On December 19, 2019, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed the Pallone-Thune Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence (TRACED) Act (S. 151), which the House of Representatives passed in a 417-3 vote earlier this month.  With the Senate’s passage of the reconciled bill, the bipartisan legislation now heads to President Trump’s desk for his review. The Pallone-Thune TRACED Act requires the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to take steps to improve call verification, reduce…

On October 2, 2019, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the Consumer Call Protection Act of 2019 to address the rise in deceptive robocalls and protect California consumers from fraudulent calls. The law requires telecommunications service providers to implement Secure Telephony Identity Revisited (STIR) and Secure Handling of Asserted information using toKENs (SHAKEN) protocols by January 1, 2021.  These protocols are designed to attest to the authenticity of caller identification data and provide service providers with…