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."
Excellent! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Insightful)
not quite the same..
this calls the politician's offices (which are staffed by people other than them)
they call your home and cell phones
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:Excellent! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Excellent! (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's not illegal because when politicians pass the laws banning disgusting practices like this, they specifically exempt themselves from it.
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In the end you'll never reach them, only the bottom of the bottom that is handling the phones. You're making that guys day miserable...
It'b be fun if they ended up doing the same to you and spamm your home phone because you spammed theirs :P
Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Funny)
csb time: I had just added fancy dialing packages for call-forwarding, call-waiting, caller-id and some others (this was 10 or 15 yrs ago when that was still somewhat new). I wasn't used to all the star- number- number codes yet.
I was planning on having a phone interview and didn't want to be disturbed, so I disabled call-waiting for the duration of the call. I dialed the prefix, waited for beeps, then dialed the number for the company I was supposed to interview with. we had our little interview chat and we ended the call. that was that.
or so I thought.
a day or two goes by and my girlfriend (who gets all the calls; I never get phone calls) tells me that people have not been calling her lately. is something wrong with the phone? I go to check things out.
yes, it turns out, I had enabled call-forwarding for the duration of that call. and all calls! until explicitly disabled!
even worse, the poor guy at the company that I called: he was getting OUR phone calls! "who the hell is alison? why do people keep calling asking for alison?? I just don't understand it!". I can imagine that is what was going thru the poor guy's head.
I never did hear back from that company. not sure if they knew what was going on or not; but it was only enabled for a few days...
learned my lesson. make sure you press the right sequence and don't just assume you got *-something-something right.
Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd like to see a politician sue someone for robocalling them, see if that works out in their favor.
Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Insightful)
They wrote the laws, gave themselves an exemption, and have better access to law enforcement and legal advice than you or I.
You're more than welcome to test your theory and see how it turns out.
I'm just pointing out that they've stacked the deck in their favor, and that if you or I did the same thing they'd probably find some other laws they can abuse to make us go away.
Me, I'd expect you'd get a visit from the local police or from a Federal Agency. Neither is likely to turn out like you might hope.
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They wrote the laws, gave themselves an exemption, and have better access to law enforcement and legal advice than you or I.
While I agree that they have better access to legal advice, if you really did want to stick it to the man, your country still has courts that may stick to the letter of the law, but juries generally vote with common sense and a sense of justice. I would be very very surprised if the found someone guilty of robocalling the same candidate that robocalled them. If you filed for costs right at the start, you would likely get off free minus your time in court. The deck might be stacked in their favour, but a jur
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Except that judges usually don't tell the ignorant masses which compose a jury about jury nullification, and if they do, they instruct the jury to follow the law and not allow sympathy towards a party to sway their decision. Further, one attorney or the other, or the court itself, depending on jurisdiction will weed out jury members who might be emotionally swayed, or have the intelligence to understand the concept behind jury nullification.
It's a great idea in theory, but in practice, people are usually to
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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.
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This might be true, except that it's not. There are states which explicitly give juries the power to decide both law and fact in their Constitutions. Oregon is one such state, though the jury instructions they give directly contradict the state's Constitution.
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Not to mention that lying during voir dire about your propensity to advocate jury nullification is perjury.
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.
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The politician, on the other hand, is making thousands of calls, to thousands of numbers. In many cases, they are calling a given individual more than once as they cycle t
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Re:Excellent! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Excellent! (Score:4, Insightful)
Any reasonably competent lawyer could argue you out of any charges on this on first amendment grounds. Not primarily the freedom of speech part, although that enters in, but the "right of the people to...petition the government for redress of grievances" part.
Any mentally competent American can see there is no Constitution, Bill of Rights, or Amendments being afforded any level of respect anywhere, in this post 9/11, PATRIOTic era we live in.
Spare me the history lesson until you can prove we actually still have a justice system, and not a legal system that does nothing but cater to the 1% who in this case, also happen to be the same 1% charging you with a crime. Good luck.
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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...
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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... ;)
Back in college, I had a computer which experienced a motherboard frying. This was determined to have been due to a lightning strike, which went through the phone line, hitting the modem which did not have protection circuitry, thus making its way to the juicy components. I'm not saying throw lightning bolts at Congress, or am I?
Re:Excellent! (Score:4, Funny)
I'm not saying throw lightning bolts at Congress, or am I?
That fits pretty well with your sig. ;)
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.
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.
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You have all thirteen clubs : Bid seven No Trump.
You'll never make it. The opponents lead. How are you ever going to get to your hand to play them? You can't. Seven clubs is your best (only) bid.
Slashdot. The home of stating incorrect opinions as fact.
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No... you'd turn the cards in and ask for a re-deal. Or if you were unscrupulous, you'd bid 1 club, and increase as necessary until you win the bidding. Your score in Bridge isn't for winning all 13 tricks, it's for winning more tricks than you bid. You bid 7, you are saying that you'll win all 13 tricks. But if you bid 1, you're saying you'll win 7 tricks, and then the extra 6 are just going to increase your score that much more. You'd bid "no trump" if you're holding all the face cards. :)
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Turnabout is fair play.
Turn about is justa a backfire waiting to happen.
Doing this just gives them another reason to ignore their constituents.
They won't even ban the practice or pass laws against it, they will simply send everything to voice mail
and dump anything coming from these services directly in the trash.
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.
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Asking a stupid person to not vote is like asking a dog to not fart.
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Letting stupid people suffer is very darwinistic, and some may argue quite proper.
The problem is that us smart folks have to share the misery.
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Hyperbole doesn't help your argument. If everyone that spoke out against the Obama administration were to be "accidentally" killed, the news would notice.
Outliers can be silenced. A critical mass cannot. Shit, look at the Middle East protests for evidence.
Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Insightful)
Whoever modded the above Flamebait is sadly, no, make that tragically out of touch with what is going on in the US today. The OP's statement is feasible based on just 2 items that came out of the government this week. Worst part? It would be legal!
The Obama government (whom I supported in 2008) is turning out to be one scary piece of work.
LOL. Instead of just being very vague to try and sound insightful, please specifically lay out for me which policies or actions by the "Obama government" makes you believe it is feasible that someone would be killed by the government for reverse robocalling politicians.
Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me get this straight. You don't think a "politician" would feel "threatened" by a Robodialer enough to put the person on a "Terrorist Watch List" or something?
No, not really. In fact, if YOU believe they'd kill someone over a phone call, then they'd probably feel more threatened by you. If you are unstable enough to believe in such craziness, there no predicting what sort of action you might take to protect yourself from those delusions.
Re:Excellent! (Score:4, Insightful)
"They" have killed quite a few people for being a "dangerous terrorist". The only difference is this guy also had American citizenship. If you were going to be worried about this you should have started worrying when they started killing people. It shouldn't suddenly change everything because this time, the bad guy who was assassinated was an American.
I'm simultaneously amused and disgusted by your delusional belief that the nationality of the victim is more important than the murder. You've reminded me of the reason you're on my list of idiots and fools.
Re:Excellent! (Score:4, Informative)
They* killed a killed a guy for being ... "dangerous terrorist". No trial, no judge, no lawyer, no oversight.
Care to share the name? News reports? Evidence? If you have evidence, go to the press, or Cryptome or...
So, back to the point, citations please.
Well, assuming GP was referring to US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki [wikipedia.org], there is no shortage of press commentary. Apparently US citizen Salmir Khan [wikipedia.org] was killed in the same attack, but was not deliberately targeted, being just another collateral casualty. The press reports include statements of concern regarding this extra-judicial execution of al-Awlaki being ordered by the sitting US president. It was not a "heat of the moment" death in a shootout or in an attempt to escape from being arrested. Moreover, was not convicted of any offence, not even in absentia. Although many accusations were made (presumably with justification), no charges were ever laid against him. From what is in the press reports, he was by no means a Mahatma Gandhi, but the ordering of an execution without even going through the motions of a trial (not even a mock trial) should be disturbing to any US citizen. It's easier to slide down the slippery slope than to climb back up.
Oh, here's a few press references, in the Wahington Post [washingtonpost.com], the Huffington Post [huffingtonpost.com], and CBS News [cbsnews.com]. Use your Google-fu to find many many more. There is also an interesting comment in the New York Times [nytimes.com], which suggests that legal advice given to the president before the execution was that it would be illegal.
Legality? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this legal? Didn't they specifically write exemptions into the do-not-call list legislation exempting political parties?
Re:Legality? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this legal? Didn't they specifically write exemptions into the do-not-call list legislation exempting political parties?
Well if they do what other robo-companies do and host it outside of the US, then no laws will be broken
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That's such a cop-out on the part of the telcos. They could and should easily block the calling numbers used by the robodialing scamers who use out-of-country equipment.
Re:Legality? (Score:5, Informative)
Also, repeatedly calling the same number with the same message (as opposed to calling many numbers with the same message like the campaigns do) could be considered harassment.
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If they call you first, aren't they soliciting a reply?
the "don't spam me, bro" party! (Score:2)
Face it, if they're spamming you they're scamsters and don't respect you. eg Congress
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That's why we have a jury system. To judge the law.
Re:Legality? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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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.
Except that these are exceptionally cheap to operate. If you ban them altogether, then you make running for office that much more expensive. Political 'speech' is not something to be restricted lightly.
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Legality? S.W.A.T. Bait ! (Score:2)
http://reverserobocall.com/products/barak-obama-2-offices [reverserobocall.com]
No.Comment.
Ah yes, maybe.
If you try... and it works... and you survive...
Please post 8p
Very nice (Score:2)
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Just remember, just one Presidential candidate since the invention of the Federal matching funds for campaigning has refused that funding and the spending caps that go along with it...
I'm slightly curious whether he'll manage to raise enough money that he's willing to do it again....
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Political campaigns aren't funded by tax dollars (unless they agree to take only public funds which hasn't really been done since Carter vs Reagan).
That is just a matter of shuffling cash around so it looks like they are private funds. Occasionally they get caught.
This will be banned (Score:4, Insightful)
Greetings friends, (Score:5, Funny)
Do you wish to look as happy as me? Well, you've got the power inside you right now.
So, use it! And send one dollar to Happy Dude, 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield.
Don't delay, eternal happiness is just a dollar away.
see you in court (Score:2)
and take the auto dialer with you or I will have no case.
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Ok then! (Score:2)
Where's the all of the above option here...
Get organized, synchronized; target and FIRE!.... (Score:2)
Combine this with an ideological movement group, and twitter/facebook, and hilarity ensues...until it's banned.
Sweet! (Score:2)
"Governor Perdue, why did you sign a bill, written by Time Warner lobbyists, which effectively banned municipal broadband in North Carolina?"
You won't reach the representative... (Score:3, Insightful)
...you're just making the staffers' lives miserable. The ones that sometimes struggle to survive in the DC area due to the cost of living if they're new. The ones with 4 roommates and 2 other jobs. You won't affect your representative, but you will be a jerk. Congratulations.
Re:You won't reach the representative... (Score:5, Insightful)
you might as well say the protesters in a dictactorship shouldn't protest because they will not affect the dictator, they will just make the life of police and military
miserable because they are the ones that have to shoot them
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Considering that the staffers actually write the text of most bills, and considering what a lot of crap has come down the legislative pike in recent years... Serves 'em right.
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Fuck em. If they decide to be whores for a bunch of vote buying fascists and communists, that's their problem, not mine.
They can get a real job doing something useful for a change.
I remember they repeatedly called me at one point. (Score:2)
$2.49 per call! (Score:2)
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There are better deals though, like calling all the SOPA/PIPA supporters is only $24.99!
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I already do this. (Score:5, Funny)
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.
After a few hours of research, I found the private home phone number of their CEO. A few days worth of repeatedly calling him and hanging up got my number off their list forever.
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: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.
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Why are you hoarding his card? Information wants to be free - you should give it away. And if you give it to someone who says "Thank You", punch them in the mouth, because getting compensated for work like that is a sign that you've fallen victim to moral decay!
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.
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I noticed this shift as well. Sneaky clever.
Pulte vs. LIU (Score:3)
Just this past summer the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals found that a union could be held liable under computer hacking laws (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act) for doing exactly this -- using a combination of auto-dialing and member phone calls to protest an action, and thus filling up the business' voicemail and making the lines unavailable for a period of time:
http://computerfraud.us/articles/can-a-labor-union-be-sued-under-the-computer-fraud-and-abuse-act-for-spamming-an-employer%E2%80%99s-voice-and-email-systems [computerfraud.us]
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But that was not political speech. A fine hair to split, but a hair nonetheless.
To make this work it needs to call cell phones (Score:2)
And it needs to be annoying both in destination and time of day.
Unexpected consequences (Score:3)
While I am ALL for bombarding our sometimes misguided, uninformed or overzealous congressmen with public opinion...I have a fear that giving people the ability to set up automated calling in this fashion would just overwhelm their call centers to the point where they just stop picking up the phone and listening to the public at all.
This is good (Score:2)
So now how can we expand this marvelous service to include pollsters, banks, realtors, obnoxious sales people, wall street brokers, anybody with a "good deal", scammers and my cousin Freddie who just can't figure out that some people actually *sleep* at night?
Re:Bipartisan? (Score:4, Informative)
I can't speak for the US, but in Canada Robo-calls are already illegal... unless you're a politician... must be nice to be able to write yourself an exemption in to any law you pass.
I generally make it a policy never to vote for anyone who uses such scummy practices. Problem is, I believe that I should vote, and last election there weren't any candidates on the ballot who hadn't robo-called my cell phone at least once, one of them almost 10 times!
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I can't speak for the US, but in Canada Robo-calls are already illegal...
...from Canada.
I'm just sayin'.
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Yeah, like that's working.
I've gotten to the point where if I don't immediately know the number (or if you can't show me in the first 15 seconds that you are someone I do business with) then I just have to assume the caller is fraudulent and tell them to fsck themselves.
I get so many &^%#^%*( robo-calls in a week the fact that it's ostensibly illegal is almost laughable. There's no teeth to the enforcement, and the people calling fro
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Actually, the last robocall that called me WAS calling from Texas. I got through to a real person, and my opening gambit was "what part of the US is your call centre located in?" He must have been new, because he answered, and was then very confused. I then explained to him that the people who hired the people who hired his call centre were engaged in illegal activity, in contravention of numerous laws, and asked to speak to his manager. HE didn't know what to do, but eventually I heard the click of som
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Citation, please. What section of the criminal code covers this?
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Telecom Decision CRTC 2008-6 Section IV
http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2008/dt2008-6.htm#m4 [crtc.gc.ca]
(as for what role the CRTC has in such matters... you can look that up yourself, but they do have the force of law behind their decisions)
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Tell that to the Conservatives. They're using robodiallers on their political campaigns, even though the rules say quite clearly that the rules for robodiallers apply regardless of whether the person on whose behalf the calls are being made is exempt from DNC rules, and that robodiallers may not be used without express consent, which is defined as an explicit oral or written contract permitting this kind of communication.
I am going to bookmark that one for the next political campaign in the area, and use it
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And got Bonus Points because he kept robocalling people in a different city from the one where he was running.
AND Got Extra Super Bonus Points for blaming the computer and saying that he couldn't control how it called.
AND AND Got Mega-Stupendous Super Extra OMFG PONIES Bonus Points because neither the robodial phone number or his campaign office had anyone
Great way to *make a point* (Score:4, Insightful)
Politicians want to hear from people in their district. The moment the staffer realizes it's a robocall, they will HANG UP and not even record the fact that you called. If you call repeatedly, it still only gets you marked down once, until the staffer realizes that you do nothing but robocall at which time you get marked down zero times.
Anyone using this to advocate an issue is doing active harm to their cause. Call your politician your damn self. It's free.
The point is showing politicians how crass and condescending it is to call someone on the phone with a pre-recorded message.
If they realize you're a robot, start ignoring you, and no one draws any parallels to their own campaign tactics then it probably can't be saved - both the politicians' intelligence and that of voters who respond positively to robocalls - but at least you tried.
My first thought for using the system was harassing corrupt and ignorant jerks, with an ironic twist; I don't think anyone really expects much more from this than a symbolic gesture or some pranks/harassment.
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No, give the cost it seems you'd be launching a DDOS on your ability to pay for other things. I'm not sure why the phreaks never did this back in the day. Like, what the hell were you doing with all of that knowledge and capability, if not annoying the heck out of our representatives? If I ever build a time machine that goes backwards into time, captain crunch will be hearing from me.
That wont work. Some are deceptive (Score:2)
Some robocalls have been deliberately deceptive: they are run by the opposing candidate using a voice actor to sound like the opponent and made as obnoxious as possible. They were pretending to support the candidate they were trying to defeat.