Today, and they are at t, bandwidth, centurylink, charter, frontier,onsolidated, cellular,mobile, u. S. Verizon, and windstream. Today we are announcing major bipartisan publicprivate effort to stop robocalls. Myst, i want to introduce colleague and fellow cochair of this initiative, New Hampshire attorney general gordon macdonald. Thank you, general stein, and thank you for your leadership on this issue. The essence of our role as attorneys general is to protect the public. No single issue comes close to generating the volume of consumer complaints as robocalls. For virtually all of us, the spam calls are a ubiquitous and regular annoyance. But robocalls are also a very effective device for illegal conduct conducted by financial particularlyprey on the vulnerable, putting at risk their savings, their identity, their security. The memorandum of understanding we are announcing today will significantly enhance our efforts as attorneys generals to. Rotect the public we serve it is a very
Reporter a big shift because cal fire and contra costa file and miranda around the fire and many others in the Fire Department let alone east bay m. U. D. , let alone the east bay parks, the Lawrence Berkeley lab, all combined together to make sure their hillsides are firestorm free this year and in the future. As we have covered the enormous brush clearing project stretching 17 miles from berkeley down to lafayette, we could not help but notice crews wearing gear saying firestorm. They are working hard, long hours, away from home. Reporter the 25yearold to base company of 300 employees is one of 8 such companies in the nation dedicated to all aspects of preventing and fighting wildfires. All year long, these highly trained and certified firestorm crews clear brush, to controlled burns, forestry, all the way up to and including wildland fires facing em head on. We travel and do a lot of Emergency Response on wildland fires for the federal agencies and we are used to working with a lot
The hearing will come to order appeared good morning. Those g people from is a central goal. Frauds and scams targeting our seniors. Theg the phone and internet, fraudsters have proven to be relentless. To protect our nations seniors, we must continue not only to prosecute con artists who still literally billions from seniors, but also to find new and more illegale ways to block spoofing and robo calls at the network level. Last year, robo colors generated more than 26 alien dollars more than 26 billion unwanted callers that reached American Mobile phones. When land lines are included, the number soars to 48 billion. Residentslone, our received an astonishing 93 million robo calls last year. That is an average of 73 calls to each person in our state. This year, scammers are on pace billionate more than 58 unwanted illegal robo calls targeting american consumers. These scammers are overwhelmingly initiated by offshore robo callers using new technology to perpetuate their schemes. Today,
The Senate Commerce subcommittee on Technology Held a hearing on illegal robo calls and what the federal Communications Commission is doing to combat them. South dakota senator john thune chaired the hearing. Illegal and abusive robo calls are a clear problem. Automated calls are not inherently negative. Many Important Services are carried out by such calls and companies have a preestablished relationship. If you are on the way to the airport and your flight is canceled, if theres a fraud alert on your credit card, or if you are being reminded of a medical important, those calls are important to consumers. Our focus today is on the unscrupulous use of robo calls. Almost a year ago, when i was chairman of the Commerce Committee, i subpoenaed an operation. Hes facing fcc penalties for making robo calls throughout the country. His testimony shed light on the reality that many robo callers view getting caught and getting fines as a cost of business. Acttroduced the deterrence with senator
Instead of having your Diabetic Management Program happen through Insurance Company x, it is now happening through Venture Capital backed technology organizational wide. For hospitals and providers area and, i mean, an example of a disruptors telemedicine. Finding the opportunity, if you are a telemedicine organization to say we know individuals are not getting as much primary care, or at least lets say in that moment of need, it is 2 00 a. M. , child wakes up crying, you know, holding the ear. The telemedicine organization would say we are going to disrupt by not just assuming that persons should go person should go to the emergency room at 2 30 a. M. They can use their smart phone to patch into a physician who, with some information, can look through the phone, possibly prescribe an antibiotic to help the child because of a probable ear infection. Those are a couple of examples. I think it is disrupting in both ways. I understand the impact. I guess the word is weird to me. But anywa