The FCC’s proposed plan to fight spam calls puts consumer privacy in jeopardy

Sick and tired of having your day disrupted by robocalls? You’re not alone, and the FCC is taking notice. In press releases from the past month, the FCC said that preventing illegal spam calls has become its “top consumer protection priority,” while FCC chairman Brendan Carr vowed to “bring meaningful robocall relief to consumers.” 

Unfortunately, their approach might be so broad, so badly focused, that it will create new privacy concerns, destroy so-called “burner” phones, and place an extra burden on consumers. Or in the words of Gizmodo’s Mike Pearl, “the FCC’s cure might be worse than the disease.”

One proposed change, known as the “Know Your Customer” rules, would require businesses to collect a government ID, a physical address, and the customer’s full legal name, instead of just their phone number, to initiate phone contact. This proposed change might serve to stop robocalls, but it would also effectively end the concept of consumer privacy. In the words of civil liberties advocates Reclaim the Net: “The result would be an identity-verification regime covering one of the last semi-anonymous communication tools available to ordinary Americans.” 

Worse still, the FCC’s proposed “red flags” that would heighten scrutiny are broad enough to encompass the lawful behaviors of millions of Americans. Proposed red flags include using a virtual office, making payments in cryptocurrency, using a “suspicious” email address, or operating a phone number not tied to a residential address. 

While all of these activities are likely indicative of robocall spammer behavior, they are also common practices among law-abiding citizens, who often operate out of virtual offices or use so-called “burner” or pre-paid phones. Worse still, the people who rely on prepaid phones often do so because of the anonymity they afford — think about refugees fleeing conflict zones or victims of domestic abuse attempting to keep a low profile. 

Finally, the FCC is looking to place the burden of enforcement on telecom providers, threatening them rather than individual spam callers with up to $2,500 in fines per call. While this approach is no doubt easier than searching out every individual robocall operator, and certainly motivates the companies to take enforcement seriously, it also creates a bad incentive in which telecom operators have to scrutinize each individual customer and their behavior at the expense of consumer privacy. 

Ultimately, spam calls might prove to be the price we pay for enjoying a modicum of privacy in the digital age.