Free Republic

After a telemarketer swore at his son nearly 10 years ago, Roger Anderson set out to cause robocallers, telephone fraudsters and scammers as many problems as possible. His solution was to create an artificial intelligence call-deflection system that puts incoming spam calls on the line with a ChatGPT-powered personality, keeping fraudsters talking in circles as they attempt to extract financial information from a chatbot. "This is really an incredibly silly idea," Anderson, who founded the Jolly Roger Telephone Company, told Fox News. "But in a way, I think it's the only way to combat unsolicited telemarketing because we just can't...

The total amount of money secured by the Federal Trade Commission through court judgments in cases involving civil penalties for robocalls or National Do Not Call Registry-related violations, plus the sum requested for consumer redress in fraud-related cases, is $1.5 billion since 2004. It has collected $121 million of that total, said Ian Barlow, coordinator of the agency’s Do Not Call program, or about 8%. The agency operates the National Do Not Call Registry and regulates telemarketing. An FCC spokesman said his agency lacks the authority to enforce the forfeiture orders it issues and has passed all unpaid penalties to...

The nationally organized, local left-wing grassroots group known as Indivisible is getting pretty ticked off about being described as “scripted” — even though its members are raising their own concerns about Wisconsin Indivisible chapters working from scripts. The outrage – at least the latest outrage – follows an op/ed last week in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel by an Nicole Tieman, communications director for U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Menomonee Falls. The piece, takes aim at the notion that the so-called Indivisible “uprisings” are part of an organic movement, instead of a scripted, well organized and, it appears, well financed national “resistance...

Yesterday we gave you the rundown on Common Sense Issues, a nonprofit group that's been phoning millions of voters in key primary states on behalf of Mike Huckabee. The automated calls ask voters about their views on certain hot-button conservative issues and then provide a barrage of facts demonstrating that Huckabee is stronger. I spoke with the group's executive director Patrick Davis this morning and asked him to lay it all out for me. Where was the group active? How many calls had they made? And were the calls illegal? In addition to the approximately 850,000 calls in Iowa and...