Call Me, Pay Fee
WITH the fall elections looming, you may be reconsidering your relationship with your telephone. In states with intensely fought races during the primary season, phone subscribers have complained of receiving as many as 20 election-related calls — mostly automated “robocalls” — per week. These entreaties add to the already heavy load of unwanted commercial calls for everything from credit cards to weight-loss programs.
Enabling these calls are vast industries devoted to collecting personal data about us and selling it to parties seeking to commandeer our attention, our dollars or our votes. Just as fortunes are made by “renting the eyeballs” of Internet users, entrepreneurs prosper by leasing eardrums.
Officially, some limits are in place, most notably the National Do Not Call Registry, created by Congress in 2003. By one count, nearly three-quarters of American phone subscribers have enrolled on this list. But the exceptions and loopholes written into this legislation are revealing. Political candidates and organizations are exempted. So are nonprofit organizations, those conducting surveys or polls, and companies with whom the person called has an “established business relationship” — all notions inviting elastic interpretation.
Worse, determined robocallers now overwhelm even these flexible limits, cheaply placing millions of calls from beyond American borders using decentralizing technologies like voice-over-Internet protocol. Complaints to the Federal Trade Commission bring no relief.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/opinion/a-plan-to-stop-unwanted-phone-calls.html?_r=1&hp
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