On Monday evening before the elections, while I was trying to listen
to the news, I was interrupted several times by pre-recorded, automated
phone calls, so-called robocalls, each offering me “important
information about” a candidate for political office. Yet, it
was certainly not information I needed. Three calls were recommendations,
but one tried to assassinate an opponent’s character.
None of the robocalls had the slightest impact on my voting decisions.
The most annoying call made me wonder if I should not politely retaliate
by voting against the wishes of the calling party.
The Federal Communications Commission requires that all prerecorded messages
must “at the beginning of the message state clearly the identity of the
business, individual, or other entity that is responsible for initiating the
call.” Yet, most robocalls I received revealed only at the end who called
and who paid for it.
As an exercise of free speech, robocalls are as legal as all other spam, including
direct mail, yard signs, and bill boards. The fact that this exercise of free
speech infringes upon one’s right to privacy seems to bother only the relatively
few Americans who resent the invaders.
For political campaigns in the expensive media market, robocalls are much cheaper
than radio and television ads. They take much less time, moreover, than door-to-door
canvasses by armies of volunteers. In a matter of hours, robocalls can reach
potentially more voters than a month of door-to-door solicitations.
Robocalls are known to be less effective than most other campaign techniques.
Many never reach the targeted persons because they may either not be home when
called or employ devices to block unwanted calls.
Technological advances have been steadily increasing unwanted intrusions upon
privacy. Most Americans wearily tolerate the littering of their front yards,
the blaring noise from car radios, and the clattering of motor vehicles without
mufflers day and night. Where there are laws against littering and noise pollution,
police usually do not enforce them.
Far more serious, however, are the numerous and largely hidden techniques government
has come to exploit for the mining of personal data. The FBI, for example, has
developed a specialized computer, called "Carnivore,” equipped with
software that can scan millions of e-mails per second. It attaches to the systems
of internet service providers and monitors their e-mail traffic.
When it comes to snooping into our private lives, big business is no less intrusive,
particularly since the invention of radio frequency identification (RFID) chips.
A recent book, entitled “Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government
Plan to Track Your Every Purchase and Watch Your Every Move,” describes
the threat posed by the radio tag replacements for barcode labels.
The authors accuse big corporations, such as Philips, Procter and Gamble, Gillette,
NCR, and IBM, of conspiring with each other and the federal government to follow
individual consumers everywhere, using embedded radio tags planted in their clothing
and other belongings. IBM is now seeking a patent for the "identification
and tracking of persons using RFID-tagged items."
In 1986 Congress passed the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. Instead of
protecting us from privacy invaders, however, the law allowed businesses to eavesdrop
on--and tape-record--telephone conversations made "in the ordinary course
of business." To let us know what they are doing, they only have to tell
us that "This call may be recorded."
Current U. S. laws, or the failure to enforce them, seem to allow anybody to
collect and sell information about others without their knowledge and permission.
Worse yet, it happened more than once that commercial compilers of private information
lost it to criminals.
Regrettably, the record shows that Congress all too often placed the business
interests of privacy invaders ahead of the privacy interests of all others.