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Comment by nilamo | Hacker News Reader

It's so funny(?) that we passed the TCPA in order to stop robocalls, but then never decided to actually enforce it.

The TCPA deputizes you as a private citizen to enforce it. It’s empowering, so much so I would be amazed if anything like it would be passed these days.

Uh, it gives us zero power to enforce anything whatsoever.

It provides a private right of action for you to sue the culprit in civil court. I have personally received thousands of dollars in compensation for every case I’ve brought under the statute.

Unfortunately most of the culprits nowadays are overseas scammers, in which case it’s no help. I would agree in that case- the only way to stop these folks is through the carriers themselves and they don’t seem too keen on doing anything.

Ok, but who's the culprit for "unknown caller"? If we don't have info, how do we go after them ourselves?

That's the art & science of it... you need to social engineer the info out of them. Most of the time, even if you do get a caller ID, it's spoofed, so it doesn't matter what "number" they call you from. You need to identify a business with an address and phone number, and definitively tie the activity back to that business.

Yes, it takes time and skill, but then again, between the TCPA and state statutes you could potentially recover close to $6000 per call. Now when you negotiate a settlement you may not actually see that much, but you are definitely getting the attention of the offenders, and just the process of responding to your complaint (lawyer time) will take another few thousand dollars out of the pockets of these cretin.

So if I try really, really hard, I can get the law to do what it's supposed to do without any effort on my part? How is that in any way a positive?

Details, please. Maybe a video/recording of you doing this? I often waste scam caller time by trying to keep them on the phone as long as possible, but this sounds like a much better approach.

Who is we? The US government is controlled by multinational corporations.

> US government is controlled by multinational corporations

As far as oversimplifying political hypotheses go, this is a stupid one. Multinational corporations have fragmented power structures. They're broadly owned, publicly audited and subject to coups through market-based means.

If you want a secret cabal, America's emerging aristocracy is at least concentrated, opaque and difficult to dislodge.

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