Posted on 01/31/2020 7:26:15 AM PST by karpov
A man who telecom regulators say was apparently behind a barrage of racist robocalls in six states — sowing hate in response to the killing of an Iowa college student by an undocumented immigrant and a white supremacist’s murder trial in Virginia — is facing a proposed fine of nearly $13 million by the Federal Communications Commission.
The man, Scott D. Rhodes, who anti-hate groups say is a white supremacist and runs the website Road to Power, was “apparently” responsible for more than 6,000 robocalls in 2018 “with the intent to cause harm,” the F.C.C. said on Thursday.
The commission said that in addition to Iowa and Virginia, Mr. Rhodes targeted people in California, Georgia, Florida and Idaho with the robocalls.
Most recently, Road to Power took credit for a flurry of racist robocalls made to Columbia University employees after Tessa Majors, a Barnard College freshman, was killed in a mugging in December in New York City. The calls, which promoted a white supremacist ideology, were not part of the F.C.C. action on Thursday.
The F.C.C. said it traced 827 spoofed robocalls that were made to residents in Brooklyn, Iowa, in August 2018 after the slaying of the University of Iowa student, Mollie Tibbetts, by an undocumented farmworker from Mexico. Ms. Tibbetts, whose murder has been invoked by President Trump in his push for a border wall, was from the small town.
The commission said Mr. Rhodes used an online calling platform to intentionally manipulate caller ID information to display local phone numbers as the source of the calls. That practice, known as neighbor spoofing, violates the Truth in Caller ID Act, the commission said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I get like 8 of these a day. When is the FCC going after them?
“The commission said Mr. Rhodes used an online calling platform to intentionally manipulate caller ID information to display local phone numbers as the source of the calls. That practice, known as neighbor spoofing, violates the Truth in Caller ID Act...”
Excerpt here said nothing about what the message said.
Good thing there is no harm here.
From later in the article:
“As if this tragedy were not enough, just two days after her funeral, Mollie’s family, friends, and the close-knit community of Brooklyn began to receive a barrage of spoofed robocalls,” Ajit Pai, the commission’s chairman, said in a statement on Thursday. “Preying on the tragedy, the calls contained inflammatory prerecorded messages and a woman’s voice apparently intended to impersonate Mollie Tibbetts saying ‘kill them all.’ ”
Thanks.
Still very meager and cryptic.
Do they publish the text of the robo call anywhere?
I have gotten calls from the local Highway Patrol, the electric company, local numbers and names, etc.
They are mostly all Credit Card Services. Or a warranty for my 200,000 mileage car that has expired that they don’t know the brand or model of.
So why can’t the Feds get them?
I think they use my 15-year no-call listing as their dialing list.
If I am not sure, and answer, I generally call them LIARS, LIARS . . . as soon as I get a human (Steve from India).
The plan that I am afraid to use is to explicitly threaten them in the most vile and detailed way, such as to cause them to complain - thus revealing their identity. But I would probably be charged for terrorist threats instead.
My first thought as well. The ACLU defended Skokie Nazis way back in the day. They understood that even hateful speech is protected by law.
Did he intend to “cause harm” or did he hope to engender political change that, to his mind, would benefit America?
I confess to calling the Hindu scammer from the microsoft tech center a “little brown monkey” yesterday before hanging up. Arrest me.
I call him “Apu”. He doesn’t get it.
I haven’t got any robo calls for the last few days! Maybe this 13 million dollar fine has them scared!
My response is to insult Mohammad and Shiva until they hang up.
Call them a “benchode.” They WILL get that.
What if I don’t want to waste my time and be interrupted by Telemarketers and politicians not even from my State.
8 or more a day at always inconvenient times. I wear hearing aids and phone use is a chore.
I’m from a generation that rarely used the phone. I have Photos on the numbers I do have in my phone. I no sooner block a spam call and they call back again. If I need a Brace my Ortho would of prescribed it.
Politicians are the worst. Donate one time and they sell your info to the RNC and every Republican candidate in the country, it seems. Then they call you incessantly, worse than any marketers or scam callers.
I’ve just made it a rule that I will never donate a penny to any candidate or group that calls me at home to solicit. They’re shooting themselves in the foot.
Some might consider that a compliment.
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