FTC moves to ease telemarketing calls

Computerworld - WASHINGTON -- The Federal Trade Commission this month will likely approve creation of a national do-not-call list to give consumers the means to block telemarketing calls as well as provide businesses with a single place to find out whom not to call, a senior FTC official predicted today.
The FTC proposed its national do-not-call registry in January (see story), and has since received 63,000 unique comments on it, virtually all in support of the plan. That's the largest number of comments the commission has ever received on any proposed regulation, said Eileen Harrington, an associate director at the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection.
"We think that's a pretty significant expression of interest," she said.
Harrington, speaking at the Privacy & American Business conference here today, said it's highly likely that the rules will be finalized by the end of the year.
Although the FTC has been asked by consumer groups to develop a similar national solution for spam, Harrington said the commission faces procedural obstacles that could delay any antispam rules for years. Congress has given the FTC authority, under the Telemarketing Sales Rule, to regulate telemarketing; the agency does not, however, have similar power over spam, she said.
Harrington said spam is one of the commission's highest priorities but added that law enforcers have trouble finding some of the worst offenders because of the use of open relays on e-mail servers. She urged businesses to "shut down open relays. Do not allow your company servers to be launching or midway points" in spam attacks.
The New York-based Direct Marketing Association has opposed the national do-not-call list and said it will hurt the multibillion-dollar telemarketing industry. But the reality is that do-not-call laws and registries have been sweeping the states.
There are now 28 states with telemarketing do-not-call lists, with seven states adopting do-not-call initiatives last year. Indeed, states are moving aggressively to establish laws in a variety of privacy-related areas, well ahead of congressional action.
"This is going to be a very active year for consumer privacy legislation in the states," said Alan Westin, who heads the Hackensack, N.J.-based group Privacy & American Business. He said the stakes for businesses are very high, particularly in facing new opt-in requirements, since some 5,000 privacy related bills were introduced in state houses last year.
The big state to watch, said privacy experts, is California.
In the California General Assembly this week, Sen. Jackie Speier, a Daly City-based lawmaker, reintroduced a financial privacy rule that would toughen privacy regulations set under the federal Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, creating opt-in provisions where the law now allows opt-out. The bill, the first one filed for next year, will be known as SB1.
More than half of the states have now introduced some kind of antispam legislation. Joining that tide in 2003 will be New York, said Dan Feldman, a deputy attorney general in that state. He said his office intends to introduce a spam bill that would allow Internet service providers to sue spammers for any spam-related increase in use of network or server capacity.
Congress is also expected to act on spam this year, and possibly on privacy legislation. One hot area: the pending lifting of a state preemption provision, which prohibits states from setting tougher "opt-in" standards under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. To keep that preemption in place, businesses will likely offer some compromises in other privacy areas, said experts.
"I think we will look at some very old-fashioned horse trading," said Ron Plesser, an attorney at Piper Rudnick LLP in Washington.