Rep. Ted Budd Introduces Bipartisan Foreign Robocall Elimination Act

Press Release

Today, Rep. Ted Budd (R-NC) introduced the bipartisan Foreign Robocall Elimination Act of 2021. The legislation directs the Federal Communications Commission to convene an interagency task force with the Federal Trade Commission and the Attorney General to develop effective measures to combat robocalls coming from abroad. Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Dan Bishop (R-NC), and Daniel Webster (R-FL) joined Rep. Budd as original co-sponsors of the bill.

Rep. Budd said in a statement:

"Robocalls are an issue that has affected nearly every American, including myself. These automated phone calls disrupt our daily lives, constitute a serious form of harassment, and expose millions of Americans to dangerous financial scams. The TRACED Act, which I sponsored and President Trump signed into law in 2019, was a tremendous step forward in combating these illegal calls. This bill builds on that success by primarily taking on robocalls coming from outside our borders."

Text of the bill can be found here.

Background:

According to a June 2021 Truecaller Insights US Spam & Scam Report, over 59 million Americans lost $29.8 billion to phone scams over the past year.

The bipartisan passage of the TRACED Act increased penalties and timelines for the FCC to better combat serial robocallers and required telephone service providers to outfit their customers with call screening technology free-of-charge.

Outside of the U.S., robocall outfits that target Americans can evade law enforcement.

The Foreign Robocall Elimination Act assembles a taskforce to make recommendations to Congress on needed resources agency strategy to better combat foreign robocalls.

The taskforce will consist of representatives from the FCC, Federal Trade Commission, and the Department of Justice as well as three private-sector stakeholders, one of which will be from a telephone service provider with the other two being from technology entities with expertise in combating robocalls.

The task force will be specifically charged with answering several questions including:

Establishing the relative number of scam robocalls that originate outside of the U.S.

Examining methods to encourage the adoption of call verification technology in foreign countries.

Examining how the sharing of information and authentication technologies could improve coordination between the U.S. and other countries.

Identifying whether additional resources are needed by any federal agencies that combat foreign robocalls.

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