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Bill to ban bots impersonating people for telemarketing and influencing election

leginfo.legislature.ca.gov

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Re: Bill to ban bots impersonating people for telemarketing and influencing election

#41

Post by pc86 »

Shivetya wrote: post #19
sprokolopolis wrote: post #10

I like the idea of this, but I wonder if it will have much impact on the worst offenders. The most frequent and annoying calls are almost always using spoofed numbers and many times originating from outside the country, like India. Is there any way that this law could be enforced... 1)on calls originating outside the state or country? 2) on calls over spoofed numbers?

Sure there is means within the phone industry to determine if the number offered up is the actual number. Last I remember the caller id function was independent of the ANI information. Now calls are down to either my contact list or the caller leaving a message whose transcription I can review. All others just get ignored. It was bad enough when politicians wrote the laws in such a way their campaigns and charities d…

Generally speaking if there is a federal law explicitly allowing political calls of a given nature (e.g. robocalls over VOIP) a state law cannot disallow them. It depends on the exact wording of each, and the willingness of both parties to go to court. Even if it's illegal, that only matters when someone is willing to (literally) make a federal case over it.

Re: Bill to ban bots impersonating people for telemarketing and influencing election

#42

Post by pc86 »

BonesJustice wrote: post #36
darawk wrote: post #2

I'm all for this...but can we just ban telemarketing entirely? Why is that even allowed? I've always thought that the law should be written such that telemarketing is legal, but if you engage in it, it is no longer illegal to murder you. You can do it, but you lose your murder protection.

It’s already illegal to place robocalls to cell phones (under TCPA). It’s also illegal to robodial any number on the Do Not Call list, but unlike the TCPA, there is a carve out for political campaigning. Thanks, Congress! Of course, neither does much good when the laws are nearly impossible to enforce. Thanks to caller ID spoofing, it’s usually impossible to tell who actually called you, so good luck collecting damag…

If you really wanted to find out you could just ask the phone company, they know the real number/identity of the person calling you, or at the very least a layer deeper than caller ID. It's not like caller ID spoofing makes you anonymous.

Re: Bill to ban bots impersonating people for telemarketing and influencing election

#43

Post by downandout »

sprokolopolis wrote: post #10

I like the idea of this, but I wonder if it will have much impact on the worst offenders. The most frequent and annoying calls are almost always using spoofed numbers and many times originating from outside the country, like India. Is there any way that this law could be enforced... 1)on calls originating outside the state or country? 2) on calls over spoofed numbers?

This bill isn’t limited to phone calls. It also applies to any bot on any social media site that receives more than 10mm visitors per month that exists to “incentivize a purchase or sale of goods or services in a commercial transaction”. In other words, a Facebook Messenger bot answering pre-sale questions is violating this law unless it has a massive disclosure about it being a bot. At first glance it also appears that this law would make chats in which a bot handles most but not all of the interaction illegal. For example, an online chat with a support tech that begins with an automated “this is Larry, how can I help you?” seems to be illegal under this law. Larry exists, but the bot is “impersonating” Larry during the automated portions of the conversation. This is a poorly thought out, overly broad law.

One sidenote...HN really needs a way to just “save” articles. I didn’t want to upvote this article, because that sends the wrong signal - that I am somehow in favor of unworkable regulations. I didn’t want to “favorite” it either, because this certainly doesn’t fall into the category of my favorite articles that I’d like to keep around on that list for a long time. But I do want to keep track of the discussion today, because I find it fascinating just how many technologists are in favor of onerous regulations governing their own industry. Currently, there is no way to simply save an article on HN without upvoting or favoriting it.

Re: Bill to ban bots impersonating people for telemarketing and influencing election

#45

Post by maxerickson »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #40
maxerickson wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think that "real geeks" aren't involved in existing influence campaigns?

Because of the low quality. All the bots I've encountered were ridiculous. Like different "people" starting to follow me on Google+ (obviously intending to attract my attention so I would follow back) at the same moment and posting exactly the same (equal as string values) "thoughts" simultaneously. You can also find crowds of human-impersonating political bots posting exactly the same things on Twitter and in commen…

Oh, I would assume a "real geek" was responsible for any bot activity on G+ before I'd assume some big orgs had bothered.

Re: Bill to ban bots impersonating people for telemarketing and influencing election

#46

Post by dTal »

downandout wrote: post #43
sprokolopolis wrote: post #10

I like the idea of this, but I wonder if it will have much impact on the worst offenders. The most frequent and annoying calls are almost always using spoofed numbers and many times originating from outside the country, like India. Is there any way that this law could be enforced... 1)on calls originating outside the state or country? 2) on calls over spoofed numbers?

This bill isn’t limited to phone calls. It also applies to any bot on any social media site that receives more than 10mm visitors per month that exists to “incentivize a purchase or sale of goods or services in a commercial transaction” . In other words, a Facebook Messenger bot answering pre-sale questions is violating this law unless it has a massive disclosure about it being a bot. At first glance it also appears…

I don't think upvoting is meant to be a signal that you agree with the article - only that you think the article should be seen and discussed by the HN community. You clearly do think this, so an upvote is appropriate. After all, upvoting an 'X has died' post doesn't mean that you're glad they're gone!

You could also simply bookmark the page.

Re: Bill to ban bots impersonating people for telemarketing and influencing election

#47

Post by downandout »

dTal wrote: post #46
downandout wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This bill isn’t limited to phone calls. It also applies to any bot on any social media site that receives more than 10mm visitors per month that exists to “incentivize a purchase or sale of goods or services in a commercial transaction” . In other words, a Facebook Messenger bot answering pre-sale questions is violating this law unless it has a massive disclosure about it being a bot. At first glance it also appears…

I don't think upvoting is meant to be a signal that you agree with the article - only that you think the article should be seen and discussed by the HN community. You clearly do think this, so an upvote is appropriate. After all, upvoting an 'X has died' post doesn't mean that you're glad they're gone! You could also simply bookmark the page.

Re:bookmarking, I always forget to delete it. I guess I should create a Chrome extension that lets me create a temporary bookmark that will automatically be deleted after X period of time. With regard to upvoting, I'd say articles like this fall in a different category than the death announcements. If you upvote this one, especially given the overwhelmingly positive response to it in the comments, you're at least tacitly endorsing it. Lawmakers that might have rejected this bill because it outlaws many legitimate tasks performed by chat bots might look at the number of upvotes and say "a community of tech people on the web really like it!" and vote for it. I certainly wouldn't want to play even a minor role in the passage of a bill such as this one. I'm not sure that the nuances of upvoting are going to be clear to everyone that visits HN.

Re: Bill to ban bots impersonating people for telemarketing and influencing election

#48

Post by aaron695 »

What's with all the anti-spam comments?

This bill just says a bot must say it's a bot? Then nothing changes at all. It makes the call longer if anything.

Given they don't exist I'd say this bill is fking stupid[1]. No matter what engadget or wired is saying this week, these bots that might be mistaken for human don't exist.

When they do, so what? Why does a bot have to tell you they are a bot, what are people afraid of here?

[1] Perhaps you could argue due to all the complaining about legislation being behind in tech, being a decade ahead is a nice change.

Re: Bill to ban bots impersonating people for telemarketing and influencing election

#49

Post by nkrisc »

darawk wrote: post #2

I'm all for this...but can we just ban telemarketing entirely? Why is that even allowed? I've always thought that the law should be written such that telemarketing is legal, but if you engage in it, it is no longer illegal to murder you. You can do it, but you lose your murder protection.

It should at least require that a human initiates and terminates every single call.

Re: Bill to ban bots impersonating people for telemarketing and influencing election

#50

Post by greeneggs »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #40
maxerickson wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think that "real geeks" aren't involved in existing influence campaigns?

Because of the low quality. All the bots I've encountered were ridiculous. Like different "people" starting to follow me on Google+ (obviously intending to attract my attention so I would follow back) at the same moment and posting exactly the same (equal as string values) "thoughts" simultaneously. You can also find crowds of human-impersonating political bots posting exactly the same things on Twitter and in commen…

Perhaps this is for the same reason that Nigerian spammers can't spell? They are selecting for gullible targets.

"Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They are From Nigeria?" by Cormac Herley (WEIS, 2012) https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why-do-...

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