warning people about these calls. Ms. Saunders. If I might, I think public education is always valuable, but I have a personal situation where my very, very smart mother-in-law was taken in thinking that her grandson, my son, was calling her from Canada in jail. She was at the bank withdrawing money until someone--and she runs several businesses. So I am not sure that public education is something that we can rely on here. Mr. Veasey. That is amazing. OK, thank you. Mr. Chairman, I yield back. Mr. Doyle. The gentleman yields back. The Chair now recognizes Mrs. Brooks for 5 minutes. Mrs. Brooks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for holding this very important hearing. Ms. Saunders, I actually have a family member who had the same thing happen to him. And so, while education is critically important and strengthening our laws are really important, one thing as a former U.S. attorney I would like to talk about, because what hasn't really come up in any of the hearings so far is where has law enforcement been in all of this. And I am very curious, and that is what one of the bills, H.R. 721, is a Spam Calls Task Force Act. But what I am really curious about, and I think, Mr. Halley, in your testimony, in your written testimony you talked about the Justice Department and we need more criminal enforcement actions. Is it happening? Are U.S. attorneys and the Justice Department, have they in the last 8 years, to what Mr. Summitt's point it has really accelerated in the last 8 years. Can we point to any cases? Has anyone gone to jail, been prosecuted? These may be complex cases, because they may involve national actors and international actors and does anyone know about anything relative to that? Mr. Halley? Mr. Halley. So the short answer is not enough is happening. We are seeing a lot of efforts out of the Federal Communications Commission through forfeiture penalties and going after companies who are breaking the law. Even in that instance, you know, when somebody fails to pay their fine it is incumbent upon the Department of Justice to go collect the funds, so there is more work that could be done there. But also---- Mrs. Brooks. Those would be civil forfeiture sentences. Mr. Halley. Exactly. So, on the criminal side, not--no, there hasn't been a sufficient amount of activity to go after criminal actors. The FTC has a separate authority. They have also taken a significant amount of actions on the civil authority side, but there has not been a sufficient focus on folks who are, you know, blatantly illegally breaking the law, committing fraud, et cetera, in my opinion. Mrs. Brooks. I assume they may be very difficult cases to put together. Does anyone know about any cases? Ms. Saunders? Ms. Saunders. The FTC has brought 151 cases in the last 10 years. Mrs. Brooks. Criminal cases? Ms. Saunders. No, civil cases. Mrs. Brooks. OK. Ms. Saunders. The FCC has brought a smaller number. I would posit that unless you can get the criminal cases instigated, and unfortunately U.S. attorneys and district attorneys are generally more concerned with going after different kinds of crimes---- Mrs. Brooks. I understand. Ms. Saunders [continuing]. That the best enforcement is private enforcement. It is not popular, but if you arm individuals who have been harmed by these scams and by these unwanted calls with the ability to go into court and force the people who have been harassing them to pay penalties, that creates at least a financial incentive to comply with the law. That is for the non-scam calls. So, I agree with what has been said that the only way you are going to deal with the scam calls is to criminally prosecute them. But it is about half and half. Mrs. Brooks. Any other comments, Mr. Foss? Mr. Foss. Yes. Mrs. Brooks. On criminal enforcement? Mr. Foss. I am a big fan of an ounce of prevention, right, rather than a pound of cure. It seems like enforcement to me is the pound of cure. If we were to put an ounce of prevention into the network level, I think that we would see a marked reduction in these predatory scams. Mrs. Brooks. Mr. Summitt, I have a question because you have been a cyber expert for a long time, can you share with us though how--what your concerns are particularly with hospital cases and with hospital systems? Is the primary concern the identity theft that is taking place or is the primary concern that--because I think, you know, the Justice Department has been involved in the past, and long in the past when I was in the Justice Department from '01 to '07, we were very focused on identity theft. And I am just curious whether, you know, are you hearing from your patients and others that it is the identity theft or is it actual, has any patient care actually been impeded? Mr. Summitt. It is across the board, Congresswoman. Patient relationships with our providers and the patients themselves are being impacted. The trust factor is there. We have people that have heard the worst news of their lives coming into our organization and to add on top of that anything else is not going to go well for that patient. So we see this as absolutely affecting patient safety and patient care especially when it starts interrupting our workers inside the facility by receiving these calls and then having to deal with them. There are so many different avenues that this is impacting that this is why I am excited that we are finally getting--that I am able to give you the idea of what is going on in the real world right now. Mrs. Brooks. Thank you. I think we need the prevention beyond the cure. I yield back. Mr. Doyle. I thank the gentlelady. I would note that the Wall Street Journal reported that the FCC levied $208 million of fines against telemarketers. They have collected $6,790 of that 208 million. Remind them not to ever hire them for my debt collectors. The Chair now yields 5 minutes to Mr. Soto. Mr. Soto. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And during this committee hearing I received a robocall myself. Thanks for recognizing that we are all being inundated by these calls. Apparently, if you own property in Florida there are lots of real estate speculators who want to buy it. I guess that is a good sign for my district at least. If we can talk about one thing that is definitely bipartisan, it is annoying robocalls. We have heard it throughout so many of my colleagues today, but particularly when we are talking about it being sort of the presupposed fraud and crime it becomes a big issue. You know, we are particularly honing in in my office on fraudulent healthcare calls and one of the, I think one of the budget submissions we have submitted on healthcare is to the Federal Trade Commission on fraudulent healthcare calls. The committee is aware of growing practice of robocallers targeting healthcare providers and patients in an effort to commit financial fraud. In some cases, callers use spoof numbers making it appear like they are calling from a hospital or a physician office and seek to obtain sensitive health- related or other financial information about patients. It goes on from there. But I want to thank one of our guests today who work with us to help put that together. That is Mr. Dave Summitt, thanks for being here today. You are the CIO overseeing cybersecurity at H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center in Florida, so welcome up from our State. One of the busiest cancer centers in the United States, ranked by U.S. News and World Report as one of the top ten cancer centers in the United States and you are under constant attack by this, attempts to get people's health information. So, would language like that be helpful in moving the FTC along to help partner with you in this area, and how are they doing right now as far as helping with what you are trying to achieve to protect people's information at Moffitt Cancer Center? Mr. Summitt. So, Congressman, just clarification, I am Chief Information Security Officer at Moffitt. Mr. Soto. Oh, we gave you a raise there. Mr. Summitt. You gave me a raise. Thank you, I appreciate that and hope the people back home are hearing this. Mr. Soto. Chief Information Security Officer, OK. Mr. Summitt. And now I have kind of lost the question. Mr. Soto. So how is the--would language like this directing the FTC to particularly hone in on fraudulent calls related to healthcare be helpful and how have they been partnering with you currently? Mr. Summitt. I wish I could say that we are combating this effectively on a daily basis. But we are so inundated with this particular problem and the other problems that we have just in cyber on networks and network attacks and software attacks that we just do not have the bandwidth to sit and do this on a daily basis. That is the damaging part of this. We cannot combat this alone. I do believe that these bills that I have been reading has a lot of great things in each one of them that when we start working together here, we are going to be able to solve this problem. And I do believe we have the technology right now to solve this problem, if not heavily curb it. I would like to see some more activities specifically within our critical infrastructure and healthcare to have additional tools on our behalf to help us with this fight. And I do believe the FCC and the FTC can absolutely step up and help us out with this along with the telecoms and along with the third parties. But, so one single solution isn't the answer here. Mr. Soto. Thank you, Mr. Summitt. Now I recently was able to block some of those calls I was getting about these real estate solicitations. I just want to, for the record, for Ms. Saunders, Mr. Halley, and Mr. Foss, what phones don't have a blocking function and how do you feel about requiring all new phones to have a blocking function? We will start with you, Ms. Saunders. Ms. Saunders. My understanding is that most landlines do not have a really robust blocking function. Mr. Soto. OK. Is that a consensus among all of you? Mr. Foss. Yes. Mr. Soto. Are there other types of phones that don't have a blocking function right now? Mr. Foss. Also like feature phones, flip phones that are, you know, old school cell phones. The modern smartphones from Android, from Apple, those operating systems allow app developers to build those in. But effectively any other device, nothing is built in. Mr. Soto. So these are really where the battle lines are formed. Mr. Halley? Mr. Halley. I was going to say, but that doesn't prevent carriers from trying to build in network blocking solutions so that the call never actually gets through, regardless of what kind of device the consumer has. And we are actively working on those types of solutions as well. Mr. Foss. Even for it is at the network level where they are piggybacking off of certain services like caller ID to go and show an indicator that it is a robocall, at least that is giving information to the landlines that would say something like ``robocaller,'' or to the feature phones. So yes, don't let the perfect get in the way of very good. Mr. Doyle. The gentleman yields back. The Chair now recognizes Mr. Walberg for 5 minutes. Mr. Walberg. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to the panel for being here. And I keep my smartphone out here to see what is going to come in here as a spoof. My carrier, I know, catches a number of calls, but I regularly keep this to remind myself that the spoof does come in. I don't get to answer many of the calls that come through. I choose to let them go to voice mail if it happens, and most don't. So, this is an important hearing and a hearing that hopefully solutions will come because this is a great tool, but it is sure wasting our lives in many ways. Today's hearing is a great start in addressing this growing problem. There are several bills on today's hearing which each add different ideas to the conversation. While this is promising, we need to remain focused on the larger problem first as we piece together legislation. Illegal spoofed calls, not calls that may be legitimate, but unwanted, it is critical that we not conflate the two. Mr. Halley, the STIR/SHAKEN standards that telephone carriers are implementing is a great first step at tackling clearly illegal spoofed calls. As we try to capture other types of spoofed calls in addition to nonexistent area codes or unassigned numbers, how do we stop bad actors while maintaining flexibility and consumer choice? Mr. Halley. Thank you for the question. So, implementation of STIR/SHAKEN across the network is critically important as you have just identified. The other things we can do are making the types of analytics tools, whether they are provided in our carriers' networks or over the top, available to as many people as we possibly can. And the other third piece I would mention, two others, really, one is the Industry Traceback Group, making sure that all companies are participating in the Industry Traceback process. And one thing I should say is, you know, Mr. Summitt has suggested that there are solutions to solve this problem and I agree. Not everybody participates in the traceback process, all right. There are times when we initiate a traceback and we can figure out the call ended at carrier A who received it from carrier B, and then when we get to the next one in the chain, they are not a part of a group, some of them refuse to participate and so that is a problem. And so, efforts via the legislative process to provide more information and to encourage participation in that traceback process would be really important. And as I have said, in addition to that, sort of going after the root of these illegal robocalls and putting some folks behind bars would be a helpful solution as well. Mr. Walberg. Along that line, with technology constantly advancing faster than we can really keep up with it, how do we ensure that our regulations as well keep up with advances in technology? Mr. Halley. So to me the key is flexibility and not over- prescription, because whatever the current standard is it is going to be different 5 years from now because we will have learned the way in which people try to get around it and we are going to need to as an industry be able to quickly and flexibly update the protocols and update the processes in which we operate. And so, to me, the thing we need to be careful about is just that if we are going to have any sort of requirements whether they be congressional or FCC that we do so in a manner that ensures sufficient flexibility for industry, because even we are going to have trouble keeping up with the bad guys. Certainly, government is going to have trouble as well. Mr. Walberg. OK, Mr. Foss, would you like to add something to that? Mr. Foss. Yes, absolutely. I would caution on any of these laws and regulations, right, don't get into the weeds. Let us get into the weeds. Even Mr. Soto was asking, do we need to make certain exemption or focus on healthcare and things like that, like let us do the heavy lifting. If you do a broad definition, what is an autodialer, what is a violation, when does that occur, that would be really, really helpful for all of us. Mr. Walberg. Mr. Summitt? Mr. Summitt. Yes. And I would also add to that not just you guys get in the weeds, get us involved in the community and in these businesses and in our critical infrastructure as part of that discussion, I think, is just so very, very important. I think the support of the task, 721, the task force, is going to be a great thing in moving this forward and that is where you get the interagency together and that is, I believe, one of the key things in getting your legislation defined here. Mr. Walberg. Mr. Halley, are there any things that you see in specific that aren't in these bills that we are meeting around today? Mr. Halley. Yes. So, I think we are supportive of the objectives of the legislation generally across the board. There are certain details which we might offer suggestions, and we have had productive conversations with the staff or the sponsors in the committee and we appreciate that opportunity and we will continue to have that discussion. Mr. Walberg. Thank you. I yield back. Mr. Doyle. The gentleman yields back. The Chair now recognizes Mr. O'Halleran for 5 minutes. Mr. O'Halleran. I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for convening this important hearing to examine some forms of abuse of robocalls--I'm sorry--consumers in my district receive daily and I do too. In fact, I was thinking we don't even answer the phone anymore whether it is cell or landline if we don't know the number. We will look it up on the computer and check it, but we just don't do that anymore. I often hear similar concerns from Arizonans about this issue. As a former small business owner, I recognize that businesses have certain reasons in which they need to contact customers for legitimate purposes. As a former law enforcement officer, I also recognize there are bad actors today trying to scam consumers and these bad actors need to be held accountable for their actions. While some bad actors may be based beyond our borders, we need to ensure our Government has the resources it needs to protect Americans nationwide. Mr. Halley, I would like to recognize and commend the industry for taking proactive steps to develop call authorization technology to stop the influx of unwanted robocalls. While STIR/SHAKEN tools are starting to be adapted by carriers, in your view, do smaller wireless carriers in rural communities face any roadblocks to adapting these new technologies? Mr. Halley. Well, the protocol is the protocol regardless of who the provider is, but I will say that there is a cost, right, associated with implementing the software and upgrading your network. As a general matter, when new technology is rolled out among, you know, the entire industry, you know, advancements tend to happen faster with the larger providers first, and sometimes there are issues of equipment availability and vendor availability. So I think we need to be on the lookout for making sure that solutions are available on a timely manner and in a cost- effective manner for all providers, but particularly with the smaller providers where that may be a problem. Mr. O'Halleran. Thank you. And also, Mr. Halley, in your testimony you state that there are acute need for aggressive criminal enforcement against illegal robocallers at the Federal and State level and that fines alone are insufficient. How can section 5 of H.R. 946, of which I am a cosponsor, be enhanced to provide broader enforcement for robocall violations? Mr. Halley. Sure, so the legislative efforts here that are looking at enabling folks to go after first-time offenders, I think, is positive consideration, of increasing the forfeiture penalties is something definitely that should be looked at. I will say with respect to the FCC's collection issue, one of the challenges they face, just to give them some credit, is they can issue forfeitures, but once somebody decides not to pay it, they are then dependent on the Department of Justice to go after those bad actors in court which sometimes can create an issue. So, I think the way that it can be advanced would be to recognize that in addition to things we can do on the civil enforcement side, there may be things we can look at whether it is, you know, directing the Department of Justice to form a specific group to specifically go after illegal robocallers that are committing fraudulent activities, for example. I do agree that the legislation that is looking at requiring the Attorney General to lead an interagency effort is a potentially positive step as well. Mr. O'Halleran. And just as an aside here, there has been so many times in our history as a country whatever the issue is that we talk about enforcement, but we really, truly don't get down to enforcing because of the complexity of the system or the lack of personnel or the lack of funding, whatever it is. We can talk all day, but if we don't know how to enforce it and really put the funds forward, then we are just telling the consumer out there that we really don't want to get this dealt with. Mr. Summitt, I just want to thank you for sharing your compelling testimony with us on the difficulties your organization faces with the influx of robocalls you receive while you are trying to focus on your mission of saving lives. Mr. Chairman, I believe we have a duty to bring relief to consumers who have been the victims of malicious robocalls from bad actors. I look forward to working with my colleagues on legislation like H.R. 946 to address this pervasive issue once and for all. And I yield back. Mr. Doyle. The gentleman yields back. The Chair now recognizes Mr. Gianforte for 5 minutes. Mr. Gianforte. OK, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the panelists for being here today for this important topic. Montanans reasonably think that being on the National Do Not Call List means they won't get called, except they are getting called, a lot, and they are sick and tired of it. Alvin, a 70-year-old man from Kalispell, receives over 20 calls a day. His provider allows him to block 12 numbers; clearly that is not enough. Connie in Missoula asked me to get back to her about an issue by email, not by phone. Why, because she is getting inundated with robocalls and doesn't pick up her phone. A young woman in Bozeman received a call from her little brother's phone number, but it wasn't her brother. It was a scammer calling from her little brother's number. Unfortunately, her little brother had died of a heroin overdose a couple of months previously. She was shaken and shocked. It is an indictment on the system that a young woman gets a call from a scammer using her deceased brother's phone number. I look forward to solutions and I am encouraged by the conversation today to end this practice so no one has to go through what this young woman did. There is a bipartisan agreement here and I think this needs to be fixed. I look forward to working together with my colleagues to get it fixed. So, I want to focus, continue the conversation on law enforcement and what we need to do to help, and I will start with Mr. Halley. You mentioned the need for increased criminal enforcement in this area to quickly crack down on bad actors. Can you explain what you think can be done to better empower law enforcement to go after bad actors? Mr. Halley. Sure. Look, there is the TCPA. There is the Truth in Caller ID Act. There are other consumer protection, you know, fraud prevention laws that are on the books. I think as much as anything it is not so much that we need to change the law as it is that we need to recognize that if this is, in fact, such a big issue, it is not just a nuisance issue, right, it is a real issue that affects not just healthcare institutions but banks and many other industries as well that are having similar problems, we need to recognize that. It is not just about a nuisance. It is about real crime, real fraud. And for those types of calls, I think we just need to sort of double down and quadruple down on our commitment to actually enforce laws and go after those who are committing crime. Mr. Gianforte. OK. Mr. Foss, would you like to add anything to that? Mr. Foss. Yes, so this kind of a forum, the enforcement side doesn't seem to be working as strongly as the prevention side. So, I would just, you know, do we need all the prongs of this, absolutely. I don't know, I don't have any specific recommendations over there, right. The things that I always usually suggest are looking at this problem from different angles, right, looking at with the new technology. Don't look at it, this is a very different type of crime that is being perpetrated. It has been traced back and things need to change nowadays, and again things that like USTelecom are doing and things and having new tools like our honey pot and things like that. I think that we can absolutely do that. Mr. Gianforte. OK. Mr. Halley. I would just say we can probably do more and we are now doing more also at the State level, really coordinating with State Attorneys General as well for particular incidents that are going on within the State borders. Mr. Gianforte. OK. Mr. Summitt, anything you would add? Mr. Summitt. Sure. Technology can solve a lot of things, but it can't--it is not the end-all. It is not a hundred percent. And as much as I would like to agree, I would respectfully disagree with enforcement. Even though enforcement has not been as effective as it can be, I think the reason is we don't have enough information going forward to prosecute some of these things. And, quite frankly, when I am getting 6,600 calls in a 90- day period, I can't do a traceback on 6,600 calls nor does a telecom want me to give them every time this happens. So, enforcement side of this and getting the latitude to the FTC to pursue with cooperation from us providing data to them is a key part of this. Mr. Gianforte. OK. And again, I want to thank the panelists for being here today for this important topic. And with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. Mr. Doyle. The gentleman yields back. The Chair now recognizes Ms. Eshoo for 5 minutes. Ms. Eshoo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I apologize to the committee members and to those that are testifying that I haven't been able to be here for most of the hearing. I am chairing a hearing upstairs on the cost of prescription drugs in Medicare. What I am struck by is that the United States of America saw to it that a man landed and walked on the moon in 1969, the year my first child was born, and I just can't accept the fact that we can't really rid people of the harassment of robocalls. I do believe in technology and I think that enforcement and technology together are the set of bookends that we need in this. To Ms. Saunders, in your written testimony you say that the NCLC supports the HANGUP Act which I am very grateful for. As I mentioned in my opening statement, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decided that the loophole that my bill repeals is unconstitutional. Can you just spend a moment on why there is still a need for the legislation now that the Fourth Circuit declared the loophole unconstitutional? Ms. Saunders. Yes, thank you, Ms. Eshoo. The HANGUP Act would undo a really grievous harm to the TCPA which exempted all calls made to collect Federal Government debt from the requirement of consent. We have seen, I would say, hundreds of cases by student loan collectors, generally, who are harassing not just borrowers, but also friends and neighbors and wrong number calls with unmercifully high number of calls. And we have actually even submitted a complaint to the FCC asking them to deal with it which they have not. Ms. Eshoo. What was their response? Ms. Saunders. None. Ms. Eshoo. Ah. Ms. Saunders. There was no response. Ms. Eshoo. There you go. Ms. Saunders. So we strongly support the HANGUP Act. In response to your specific question, we have 11 circuits in this Nation, one circuit has not declared the TCPA's provision exempting these calls from the consent requirement as unconstitutional. But the callers themselves routinely defend actions brought against them for illegal robocalls by saying this whole statute is unconstitutional and that was the goal in this case. So, this good decision in the Fourth Circuit may not stand. It may be overruled en banc. It may be overruled by the Supreme Court and may be differed with by other circuits. The HANGUP Act is still essential. Ms. Eshoo. Thank you very much. To Mr. Foss, thank you for--I read your written testimony and I loved how you just came to the point. Usually written testimony is encyclopedic and so yours was just a pleasure. It was like I just turned the page once or twice and I was done. But there was a lot packed into it. Mr. Foss. I just get down to business. I don't know. Ms. Eshoo. Yes, how do you deal with spoofing? So, specifically, if a robocaller uses my phone number to mask their identity, would your technology blacklist my phone number even though I haven't robocalled? Mr. Foss. No. So, we don't really care if a phone number is spoofed or legitimate, it is real, we care about the calling patterns. So, in that case, if somebody spoofs your number and is now making, you know, tens of thousands of calls in an hour, well, then it is going to get on our blacklist while that attack is happening, right. Once that attack, once they go on to someone else's number it drops off our blacklist and there is no harm with that. Ms. Eshoo. So your blacklist deals with volume? Mr. Foss. Correct, because that is the best--volume as well as content. So again, if we see a small volume but we have a recording, we have a transcription, we know what is going after that, that is one way that your reputation will go down. The most obvious way is just when you start seeing these high- volume calling patterns. Ms. Eshoo. I see. Well, thank you for your important work. To Mr. Halley, much has been discussed today or I think it has given the testimony about the problems with voice-based autodialers. What are your members doing to ensure that Americans still have landlines that are protected from robocalls? Mr. Halley. Sure, so we are building---- Ms. Eshoo. There are still a lot of people that have them. Mr. Halley. Absolutely, there are. Ms. Eshoo. I know my kids don't understand it at all, but-- -- Mr. Halley. Right. No, I have one and it is an old 1980s- style phone and my son just looked at it and started to talk into it, and it didn't work. It was pretty funny. Anyway, we are doing a lot. So, we are building in technology into our network so that even if the phone itself, for example, is an older phone, the network has the capability to block calls that are unwanted or illegal. And, you know, we are looking at solutions like anonymous call rejections services for those types of older services where if the number, if somebody who is calling has specifically stripped their caller ID, it won't go through. Ms. Eshoo. How much of a dent do you think, I mean the universe, say, is a hundred percent robocalls on landlines, what would you estimate what you have done has put what percentage of a dent into it? Mr. Halley. Well, you have to start with the percentage of calls that are over landline which are---- Ms. Eshoo. I understand. Mr. Halley [continuing]. Extremely small. So, for that remaining portion of calls that do come over land---- Ms. Eshoo. It is a lot to people that just have a landline though. Mr. Halley. Of course, for those individual callers, sure. You know, look, for those people who have opted in to the solutions that I am talking about it has made a huge dent. The calls either don't get through or they have a lot more information about the call so that they can make a decision as to whether or not they want to answer it or not. In terms of whether or not, you know, 10, 20, or 90 percent of customers have actually taken those services, I don't know, but it is rising every day. Ms. Eshoo. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Doyle. The gentlelady yields. Ms. DeGette, you are recognized for 5 minutes. Ms. DeGette. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I was up at a hearing in Natural Resources and I apologized to them for being late because of I was here earlier. And everybody in the room on both sides of aisle says, ``We need to do something about robocalls.'' So this is something that I think that is striking everybody in America. And I have always wondered about what, exactly what the Do Not Call Registry did. And I also think, and I am just going to say this in public, I think that the Do Not Call Registry had real benefits but it had some real shortcomings. And, in my opinion, one of the shortcomings that it had is it allowed campaigns to exempt themselves. So, I get called on a frequent basis by candidates wanting me to record robocalls for them to send out and I won't do it because I think that robocalls by politicians maybe should be even more illegal than robocalls from everybody else. But in any event, that is what I want to talk to the panel about today is the national no call registry because it seemed like it was making some real impact for a while, but now it seems that--and even at its most effective points consumers didn't realize things like politicians and others could still make calls under the Do Not Call Registry. And I am wondering if we pass some of this legislation that we are considering today, are we going to have some of the same shortcomings that we have found with the Do Not Call List? So, Ms. Saunders, I wanted to ask you, do you think that Congress and the FTC did enough to prepare the public for what the Registry would and wouldn't do? Ms. Saunders. I am afraid that I am not familiar with exactly what the FTC and the FCC did years ago. Ms. DeGette. OK. Ms. Saunders. I can tell you--I can answer more about what is currently going. Ms. DeGette. Tell me what is--yes, well, tell me about the current situation. Ms. Saunders. So I think the Do Not Call Registry is good if it could be enforced. Ms. DeGette. Right. Ms. Saunders. Unfortunately, there is the--the private remedies for enforcing it are not nearly as good as the private remedies for enforcing the rest of the TCPA. Senator Durbin on the Senate side is proposing a bill that will make the remedies somewhat equivalent. The FCC has the authority to expand beyond telemarketing and include other calls in the prohibition to landlines. They could potentially do that or one of the bills that are pending today could allow that expansion. Ms. DeGette. Right. Ms. Saunders. The New York bill that is currently pending would prohibit all automated calls and prerecorded calls to landlines and residential, to landlines and cell phones and business phones, regardless of content if they are automated, unless there is consent or there is an emergency. So, there are different things that can be done. Ms. DeGette. What would you think would be the--not commenting on the specific bills, but what kind of a paradigm would be the most important paradigm for consumers, do you think, for Congress to pass? Ms. Saunders. I think that has been recognized here today we are dealing with two sides of a problem. We have three kinds of calls that are being made---- Ms. DeGette. Right. Ms. Saunders [continuing]. To borrow Mr. Foss' analysis. One are the wanted reminders and legitimate business calls that we want to make sure are allowed through. For those calls, as long as consent has been provided there is no problem. Then on the other side are the scam calls which whether that is 30 percent or 47 percent, clearly, they need to be stopped. Ms. DeGette. Right. Ms. Saunders. That is probably best stopped with a caller authentication problem and the technologies that Mr. Foss and others implement. For the rest of the calls which 30, 40 percent, those are telemarketing and unwanted debt collection calls, we need a very strong Telephone Consumer Protection Act that will create the financial incentive for the callers to comply with the law. In the meantime, with call authentication and effective tracebacks we will be able to catch them because we will know who they are. Ms. DeGette. So, Mr. Halley, do we have the technology to be able to carry out that kind of a paradigm? Mr. Halley. Yes, we do. Ms. DeGette. Mr. Foss is also nodding yes. Mr. Halley. Yes, we have the technology. Now what is incumbent on some of the things that I have been talking about today is carrier participation. So USTelecom members actively participate in tracing back calls, for example, not all of them do and not every carrier is necessarily implementing, you know, all the different tools and solutions that we are talking about. The technology is there, but we do have to make sure that everybody who is part of this is taking advantage of it. Ms. DeGette. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. Mr. Doyle. The gentlelady yields back. Without objection, the following documents will be made part of the record: A letter from the Chamber of Commerce Coalition members; a letter from Consumer Reports; a letter from the Electronic Privacy Information Center; a letter from National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions; a letter from ACA International; an attachment to the letter from ACA International; and a letter from Representative Van Drew of New Jersey. Without objection, so ordered. [The information appears at the conclusion of the hearing.] Mr. Doyle. I want to thank the witnesses for their participation in today's hearing. I want to remind all Members that, pursuant to committee rules, they have 10 business days to submit additional questions for the record to be answered by the witnesses who have appeared. I ask each witness to respond promptly to any such question you may receive. At this time, the subcommittee is adjourned. [Whereupon, at 12:15 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] [Material submitted for inclusion in the record follows:] [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]