No Robots on My Phone

By Josh Levy, November 15, 2011

If a new bill gets through Congress, marketing robots will invade your cellphone.
The bill, called the “Mobile Informational Call Act of 2011” (H.R. 3035), would amend the Communications Act of 1934 to allow marketers and bill collectors to make endless calls to your mobile phone — just like they currently can on your landline, but this time using minutes that you are paying for.
Sponsored by corporate interests like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Bankers Association, the bill shows a blatant disregard for our privacy and our rights as mobile phone users.
And to make matters worse, you’ll likely opt in to this new robocalling regime without even realizing it.
While the bill requires that mobile phone users give “prior express consent” for telemarketers to start hitting them up, its definition of consent is incredibly loose. Giving out your number when you’re buying anything — clothes, groceries, a pack of gum — gives merchants (and the companies that own them) full license to robocall you into oblivion.
The kicker? Most mobile plans include a limited number of minutes, so we’ll be the ones footing the bill every time a robo-dialer picks up his robo-phone and robo-calls us.
Right now a House committee is reviewing the bill. We need to stop it before it goes any further. Take action now to tell Congress to abandon any bill that lets marketers invade our cellphones.

Josh is associate campaign director for Free Press and the Free Press Action Fund. He was formerly the managing editor of Change.org, a social action site, and was a frequent commentator on the use of technology in the 2008 election as associate editor of techPresident and the Personal Democracy Forum.
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