Transcripts For CSPAN Washington This Week 20121021

Again and if they do and make another sales call to you, that is violating block. By letting the law. You can Tell Companies not to call you again and if they do, that would be a violation. The third part of that is the robocall rule which says generally speaking that businesses cannot make sales based robocalls to consumers. Those calls are prohibited even if your phone number is not on the national do not call registries. The only exception is that the consumer has provided the business with the express written permission to robocall them. The handful of types of calls that are not covered under the telemarketing sales oral business to business calls are generally not covered, and Debt Collection calls are generally not covered, Customer Service and Customer Satisfaction calls, survey calls but only if they dont contain a sales pitch. If it is a service call that tries to end up selling you a trip for a cruise or some sort of product, that is against the rule. Political calls are not covered under the telemarketing sales world. If they dont include a sales pitch. There are special exceptions to ftc jurisdictions. Banks, fund companies, Insurance Companies are not covered and theres a separate exception for robocalls that deliver a health care message made on behalf of a covered entity as defined by the hipaa privacy rules. What calls are covered . The vast majority of calls calls that are part of a campaign or plan to get consumers to purchase a product or service is the most general way to say it. If any part of that call is designed to end up with a consumer purchasing something, that call is covered under our do not call rule, are robocall role. It also includes solicitation calls by forprofit fundraisers, the hybrid calls, the survey calls where they pitch it as a Political Survey or some sort of survey about whatever topic youre interested in and they ended with a sales pitch and Even Companies with which you have an established business relationship cannot robocall you with a sales message. Companies that assist for facilitate those that place illegal calls are also subject to liability. This is the role the we all care about and we are all here about today the telemarketing robocall rule. It prohibits initiating a call it delivers a purported message to consumers or a sales call. If it is the type of call that falls under the ftc jurisdiction , the only exception is if they have written permission from the consumer for that specific seller. There are several requirements for what that written permission has to say. It has to be after clear and conspicuous disclosure by the seller and the purpose to authorize the seller to place a record calls, it must show the consumers willingness to receive calls during pre recorded messages by or on behalf of the specific seller, it cannot be a general agreement to get robocalls from anybody and they sell the lead to different telemarketers. It cannot be required as a condition of purchase and that written exception has to that written permission as to include the consumers telephone number and signature. If they dont have all this, it is illegal. Thanks, will you pick up from the point of view of the ftc . Yes, just to start at the beginning. The source of the fcc rules in this area, from the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991. The fcc had adopted implementing rules not long after that statute was enacted. The rules have changed somewhat over time in the last 20 years. In some cases, including the most recent changes that have been adopted after valentines day, those were designed to harmonize the fcc rules as closely as possible to the ftc rules and i will get to some specifics in a minute. One thing to highlight for you at the beginning, you heard will mentioned that certain entities are not subject to the federal trade Commission Call roles because the jurisdiction of the federal trade commission ther the telemarketing back ta, fcc rules are not limited in that way. Some entities are not exempt from the fcc standards that i am about to mention. The general standard and prohibition that emanates from the Telephone Consumer Protection Act which is codified in the Communications Act is that there can be no autodial or pri recorded voice calls to an emergency number or numbers that are designed for emergency purposes like a doctors office, Law Enforcement, that sort of thing. You cannot make these calls to emergency numbers, you cannot make these calls to a guest or patient rooms of hospitals or nursing homes, and you cannot make these kind of calls to mobile phone numbers or other numbers for which a consumer might be charged for having received the call. The only exception to those prescriptions that i just identified are if you are making a call for an emergency purpose where you have the prior express consent of the called party. There is also restrictions on prerecorded calls to what we call residential lines. Calls can be initiated, pre recorded calls, can be initiated to residential phone lines, landlines, if they are made for an emergency purpose or for a commercial purpose that does not include telemarketing if they are made for if they are not made for commercial purposes. If they are made to a person with whom a caller has an established business relationship or if they are made by or for a taxexempt nonprofit for those kind of calls to fit within the legal requirements that the fcc and forces, it is also the case that certain disclosures have to be made to the called party, namely the person who is initiating the call has to identify who they are at the beginning of the call and during or after the call, they have to provide an actual phone number at which they can be reached. Just to state these requirements in major way to summarize the distinction between landline and mobile you cannot make a pre recorded call 2 mobile phone number unless it is for an emergency purpose were you have the prior express consent of the called party. I wanted to mention that when a prerecorded political voice call would be okay because that is something people refer to. Windows are ok as when there may to residential line that cannot be when those are ok, is when there may be a president ial line and you make the required disclosure of the identity of the caller as well as the telephone number at which the called party can be reached. You have heard me refer to the established business relationship exception. This is one of the things that is being changed to harmonize more with the ftc rule that says for robocalls, that does not work anymore. You have to have a prior express written consent of the called party in order for that to be acceptable. As i mentioned, the ftc has adopted a rule to be consistent with that on february 5, 2012. That is not yet in effect because it is subject to some review at the office of management and budget but when that approval comes through and after the passage thereafter, that will be the governing rule. We also have a seizure role for business calls. Youre not permitted to make automatic dial calls to multi line businesses. You cannot engage two or more of those lines at the same time. That is the basic overview of the fcc rules in this area. Thank you. I will speak specifically about in the and that but there are a number of states that are pooled together on these issues. We never had the established business exception in indiana. We maintain a stronger version of the do not call list. A lot of the states did fold into the federal do not call since they have the same established business exception. There are a number of states that still have a stronger do not call statutes. We maintain a do not call working group and ive got Marguerite Sweeney many states pulled together so we are active with our National Association of attorneys general. When it comes to robocalls, indiana as another unique experience. We have banned the use of auto dialers since 1988 recognizing the growing opportunities for scams. We have even banned the political calls. That has engaged a number of legal challenges, as you might have guessed. It has been successful up through the courts and the Supreme Court of india and that successfully arguing that the rights to privacy trump a political free speech to blast out tens of thousands of calls to hoosiers. It is subject to a federal case we want at the District Court that is now in the seventh Circuit Court of appeals. I think there is opportunities there that indiana and other states have shown to have stricter do not call and no boat rolled and no robocalling options. Some of the current work will again be subject to additional challenges and we look forward to many more days in court. [laughter] thank you, lets shift gears and talk about targeting. How do you identify entities you might choose to sue or investigate . What do you know about complaint volumes and trending . Lets stay with the state of indiana. I think ive got a slide appear somewhere. Up here somewhere. What we really found is since the advent of the voip and the cloudbased robocalls, our volume of complaints has doubled just in this past year. We have now gone over 17,000 just since september 30 of this year. Again, since we had a much stronger statute in our state, we were blessed with a decade of all i would say peace and quiet. Hoosiers still have a greater sense of expectation when it comes to privacy in the home particularly. Wendy voip and cloudbased robocalls began and rachel was working her magic in the room in the hoosier state, despite these complaints, and is a geometric growth on the complaints, some of them, as a shock. I want to express the righteous indignation that i have received in letters every day. A lot of it comes from the relative peace and quiet we have received in the past. Now they are not used to having these calls and they are wondering why you cannot keep people from calling. I think a lot of states did not have the same experience in indiana. They always had a little bit of the robocalling they got used to it. It comes as quite a shock in indiana. Woodcut 17,000 complaints i can share. They fully express the resignation of my state. The righteous indignation of my state. The breakdown of the complaint really come the largest bulk is clearly the robocalls. We do have complaints about text messaging which is only 17 . 33 is everything from collection calls to all the rest. Truly, is the robocalls that incite the most passionate complaints. After a long decades of peace and quiet, why cant you and the federal government do something is a pretty loud and clear message. A picture of some of the handwritten i will have to share my favorite from what i assume is a grandmotherly she hoosier. She writes can we stop the calls because he cannot even take a nap. Thank you. Fcc . Sorry i dont have a graphic to put up on the screen in front of you. I have some complaints volume to report to you. In 2010, let me say that if you go to the fcc website and you want to file a complaint with us about robocalls, there are a variety of forms that are available and they are self explanatory. You can choose from than depending on the particular type of problem. It is looking at those different complex that has enabled us to pull together the type of statistics i will give you. Across the complaints involving purported called to residential lines copper reported lines called to business lines, cell phones, and Text Messages to sell funds in calendar year 2010, we had about 50,000 complaints across those four topical areas. You can see the growth and the figures in the figures are about to give you. In 2011, there were 86,000 complaints across those areas. Thus far, in 2012 and we still have the balance of october and all of november and december to go through, we have received 98,607 complaints. About 22,000 this year are complex bel pre record calls to residential lines, about 3000 to business lines, 36,000 to sell funds and 37,002 cell phone. 37,000 to sell funds. The statistics dont necessarily indicate that the law has been violated. In every particular case. For example, i did not talk about any restrictions about calls to business lines. There may be something going on there but there may not be. I say that not to call the statistics into question but i want to highlight that those numbers dont necessarily mean there have been 98,607 violations of laws we and force that we are aware of us for this year. I believe we just released our data book and do not call compliance for the last fiscal year that ended september of this year. Our compliance were up, nearly double for do not call complaints, robocall complaints even higher, a larger percentage than the year before. If you look back over about two years, it looks like this. Everyone knows if youre getting more calls, were getting more complaints and people are getting angry about it. We use those complaints to find the bad guys. When we are targeting to figure out who to go after, one of the biggest things we consider is who we can go after to stop the most number of calls. Will have the biggest impact on who we go after . There was a case recently that concluded that we filed against a Company Called asia pacific. That company had made over 2. 5 billion robocalls. 2. 5 billion. There are lots of other companies that made lots and lots of calls like that. Thats what we figure out what we figure out who to go after we take the complex and get information from those complaints and try to figure out who will stop the most number of calls. We talk about complaint figures we filed 94 Enforcement Actions involving do not call violations. Of those include robocalls and some are specifically do not call but 94 Enforcement Actions against 271 companies and to 12 individuals. Those defendants in the case is that ended have paid more than 69 million in Civil Penalties and equitable monetary release. If you look just at robocall cases going back three years ago,the ftc has filed 15 cases just on robocallers. Against 42 companies and 24 individuals. Many of those cases are still ongoing and many were filed recently. We have already collected more than 5 million in Civil Penalties and equity monetary relief. If you keep an eye and our press releases on our website, there is more to come. One thing we also do because retarded the people responsible for the most bad axe, the most calls come in many cases, we think those people deserve some criminal punishment. We dont have a criminal and authority, unfortunately, we prefer many of those cases, the worst actors to criminal authorities for criminal prosecution. For instance, a couple of weeks ago, in our transcontinental warranty action, we sentenced 16 months in prison and illegal calls connected with auto warranty calls. There were sentenced to five years in prison. Just last on, we announced the civil action against those defendants, we were mailing refund checks to nearly 5000 consumers across the country who were allegedly defrauded by these calls. Those checks were for more than 1,000. A federal judge sentenced the defendant earlier this year for our Economic Relief Technology Enforcement act to more than 17 years in prison and ordered to pay more than 1 million in restitution for making Illegal Robocalls to consumers and those calls that use name like names like Card Services. Because we target those really bad actors, in many cases, those bad actor to serve jail time and in many cases they find that. I did not share anything as i should have about what our Law Enforcement average have been. I told about the complex but i did not share with you what we have done. Our rules have been in effect since around 19911992. Since that time, we have issued hundreds of citations. We have instituted a round 10 different penalty actions that collectively are valued at around 3. 5 million, i believe is the figure. Our authority is different than what you have heard the ftc described and the Indiana Attorney general. We do not have the power under the Communications Act to go directly into federal court. And to seek an injunction. The type of enforcement process that we use is a penaltytype of process. In the cases of people who are not carriers or broadcasters in other words, people who do not hold licenses from the fcc who are required to issue a citation to that entity. The point of that requirement is to alert this entity that may not typically aware that it is operating in a regulated space that the fcc is involved in, we have to tell them that you are doing something you are not allowed to do and if they do it again after having been warned, then we have the power to go ahead and started penalty proceeding and the way that works is that we would issue something called the notice of apparent liability which comes directly from the statutory enforcement procedures that the fcc has where we tell the alleged wrongdoer what law they have violated, when we believe they did that, and what penalty we are proposing to impose for that violation. Have an opportunity to respond to that and then we consider what they have to say in response and move forward with a forfeiture order that would either go ahead and impose the forfeiture that was proposed in the notice or do some reduction if there is some merit to doing that or we could cancel it. Some cases are at various stages of the process. No shortage of complaints. States are getting thousands,the ftc getting a couple of hundred thousand each month the next question summarizes wonderfully why is rachel still calling . That pulls together the next topic of conversation. Why is enforcement so challenging . Lets start with ftc. You have heard about the reasons already and we talked about how the network has changed. The easiest my thing to do is to walk through the way the typical racheltype call might happen. It might start and frequently does with what we call a lead generator, sometimes a qualifier. It can be based anywhere in the world or the United States. All they need is a computer and Internet Connection with an autodialer company. The autodialer company then as the connection for voice carriers and pst and Telephone Networks. The lead generator is just trying to find people for these products or services which will scams, they willmas blast of calls to home of our. Whomever. Theyre going sit quietly through numbers and looking for bodies. The costs are so much lower now. The startup costs are lower, almost zero, you can get dialing in a few hours now. You dont need a pbx lots of copper lines or a telephone perry just made your computer and Internet Connection. They will send out these calls going through an autodialer which will put them into the Telephone Network and that will go out all over the country. The small percentage of people end up answering and listening to the message. The message will be like the one you may have heard earlier, the racial call, press one if you are interested in lowering your Credit Card Debt, press 2 to go on our do not call list. If you press one, the call can get routed some were completely different. It can go to an outsourced boiler room in india or pakistan or california or florida. It might go back to the lead generator or go to a company that is trying to pitch this scam to you. Frequently, you will speak to a qualifier. They will ask a few questions whether you have at least 10,000 Credit Card Debt and at least two credit cards and they might just hang up on you. They will not give you a real name or a caller i. D. Number. When you answer and talk to them, you dont know anything about them. You think you know there and you think you know their name and you think you know where they are because they might call for an area code that is near you. In fact, it could be in panama, india, or california or anywhere. In some cases, theyll just hang up on you. Theyve got your number and your name and they know that you are someone who is interested in producing a Credit Card Debt and they will sell that information to many different scammers will try to call you and pitch you debt relief services. Sometimes you will immediately get transferred somewhere else in the country or somewhere else in the world and they will try to sell you how you need to pay 500 or 1,000 to reduce your Interest Rates to 0 on your credit cards or some sort of outlandish scheme that is not true. Because those lead generators can be based anywhere and spoof their caller id is, that makes it much more difficult to find. They can move extremely easily. In many cases, those people dont have any connection to the whatsoever because you will not pay those people. The people you end up paying, the few that do come are the scammers are pitching you this Card Services service and they may call you separately and you may not realize that the two were connected. The way that we work back to find the bad guys and file our Enforcement Actions is we do a number of different things. We usually start with the consumer complaints we get. Even though the caller id is usually spoofed and fake and the name is fake, you can still get the information out of those and bring those complaints together and look for trends. Maybe they made a mistake on one particular call and you connect those different complaints together. Just a few weeks ago, we filed an enforcement action in california against a Company Called nelson gamble that was making robocalls, making Debt Reduction claims were talking about today. I spoke to consumers that began with consumer complaints. One of the things that led to bad investigation were those complaints even though the caller i. D. Number was probably spoofed and the location was how wey spoofed, thats help trace them back. Did someone pay money to them . Did you pay 500 for Credit Card Debt relief . If you did, then we can trace that money back and we can find who you paid. If we bring enforcement action and go in and shut down that company you paid, we can look through their documents and say who was doing the lead generation. Who was doing the robocall and for them . Who was the autodialer involved in the call . We can go after everyone in the chain at that point. It is lengthy and takes time to build these cases, to find information, traced the money back, and go in and actually get a court order to shut down the company and get their records. We have to then find out who made the initial robocall. We can also traced the call back for the network. That can be very difficult. We were talking about routing calls through different carriers all around the country, it takes time to go back to each one and find out where this commence your network from and then we go to the next one. We can do it and it helps locate the bad guys in many cases but it is a timely and difficult process. We also used informants, informers, former employees. Many of these bad guys dont treat their employees that well. They dont pay well. They dont give vacations. They end up with some miffed employees. We hear from them all the time. In the nelson gamble case, we used information obtained from former employees were not happy with their former company because they knew what they were doing that was bad. And those former employees are extremely valuable sources of information. When we find the bad guys that are involved in these calls it takes time. We can find them and we want to target the ones that are responsible for the most number of calls,the most bad, and when we do, we try to shut them down, get court orders for making those calls anymore. Weve got a lot of Enforcement Actions i have talked about already, a lot have just been filed in the last few months. Theres a lot more in the works. Keep attuned to fcc. Gov as they come forward. More is coming. Thank you. How do you find the bad guys . We have been very successful over the years up until this past wave of voip robocalls. We are finding similar frustrations with spoofed numbers and where the numbers are valid, people are not there. We have gone through the same process as we used to but i will say it is getting harder with the new technology to be as successful as we had been. Some of the same things that will talk about, we are looking at. We are trying a couple of cases where the purchasers of the leads from the lead generators are claiming that they did not cause the calls to be made. We will be changing our statute. We are pros and legislative changes that would allow us to get past that defense and require purchasers to verify that the leads were legally generated and not done through a Illegal Robocalls. We are also following up on another idea where a similar to the suggestion that the boiler rooms dont treat people very well, we will initiate legislation that will allow anyone out there that might be working in a boiler room to call and it is just about making money, they can probably make more money working with the Indiana Attorney Generals Office than they could from being paid by the robocaller. We have been successful working with some of our states partners in being a little more creative. There is one example, i think it was in florida, where we thought we had run into a deadend but some of the people cleaning up after the boiler room saw the script from the boiler room and called a few people. Next thing we knew, we have a live case. Were still being very aggressive but there is more frustration with the ability to masak things and we look forward to more help and the technological side to fight the new technology. I dont think i have a lot to add. Obviously, there are challenges in finding out who these folks are. You would hope you could use the number that is showing up on somebodys caller id to help you out in that regard but i guess we have heard over and over this morning that is often not a good source of information. You can try to work backwards from taking not the original the number but the terminal in a number and trying to trace back to get to the point of origin in that manner. As you also heard, that can be challenging. And timeconsuming. Folks we work with, carriers we need to talk to, often are very responsive and helpful in a relatively short period of time such as a day or two. That still can be a long process when youre talking about needing to get in touch with people, several different carriers who have been involved in the transmission of a call along the way. Something that would be great is to get better intelligence about the true call and have a very expedited compulsory process vehicle available to get the information very quickly. I also want to mention a challenge that we have at the fcc that is not necessarily shared by the ftc or the Indiana Attorney general. You heard us talk about the typical process we use. Obviously, there are laws in many places out lining the type a behavior were talking about this morning but the worst actors out there do not Pay Attention to those laws. That may not pay any attention to a piece of paper from the fcc when we find them. That says you are breaking below and were imposing a fine and this is how much the fine will be. I think we need to be looking at the other enforcement tools that are available to us in the statute. Although they do not permit us to go directly into federal court and seek an injunction, we have our own administrative and injunctive authority that would have to be enforced in court and there is a provision in the Communications Act for the purpose of justice can get involved at our request to seek injunctions to stop violations of law that we enforce. Something i want to follow up on it i think it was mentioned earlier this morning we were referring to penalties of 500 and 5,000 those are the penalties that are available for i believe a private right of action a consumer himself or herself can bring these actions to enjoin these type of practices or get damages and states can do it as well. The fcc fining authority is bigger than was mentioned. We can actually impose 16,000 per violation. That means per call. We could impose a 16,000 fine and we, in fact, have done that in our most recent action. The more common fund which would impose is not that high. It is the one we would impose when there is aggravating factors. We are using the authority we have as aggressively as we have in terms of finding people but i think we need to be retooling and looking at the other tools we have in the Communications Act to address the problem as well. Along those lines, under the telemarketing sales rule, we can go into federal court and get orders to shut down businesses. Sometimes that takes a while so we are looking at ways to get into court faster so weakened get into a judge almost immediately and say we need in order to get these calls stopped and have the calls stopped going to the network. I can announce today that we have set up a honeypot, a significant number of phone numbers from all over the country that come into our honeypot and the calls get answered and we record messages and take the information on the calls that are coming into our honeypot so that we can find out much faster who is actually making these calls and have a recording in house so we have the evidence right there that will hopefully help us find these guys faster and prosecute faster. Thank you. Lets turn to some of the questions. There is no shortage of them. I cannot get through them all but we will do the best we can. I will literally construe some and consolidate. Is it better for the consumer to stay on the line and engage in conversation and collect as much information as possible rather than hang up . No. [laughter] four years, we have told people that and there may still be some benefit with a lot caller. Robocalls, we are desperately trying to get the new word out that the longer you stay on, the worse it is for you. Sense of the spike in our compliance are robocallbased, we need to get the word across quickly that it is more a question of play the game of how quickly you can hang up. I think thats right. If they give you information, it will be fake information. The names will be fake and you will not get anything out of it. That is usually not stuff we can use. If you press one or two, whether it is one to talk to someone or two to talk to someone on their drug call list, they are happy to have you president barack obama their number. They will put you on their number because they will not put you on their do not call list. They dont have their internal do not call list that they will honor. They would then put you on more lead lists for people who are at home that of working from numbers and answer the phone that lessens the message and press the number. Perversely, you will get even more calls that way. That may be different if it is your School District new or your doctor or Something Like that but for a salesbased robocall, we tell consumers it is made a mistake to press water to, just hang up. I will admit to personal experience which is not particularly helpful. A number of years ago before got involved in Law Enforcement were talking about today, i received a number of phone calls. I pressed one to say please dont call me anymore. It did nothing so i decided to press 2 to talk to somebody about the product or offering and that did not help. That made more calls come to made. When you start trying to get information that might be useful to lawenforcement, people are not interested in talking to you about that. A series of questions on fcc ftc coordination and state enforcement. How is it working . The states have banded together and the working group we have through the National Association has been effected. Our relationship with federal partners has been as good as maybe a little better than some federal agencies at least until the last 1. 5 years. We had a series of roundtable meetings around the state of indiana to try to get some of our own issues in front of us so we could see what the states could be doing a little more creative use of our own state statutes and new authority. Plus what things could be done to the federal level. Will was kind enough to come up for at least one of those. There is a lot of things about where these phones if you are going to blast out 10,000 calls per minute, they have to be dropped onto the system somewhere. I am not a big fan of regulation just for the point of regulation but if you will put 10,000 calls on to the system, is probably worse than radio. Can we regulate it and license it and put it in some way that the fcc might relief focused on blasting out calls that will bring your phone at home . I can always turn the tv or the radio off but i cannot turn the fall of unless turn the phone off unless i cut off communications with my friends and family. Were looking for more help than most of the conversations around the round table were looking to the federal government for more help even if it comes a point of more regulation, to have least protect my whos your friend to just want to take a nap. The cooperation certainly is helpful. The general mentioned the National Association of attorney generals is a big part and the ftc participate in that working group has shared information. There is lots of states that have been helpful and are actively working with us on active investigations especially when they have boots on the ground near where our targets are and that can be extremely helpful. The same with respect to the ftc. We cooperate frequently with them. I frequently speak to people there ensure compliance information and make sure that we are coordinating and not typically going after the same targets. The more states and more help to get from other federal agencies, the better. It has been very helpful personally. The ftc and the fcc steps that work in this area have regular and periodic contact to share information. If people are concerned about duplication of efforts, and not sure of that was part of the question, but you have heard with different kinds of Enforcement Authority and that is something we would take into account as to who might be the right entity to be pursuing a particular matter. Youve also heard that while there is a lot of overlapping rules, they are not necessarily coextensive. Without sharing confidential information that i cannot talk about specifically, i can assure you that there are state folks who are in touch with us about different problems that they are experiencing. We are working with them where we can and it is appropriate to try to do what we can to deal with the problem. Thank you. Does robocall includes all the dials and recorded calls . Yes, under the tsr, a robocall is a call that is playing you taperecorded message. A prerecorded message. By definition, it will be autodialer. No one will sit there and press in the number to play the recorded message. Absolutely, what makes it a pre recorded call under our role is the recorded message. It is on the computer and it plays when you pick up the phone. Youre not talking to a live person. We have had discussion about political calls but there are a number of questions here. What are the two federal agencies doing to enforce or robocalls to cell phones banned by political organizations . Getting those types of calls that are not legal, file a complaint with us. We have complaints about that and we have active matter is were looking into. Something you might be aware of to further get out the word and to remind people who want to comply with law and intend to comply the law, what the standards are. From time to time, we issue things we call enforcement advisories that are designed to highlight the agencys work in a particular area and, more importantly, to highlight what the rules of the road are in a particular area and alert people that we are available to receive complaints. In september, given the political season we are in now, we did issue an advisory of what the rules of the road are four political calls. We are trying to get the word out. We do have complaints and were looking at complaints and state to end. Stay tuned. The crucial question boils down to whether a call is part of a campaign to try to sell you something. If it is a call from the Romney Campaign or the Obama Campaign that would not fit within our definition because they are not trying to sell you something. [laughter] maybe they are trying to get to vote for them but you will not pay the money for the service. The survey calls also falls within that same issue. They are not trying to sell you something. There are people that have gone out to try to make to mask their sales goals as a Political Survey. Those calls are covered and we are aware of those. Our prohibition for political calls has been very successful over the 10 years i have been involved. Even though we have had a number of legal challenges and still go through it, it is a pretty strong legal argument particularly as it comes to blasting out tens of thousands of these calls to people who dont want them in their homes. The fact that youve got federal statutes on the cell phone, i still think we will be a winner on the idea that you cannot call people at home to try to get a political free speech even though that is what the seventh circuit is still looking at. Our argument is very strong that we are regulating the time and place and it will not be done over the phone in indiana unless the seventh circuit disagreed. A couple of questions on the same issue what is the magic number of complaints to trigger Law Enforcement . I dont think there is a magic number. I think it is contextual in many ways. I would say the same thing. Most of our cases start out looking at complaints. We look at them every day, all the time. They are incredibly useful and we have to put everything in context for it would look at what kind of evidence we have and if we have informants and can we figure out where these people are and if they are in the United States and what are they doing and what kind of calls they are making and was the volume and are they stealing money from people. All those things go into was figuring out who we can go after with our enforcement resources and stop the most number of calls. In indiana, by the time you hit the fifth complaint, it has gone up the line. It might have one complaint that really leads you to some very strong evidence. It does not take much of the state level. There is a question about criminal prosecution at the state level. Any success . I dont know about criminal prosecution because our office has said also would turn that over to a local prosecutor or the u. S. Attorney. We have been very good about being draconian on fines. We have had a number of very large fines. A lot of the legitimate telemarketing industry as a gold star next to indiana and is not worth the cost of doing business. Whether you are on the do not call or not, up until the voip, we have been successful using the Civil Penalties. If i catch rachel, i will show her the statute. Do the federal rules supercede the state . No. Shall we move on . I think are some open questions that have been filed at the fcc on that topic and i dont believe the agency has addressed to those questions and i dont think i should say more about that. Would be glad to have that hearing. Can somebody explain exactly what an autodialer is . I will tell you what the statute says it is. It is equipment that has the capacity to store or produce telephone numbers to be called using a random or sequential number generator. That is the statutory definition in our rules of what an autodialer is. Hopefully, that is helpful. We will end five minutes early. There are many more questions here but these are request for legal opinions. I know there are a bunch of lawyers sitting out there and you know better than us. In any event, i appreciate your attention and lets give a round of applause for our panel. [applause] were going to break until 1 22. 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