Reverse Robocall Turns Tables On Politicians 252
jfruhlinger writes "One of the great banes of election season is that any politician can shell out a few pennies per voter and phone-spam thousands of people who'd rather not hear a recorded pitch. But turnabout's fair play, and now a service called reverse robocall will deliver your recorded message to elected officials as often as you'd like for a nominal fee. If there's a representative you'd like to call repeatedly, check them out."
Re:Legality? (Score:5, Interesting)
They have made themselves one of the explicit exceptions to the automated dialing laws they passed. "Here's a law that stops our voters from being harassed over the phone by everyone, except us of course."
There are a few additional exceptions, but not many. There ought to be a law that bans electoral bodies from passing laws with provisions to make the voting body an exception to the law being passed. Just one of those "I can't believe they had the balls to do that" stunts by our country's legislature. Really, if they can get away with that, they can get away with about anything.
Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Interesting)
The politicians who wrote the laws about such things game themselves an exemption to call you. It is entirely possible that if you turn around it do it to them, you could be doing something illegal.
They didn't just exempt themselves, they exempted political organisations [ftc.gov] - an organisation dedicated to delivering the grievances of the citizenry to politicians sounds like the very definition of a political organisation. But then again, I am not a lawyer or a politician.
Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Interesting)
Or, it might get you into trouble.
The politicians who wrote the laws about such things game themselves an exemption to call you. It is entirely possible that if you turn around it do it to them, you could be doing something illegal.
Remember, the deck is stacked, and not in your favor.
Exactly.
;)
I've had to run a few of the robocall systems, and I frequently asked questions about it all.
Me: Can we give them a 'press 1 to unsubscribe' option?
Them: No, otherwise everyone would unsubscribe.
Me: What should I do with incoming calls (when people hit *69)?
Them: Just drop the call.
Me: I thought robocalling was illegal?
Them: It is. We're exempt because there are special provisions in $STATE-TELEMARKETER-BILL that allow for political calls.
Me: Hmm. The bill says we must stop calling at 6 PM, otherwise it says were 'harassing' people and could be liable...
Them: Look further down--it says political calls are exempt and can be run until 9 PM. And also on Saturday as early as 9 AM.
I remember waaay back in 7th grade, a kid was trying to impress everyone on the playground by saying he could build a 'screamer' bomb. It was a special 'pulse' you could send down the phone line that would blow up computers at the other end. Untraceable too.
*sigh* Every 4 years I start wishing that kid was right...
Reverse psychology (Score:5, Interesting)
Starting in about the 2004 election, the tactics of the local election robocalls changed quite a bit. The call would start out with a line like: "Hi! I'd like to talk to you about candidate Mark Smith..."
At that point, you'd hang up thinking "Damn Mark Smith!" BUT: what you didn't know was that a few more minutes into the call, you'd discover that the call was sponsored by Mark's opponent, and if you had stayed on long enough, you would have heard about Mark's failings and how good his opponent was.
If you were on the fence before the call, you SURE weren't going to vote for Mark after a dozen of THOSE calls.
The "R"s used this a LOT in 2004, and it has picked up every year since then.
Slime.
Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm pretty sure people other than the politician (you know their staff) are the ones who organize the robocalling in the first place. So that seems fair enough.
Re:I already do this. (Score:4, Interesting)
A while back I donated money to the ACLU. I thought it would go towards defending civil liberties, but it turned out my donation was used to pay a company to repeatedly call me and ask for more money.
THIS.
That's exactly why I am loathe to donate to any charity. I just don't know what else they will do with the transactional information and its bullshit that I should even have to worry about it. I only give cash to places I can walk in to. The EFF is happy to take walk in cash donations, BTW.
Re:Excellent! (Score:2, Interesting)
The most common expression of jury nullification in years past was for all-white juries to refuse to convict whites for murdering blacks. Juries are expressly for the purpose of deciding the facts, not the law, for precisely this reason.
Re:Excellent! (Score:4, Interesting)
Me: Can we give them a 'press 1 to unsubscribe' option? Them: No, otherwise everyone would unsubscribe.
How about a reversal of this... when someone calls your home, you have a "call screening device" that asks the person to "Please press 1"
Since the robocaller cannot press 1, their call will be dropped in 20 seconds and never heard.
Another method (Score:5, Interesting)
Using this on politicos' personal phone numbers at 6 AM would be the real fair game. If only one of ten people woken up by a robocall participate in this, it has a chance of quite decent success.
If they annoy us, let's annoy them! We can do it, we have the technology.
Re:I already do this. (Score:5, Interesting)
>>I only give cash to places I can walk in to. The EFF is happy to take walk in cash donations, BTW.
While donating to the EFF gets you on their spam list, their spam is actually worth reading most of the time.
Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Interesting)
Been there, done that. I had an old system hooked up to the phone line with an FXO card and running asterisk. It had a default-deny policy -- meaning that if there wasn't an explicitly defined route that matched the incoming caller ID info the caller would get a short, snarky recording telling them to get lost and then get disconnected. If you got past that hump, the next step was "to continue in english, press 1". The next hump is a call queue where you'd hear hold music. At that point the phones inside the house would actually start to ring.
It was fun to look through the CDR list at the end of the month and look at all the calls that got dropped due to no Caller ID info. Since then the hard drive died and I've been too lazy to hash out the replacement system.
Re:Excellent! (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly. The last time I was summoned for Jury Duty, the judge told us "raise your hand if you will consider anything beyond the evidence and your instructions during deliberations." Out of a pool of about 100, mine was the only hand to go up. I was under oath, and had to answer honestly. When questioned personally about my action, I informed the Judge, "It is my belief that our Constitution does not forbid jury nullification. As a juror, who has the potential to legally strip a defendant of liberty and property, I am the final arbiter of 'justice' in the application of the law, and the only thing standing between a defendant, and punishment for a law which may be unfair. In an extreme case, I cannot guarantee I would not use this power to nullify." The judge nodded and subtly smiled, apparently somewhat amused. The defense attorney's smile was more pronounced. And I could easily hear the Prosecuting attorney's pen as it scratched my name off his list.