Strike force met to determine ways to protect consumers from unwanted calls and texts. 32 of the companies are taking part in the effort including apple, google and microsoft. The task force has 60 days to come up with recommendations. This is just under 30 minutes. Good morning. Make sure your microphone is on. Good morning, everyone. For those of you i have had opportunity to meet, im alison telecom chief of the consumer and Governmental Affairs bureau. A major part of my work is to help consumers stop unwanted robocalls and thats why we are all here today. Im delighted you could join us. We are pleased to be able to host the first meeting of the Robocall Strike force, an industry led group that has come together in response to chairman wheelers call to give consumers better tools to stop unwanted calls. I look forward to working with you in my role as the commissions liaison. This morning to hear from several speakers about the importance of protecting consumers are more annoying and often fraudulent mobile calls. First chairman wheeler will speak about the steps the commission has taken to tackle this problem in ways the strikeforce can support this effort by delivering Effective Solutions for consumers. Commissioner clyburn and commissioner pai will then provide remarks and then at t chairman and Ceo Randall Stephenson will conclude todays meeting. Thank you again for being here this morning, and that will turn over to chairman wheeler. Thank you, alison. And thank you to all of you who have volunteered your time to spend the next 60 days buckle down on this very important issue. It is significant that we have not just carriers, not just gateway providers, but also equipment and Service Providers here at this table, because this is a challenge that is going to require everybodys commitment. I want to thank my colleagues for joining us today. And i particularly want to thank Randall Stephenson for stepping up, to lead this effort. Because americans are fed up. Robocalls are a scourge. Its the number one complaint that we hear from consumers on a daily basis. Over 200,000 calls a year into the fcc, or into our webbased consumer assistance platform, to talk about this problem and complained about how consumers are being abused. Americans have a right to be fed up with this scourge. Its an invasion of privacy, and it is rife with fraud and identity theft. And the problem is that the bad guys are beating the good guys with technology right now. Voice over internet protocol, calls from scammers in Foreign Countries rely on networks, that are not ready to deal with them. The ability to spoof a legitimate phone number is the downside to a digital environment. But i also want to go back and reiterate that this isnt just a network problem. This is a community problem. This has to do with those who run, build and operate networks, those who build and operate equipment, those who build and operate services and thats why its significant that you will all collectively here at this table. The profit motive has driven the bad guys to exploit pashtun the profit motive has driven bad guys to a level of technological innovation that exploits consumers by exploiting networks and equipment. Its not as if the good guys have been standing idly by. But this is something that requires everybody to pull together. And to have an urgency in finding solutions. So thank you to this group for bending to the task of proposing solutions within 60 days. It is significant that the working groups are going to be meeting at least twice a week to keep to the schedule. But let me be clear, this is an Industry Group. We believe in multistakeholder solutions. And win the whole ecosystem when the whole ecosystem can come together, it can produce good results. But without results, we will be forced to look for other solutions. Because this is scourge must stop. So lets set some goals for 60 days hence. Authentication standard for voip calls including gateway standards as well as tdm voice. We know that standards bodies have been working on commissioner pai . Thank you, mr. Chairman. Great to see all of your at the sec. Like a commissioner clyburn let me paint a picture for you that reflects my experience and hopefully all of yours as well. One monday night in the fall the Kansas City Chiefs are battling the dreaded Oakland Raiders at arrowhead stadium. Its a close game. Settle in to watch Americas Team during a clutch Fourth Quarter drive. But just before the snap in and off, the phone rings. You reluctantly answer only to a recorded message claiming to be from the irs at the caller says you owe the government money and you will be arrested unless you pay. You hang up, angry at yourself and realized you even angrier when she realized he missed the wrong through an open lane into the end zone for a resounding chiefs of victory. Artificial or prerecorded calls, robocalls as we know them are awful. Their unwanted, intrusive and many of them like the recent fire as related robocalls are a scam. Robocall some telemarketing calls are the number one complaint, source of consumer complaints received by the fcc. I think former senator Fritz Hollings from South Carolina who i met with last year put it well. It was called robocall the scourge of civilization. That if anything is an understatement. The broad deep and enduring dislike of these robocalls inspires our work this morning. We are gathered at the inaugural meeting of the Robocall Strike force. This Industry Group has an appropriate intimidating name, and according to its rechargeable try to develop ways to prevent, detect and filter out these unwanted calls. I like my college want to commend the folks have rolled up their sleeves and committed to solving this problem. A number of people and organizations have already expended sweat equity in this effort and they deserve to be recognized. The federal trade commission, 2013 robocall challenge focused on the text industry and tension on robocall and. One of the winners of the challenge which was called no mo robo has no stock over 126 million robocalls. Its one of the leading antirobocall apps we have in the united states. Second, the alliance for Telecommunications Industry solutions, the session initiation protocol come and internet engineer task force secure Telephone Identity Revisited Working Group have been developing standards to reduce illegitimate caller id spoofing. Which all will help consumers be able to identify and to avoid fraudulent robocall. Spoofing is the critical input that enables robocall and. I think the work of these dedicated experts in particular is critical. Last bus or in the least i want to express my appreciation to all of you, to the industry participants who are here today to form the task force especially 18 to enter chairman Randall Stephenson for leading the charge. Your efforts will help and hopefully his scourge of civilization, something everyone i think other than rachel from Cardholder Services would apply. I look for to learning more about the scope of the problem and the potential solutions. I hope the participants will ponder a few questions as we labor together to stamp out these unwanted robocall. For example, should we encourage congress to pass the bipartisan antispoofing act of 2015, introduced by joe barton and leonard lance. Legislation that would help crack down on foreign cars that prey on americans using spoofed caller id or the robocalls. Should the sec take more enforcement action against telemarketers and known robocallers, given that tens of thousands of completes we receive from consumers each month. How can we make it easier for consumers to tell us about the robo calls they receive a to make it easier for our enforcement. To track down and shut down some of those fraudulent robocallers . Would it be helpful to carve out a safe harbor for Telephone Companies seeking to provide Call Blocking services to their customers . Would creating reassign numbers of database allow callers to avoid dialing wrong numbers by mistake . And would granting the petition of 51 consumer advocacy organizations to overturn the fcc critic exemption for federal contractors close a potential loophole in a robocall and regulations . For my part i hope everyone here, government officials, industry representatives, consumer advocates and others, can rally around the purpose that ive outlined this morning. And to ba borrow from former president kennedy, let every robocall are no whether it wishes us well or ill, we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any solution and oppose any two survived the piece of american consumers. [phone ringing] it sound like a me just one acoustic if youll excuse me i have to take this call, but thank you very much, mr. Chairman. Thank you for bringing us a Little Theater as well as for threatening the Nuclear Option las. [laughter] randall, this is your party. Thank you, chairman wheeler. I really do appreciate you initiating this and in getting this going. I think its important. I didnt intend to create controversy right away but i live in dallas, texas, and allowing commissioner pais characterization of the Kansas City Chiefs as Americas Team is unacceptable. [laughter] so i do appreciate everybody that is here. If you just look at the number of people that are here commenting on short notice is a really big deal. The 33 companies and organizations on this strikeforce, you represent the entire Communications Ecosystem to do that you here speaks i think to the breath as well as the complexity of his robocall problem. This will require more than individual Company Initiatives and its going to have to go beyond one off blocking applications to address this issue. Robocallers far as your determined reference very formal adversary and they are notoriously hard to stop. And technology such as spoofing makes it easier for them to work around all of our excess and then to cover their tracks. So far weve been coming at this problem piecemeal, editing we can demonstrate weve had limited success. Because these robocalls continue to increase and to grow. So the strikeforce we believe will have to take a different approach to addressing this issue. We truly want to deal with this with the entire ecosystem working together. I think that system is well represented with carriers, device makers, os developers, Network Designers and measure the commissioner speak, regulators and lawmakers are going to have a role to play in this as well. So what we will have to do is come out of this session with a comprehensive plan to end on all go to execute. A lot of people like to portray this simple issue to address and i think we all understand, its not. These unwanted calls and a wide range. We have calls that are perfectly legal but theyre not wanted. Things like telemarketers and Public Opinion surveyors, but on the other end of the spectrum we have millions of calls that are blatantly illegal. They are violating do not call registries, or worse, they are trying to steal identity or steal money. This is why think government is going to a very Important Role to play. In peril with the Technological Solutions we wanted regulatory and Law Enforcement agencies to go after the bad actors. Shutting down the bad guys is a very important step and it will be a powerful example to others. I think our goal is not terribly complicated. Its real simple. We have to stop unwanted robocalls. While its easy to say, its hard to do. The chairman wheelers request, members today have committed to doing the following. Conform to voip calder identification stickers as soon as they are made available on the standards setting group, and we need to drive the standards setting group to accelerate to our process. We need to adopt as those seven solution associate with voip calls. We need to Work Together with industry including every company represent in this room along with the standards setting bodies to evaluate the feasibility of a do not originate list. We ar have to further develop ad implement solutions to detect, assess and stop unwanted calls from reaching the customers and finally the stilted efforts by other carriers to adopt Call Blocking technologies on their networks. So in preparation for todays meeting the technical experts representing our companies have had preliminary conversations about both short and longerterm initiatives. We will discuss those ideas in greater detail here today. We formed several subcommittees to tackle the issues that they will be led by technical experts ranging from apple, at t, comcast, level three, nokia, samsung, sprint and verizon. The robo calling strikeforce is committed to report back to the commission by october 19. Thats six days from now, chairman. The report will include concrete plans to accelerate the development and adoption of the new tools as well as solutions and to make recommendations to the fcc on the role government should play in this battle. The fact so Many Companies agree on such short notice to be your tells you the seriousness we have about finding a solution. I want to thank each of you for being here and for your leadership on this. And with that, chairman, we are ready to get to work. Terrific. Thank you. Alison, are you going to wrap us up . Thank everybody. I think it was a great kickoff. Not just a couple of which is the announcements. This is the end of the kickoff portion of the meeting. We will take a 12 minute break for Strike Force Members back into the break room. Theres coffee as well and we will reconvene at 10 45 with the strike force for the working session of the meeting. Great, thanks. Thanks, alison. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] tonight on the communicators on how Law Enforcement uses cell phone tracking to find criminals and terrorist suspects. The way they operate is essentially by impersonating a legitimate cell phone tower it as a result what they allow
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