[ NNSquad ] Skepticism (from me) about the FTC's anti-robocall announcement

[Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>]

Skepticism (from me) about the FTC's anti-robocall announcement

"US gov't names winners of contest to build the best robocall-blocking
system"

http://j.mp/10tpJ2s  (ars technica)

    The $50,000 prize will be split by two co-winners who separately built
    systems that "focus on intercepting and filtering out illegal
    prerecorded calls using technology to 'blacklist' robocaller phone
    numbers and 'whitelist' numbers associated with acceptable incoming
    calls," the FTC said. "Both proposals also would filter out unapproved
    robocallers using a CAPTCHA-style test to prevent illegal calls from
    ringing through to a user."

 - - -

I am, frankly, skeptical about the efficacy of the system described in
the associated video.  Even with the noted relevant provisos, any use
of Caller ID or ANI for such systems is highly problematic since they
can indeed both be spoofed (especially the former, but also the latter
in many cases) -- or may be missing entirely for legitimate callers
blocking Caller ID due to privacy concerns.  The use of an audio
CAPTCHA is interesting, but is likely to be evaded by telemarketers
using the same "instant outsourcing" schemes used to evade computer
CAPTCHAS currently, and may block legitimate callers not known to the
whitelists -- especially in emergencies when people tend to be upset
and confused.  Finally, any system based on existing conditional call
forwarding technology is problematic.  The article notes scale but
it's worse than that.  Many people already use conditional call
forwarding for their voicemail -- adding an intermediary layer is
likely to cause significant confusion and collateral effects in many
cases.  Also, for persons who can only afford basic telephone service,
conditional call forwarding tends to be an expensive add-on which
would be difficult to justify for such an application.  And of course,
the telemarketing networks will evolve, likely rendering much of this
useless for that reason alone.

--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): http://www.vortex.com/lauren 
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info
Founder:
 - Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org 
 - PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
 - Data Wisdom Explorers League: http://www.dwel.org
 - Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: http://www.gctip.org
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://vortex.com/g+lauren / Twitter: http://vortex.com/t-lauren 
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
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