President Signs TRACED Act Aimed at Stopping Robocalls

On December 31, 2019, the President signed into law the Pallone-Thune Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act (TRACED Act), which grants the FCC broader authority to bring enforcement actions against robocallers who violate the TCPA.  The Act also requires voice service providers to develop call authentication technologies to help identify unlawful robocalls without imposing additional costs to consumers.

The TRACED Act notably grants the FCC the ability to impose additional penalties up to $10,000 for intentionally violating the TCPA and extends the statute of limitations for pursuing violations from two years to four years.  Additionally, the Act requires the FCC to submit an annual report to Congress detailing, in part, the FCC’s enforcement efforts and the consumer complaints that it has received.  The report must also include “proposals for reducing the number” of robocalls.

Moreover, the TRACED Act states that the FCC must require voice service providers to adopt call authentication technologies to better verify the identity of callers.  Specifically, voice service providers must implement the secure telephone identity revisited and signature-based handling of asserted information using tokens (STIR/SHAKEN) authentication framework for IP networks and an “effective call authentication framework” for non-IP networks.

The Act also requires the Attorney General to create an interagency working group, with representatives from other federal agencies, to study the government’s prosecution of robocall violations.  The working group must: (i) determine how federal law and budgetary constraints inhibit the prosecution of such violations; and (ii) identify existing and potential federal policies and programs that encourage and improve coordination between federal and state agencies for enforcing and preventing such violations.  In addition, the working group must identify existing and potential international policies and programs that encourage and improve coordination between countries for enforcing and preventing robocall violations.

Further, the TRACED Act directs the FCC to: (i) initiate rulemaking to help protect subscribers from receiving unwanted calls or text messages from callers using unauthenticated numbers; and (ii) commence a proceeding to determine how the FCC can protect consumers from “one-ring scams.”  As defined under the Act, a “one-ring scam” means a scam in which a caller makes a call and allows the call to ring for a short duration, in order to prompt the called party to return the call, thereby subjecting the called party to charges.