 Good morning. This is Friday, February 12th, and there's a dog barking outside, and we're taking up robocalls, and it happens to be my dog, and he is being what we refer to as a jack wagon. So I'm going to let Senator Baruth introduce David Hall, and I'll be right back. Okay. Thank you. David Hall needs no introduction. The illustrious David Hall. David, are you going to walk us through, or is that what you're doing this morning? That's a fair question. I don't know the answer to that. Okay. That's up to you, actually, Senator. Sorry? I think that's up to you. Well, I think that might not be a bad idea, since it's a two-page bill. So let's start there. Sure. Well, good morning, David Hall Legislative Council. Nice to virtually be with you all, see you all, miss you in real person in real life. Is that what they call it in real life? I'll see you soon. But until then, you'll have to suffer another morning of a zoom walk through. And this is S11. It's an act relating, what do we call it? An act relating to prohibiting robocalls. It is a two-page bill. There's a lot more going on beneath the surface in the world of robocalls than this bill would suggest. So before I turn to the text, I want to remind you that you all took this, a similar bill up to this. About a year ago, it was as three 24. The only difference between this and that was that this committee reduced ultimately the criminal fine from $10,000 to $1,000 per call. But otherwise you've seen this before. And so you may remember the construct here is to try to just mirror federal law for purposes of state law. So that's why I want to say that there's more going on beneath the surface because there's a lot happening at the federal level in this issue. You may remember from our hearing last year on this subject that the federal government adopted the Traced Act in December 30th of 2019. And so in the intervening year plus, the FCC, the FTC providers, lots of people have been having lots of meetings to try to adopt some orders and make some more recommendations on what telecom providers and the government can do to try to reduce the number of robocalls that people are receiving. Part of that is called the shaken stir technology, which, you know, for the biggest providers is supposed to provide sort of a digital footprint and map and verification process so that you can make sure that most of the calls or more of the calls that are coming through are from legitimate folks because right now, most of the robocalls in particular are not from legitimate sources and they're from all over the world. And it's a problem. Everybody recognizes. So what is the state bill, what would the state law do under this bill? As I said, the purpose really in section one, you know what, I'm not sharing my screen. Perhaps I should pull that up. Would you like me to do that? Absolutely. Yeah. All right. Now you should be looking at the bill as introduced. So in section one here, we're entitled nine, you know, roughly in the area of the consumer protection laws. And this would create this new state law statute that basically says, you can't initiate a telephone call to a Vermont consumer using automatic telephone dialing or an artificial pre-recorded voice. So that's what we're talking about in violation of these two governing federal laws. So those terms, automatic telephone dialing system and artificial pre-recorded voice, those are defined in these federal laws. People know what they mean. And the two applicable federal statutes are basically what's going on. So that's the telephone consumer protection act, 47 USC 227. And then the telemarketing consumer fraud and abuse prevention act. And those also have a suite of regulations that have been adopted to implement those. So as a general premise, bear that in mind. If this law passes the state law is co-extensive with whatever is in the federal law. Obviously we want to know what the federal law does. And to do that, I'm actually going to pull up another screen. I found a couple of things helpful here. Are you seeing this FTC page? Yep. Great. So this is, this is a pretty straightforward and simple summary of what's going on in the world. This is on the federal trade commission's website. So basically the, those federal laws, band calls to either cell phones or landlines using those automatic dialing systems or the pre-recorded voices. With a few exceptions. And so that's sort of the scope of what I want you to see here. So I'm going to go through a couple of things that I want to show you. This says most, you know, of them are illegal. And they're mostly scams, but there are, you'll see here on the page, there are a few classes of things that are permitted. Under the federal law. And I know that some of you in the past have raised questions about what about nonprofits or political organizations, et cetera. So, you know, school reminders. You can't make un-solicited robocalls. So you can do messages that are purely informational. So flight being canceled. Appointment reminders. Delayed school, et cetera. Those can come through. As long as they're not also trying to sell you something. In the scope of that call. So first class messages that are purely, let me just rephrase. These are the exceptions from the general rule that you can't make unsolicited robocalls. So you can do messages that are purely informational. And then you can make un-solicited robocalls. So that's, that's the way that they make that call. You know, the next bullet is debt collection calls. And this is for business contacting you to collect a debt. That's okay. They can't also try to sell you debt services while they make that call. I'll pause here to say that the TCPA in its statutory language carved out an exception. that down, saying that that privileged one kind of speech over another and was not okay, but they found it to be severable. So we don't have to worry about that. But know that that case was out there and that collection of US government debt no longer gets, you know, priority treatment under the statute. You can still make political calls. You can make calls from some healthcare providers such as your pharmacy and you can they be robo political calls? I'm sorry. Can they be re pre recorded political calls? Yes. Yes. Why is that? That's in the federal law. And obvious car. Can we can we ban it? Well, I mean, you could. It's probably unconstitutional. Well, doesn't seem to stop them in Washington if it's unconstitutional. I don't know. I just, you know, I personally, I think it costs your more votes and it gains you when it's a robo call for me. But so I just absolutely refused to do it. But during the last campaign, one of our opponents was a strong user of robo calls. And it was some of the some of the comments on the robo call we're using our names and, you know, mine are Senator Campion's or opponents. And I thought that was illegal without notifying us. And I guess, yeah, and here's what the problem is. There is no real enforcement mechanism. I think the government operations committee should look at that because I made a complaint about one of my opponents in the mass media mailing, which used us in his mass media, he never notified anybody, never did anything. And it's basically swept under the rug and there's no consequences whatsoever. So I hope government operations will look at both of those issues, where they use an opponent's name, or in either mass mailing or robo calls or an advertising. And there ought to be some consequences for doing that. Besides just please don't do it again. We'll slap on the wrist. Dick, can I ask a question? Yeah. David, if political calls are accepted from the feds, we would not be able to do that here, would we without running a foul with a federal statute? It's not really a conflict, a preemption issue so much as a free speech issue. So the way that these laws are constructed at the federal level, you know, they have their regulatory framework, but they also specifically provide a few things. One, private citizens can enforce their rights under those federal laws. State attorney generals can enforce the rights on behalf of citizens under those laws. And that's, you know, so that scheme is sort of freestanding. And in the last piece is that those laws also say that a state law could be is not preempted. It could be more protective. But then we run into, but where we run into the issue here is that most of these, most of the prohibitions are trying to stop basically commercial speech. And that has a lower, you know, constitutional threshold for how it can be regulated. Once you start talking about trying to ban a political call, for instance, then you get into speaker based content based restrictions that start choosing one class of content based speech over another, which is where you run into first amendment problems. And if it's content speaker based speech like as they discussed in the exemption for collection of US government debt, then it's a strict scrutiny standard. And usually you lose on that. So I mean, to answer your question, you know, it's not really a problem with the conflict necessarily between what we did at the state in the versus the federal law, it's really a free speech issue. Well, what I guess what I'm suggesting is that I understand that I understand the free speech issue, and that political robocalls are allowed. But that we have certain laws, particularly the 45 day rule. And while there is no consequence for violating it, as far as I can see, that you know, it happens in, you know, late October, the event, we get a half, excuse me, half hearted apology in the, you know, sometime in late December. Yeah, I think that's the only consequence the person admits they made a mistake. And on they go. So the our campaign finance laws, I don't believe have any consequences for violating these robocalls or mass media events. I don't I'm not familiar enough with the campaign finance laws, to be honest, to tell you, and you know, I guess it is possible that in that context, you could try to put some reasonable time planner may put time manner place restrictions on, for instance, you know, the hours during which something calls could come through those are okay. It's when you start trying to ban, you know, either whole classes are particularly one class, but not another where you really get into the viewpoint of the speaker content based type stuff. The other thing I'd say is, you know, there's no protection for, there's no First Amendment protection for illegal speech, what you know, what sort of considered low value speech. And, you know, you could try to make the argument that if somebody is lying, or trying to deceive people, then that kicks us over to a kind of a different area. But I don't want to step too far in the mud. But you know, whether or not somebody's being truthful and a political ad is, that's kind of tough to know, I wasn't talking about being truthful. I was talking about following the laws that we already have regarding the 45 day notice. And when they failed to do that, fails to follow that law, there's no let me let me share the bill again. And let's see. So here are the other pieces of it. So if we're going to track, you know, what's in the federal law and these two consumer protection statutes, okay, what does it mean at the state level? Well, this, if this were adopted, it would create, you know, a state level offense, it could be prosecuted in state court, you know, by the AG's office or state's attorney, I mean, that again, that can already happen under the federal statutes, the AG could try to enforce the federal provisions in federal court, and they have exclusive jurisdiction under that. So maybe this is more nimble, maybe there's, you know, a state law action, you could add to a federal complaint, or you can pursue it the state level independently. This would create a civil violation first of the Consumer Protection Act 9VSA 2453. It provides that each prohibitive call is a separate violation. And three here, a person who gets a call and violation of the section could bring an action in superior court, you go for damages or a civil penalty, junctive relief, punitive damages, and attorney's costs and fees. And then the award could be the greater of actual damages or a civil penalty 500 first, a thousand subsequent. This would also create a criminal penalty. So a person who violates a section could be 90 days imprisonment or $1,000 fine per violation or both. And again, each telephone call constitutes a separate violation. And then under D here, this is was also present in S324. Under D, the AG's office should exercise its authority and discretion to work cooperatively with other state and federal government entities to identify callers who initiate robocalls to consumers in violation of the section. So that's what the bill does. Are there are other questions? Yeah, you're bringing up a horrible memory from law school. The last section, the criminal part. I recall a question somewhere that if a person standing on the east bank of the Connecticut River fired a gun and struck and killed somebody on the west side of the Connecticut River, in which state could they be charged with murder? And this this bill sort of brings up the same thing. If I'm in New Hampshire and I make a call into Vermont, am I violating the law? If New Hampshire does not have a similar statute? Yeah, it's it's a really, really interesting area of law, the choice of law, the choice of forum. This came up years ago, you may remember when you all were working on legislation relating to rent to centers, you know, places like errands where people do renting material and there were locations both in Vermont and New Hampshire, some in New York, there were advertisements in Vermont, also tour to New Hampshire, we had certain requirements for what they had to include in advertisements, whether they could just have to have to display prices, that type of stuff. And the very same kind of issues come up like, well, what do we, you know, how far does this extend? I mean, there are a few answers to the question. First, we can't under the Commerce Clause, we can't project our laws out into another state. So we couldn't, we couldn't, we couldn't go after somebody in another state for violating our law and try to get their activity, what they did there, necessarily, it's not there that we're trying to regulate though, we're regulating the initiation of a phone call to a person inside Vermont. And when they receive that call, if it's a violation of our law, we can enforce our law here against them. And that becomes, you know, so that's not a question of the of the applicability of our law to our citizens, our consumer protection laws, which is definitely allowed in the police power. But the problem becomes, you know, is there sufficient contacts? Do we have personal jurisdiction over that person becomes a matter of civil procedure more than the consumer protection law and the substance of it? So if we wanted to enforce this against somebody, you know, we'd have to try to haul them into Vermont, and that would probably be hard, you know, a lot of these robo callers are in other countries. And, you know, that's the reality of it. Yeah, I'm just rolling this around in my head. I mean, I'd love to support this bill. I'd love it even better if we had any way of actually convicting or finding somebody. But the likelihood of that is pretty small. I think everybody on the screen would love to have the political statement of saying, we try to do something. But I know at noontime, I'm going to get a phone call. It's going to begin with the words Hi, I'm Erica from such and such medical. And then all of a sudden it goes blank, they don't continue the call. And it's like clockwork. And if my phone rings this morning, I'm going to pick it up and set it up to the screen because I know exactly what's going on. But I at the end of the day, if we pass the bill and we all pat ourselves on the back for passing it and the robo calls continue, I think we're all still in trouble. I don't know. I'm just rolling this all around in my head. There's a lot of law school questions, great bar exam questions on this subject. Under the white. So I don't want to go down this rabbit hole, Senator Sears, but in terms of your mass media robo call, that you were talking about, he probably wasn't even in violation because it only is effective if it's any one mass media activity totaling $500 or more. Probably didn't spend $500 on that robo call to Bennington County. No, it wasn't a robo call. It was a mailing and the totals were more than $500. But because he paid three different vendors, the printer, the postage and somebody else, he only counted each one separately. Oh, I thought you said it was a robo call. There were robo calls too. There were so many robo calls that I can't imagine have been under $500. Okay, robo calls are all that cheap. I didn't know they were that cheap. Anyway, but I understand what you're saying, Joe, but I think it's important to put something on the books. It sends a message. I can at least say to somebody, you know what you're doing is against Vermont law. If I can speak to a human being, that's the other. I don't know how to stop it when it's not a human being. I mean, you're talking to an automated machine. And I called one of them a bad name yesterday. Because it was an obvious scam. My wife had answered the phone. She was having a bad day. And then she yelled for me to come and answer the phone because it was so important. And by the way, it was a state of Vermont was the ID number state of Vermont. Obviously, it wasn't the same. Charity Clark. Are there any other questions for David? Charity Clark from the Attorney General's Office. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for inviting me. It's great to see everyone. Sorry, we're not in person. Here we are. I'm the Chief of Staff at the Attorney General's Office. And as part of my role, I supervise the consumer assistance program, who receives over 5,000 scam reports every year. We don't actually track or didn't track when that statistic was arrived at which of those were robocalls. But anecdotally, most of them are robocalls. I, Senator Benning, I was thinking to myself when we started, I would be surprised if one of us does not receive a scam robocall by the time this hearing is over. If not us, then someone may be watching on the on the live stream. I, you know, we get them all day long. I've definitely been testifying already this year and been interrupted by a supposed call from Canaan, Vermont, which is, you know, obviously going to be a scam robocall. I don't know anyone in Canaan at the moment. Yeah, it's it's really a problem. And I am following along with interest with everything that David said, and also your questions. It's frustrating because so far I've I think I've yet to in my almost seven years at the Attorney General's office uncovered a robocaller based in Vermont, and they're they're based usually overseas. It's a problem that our fellow attorneys generals in in the other states are also aware of. And we have a working group through the National Association of Attorneys General on robocalls and trying to find solutions to this insidious problem. It's been very challenging. So let me let me start there. I know this you this committee is the same as the last time I testified on a very similar bill. So I don't have a lot of new information. This might be familiar. I'm just looking at my notes. I wanted to remind you that I had a conversation what I guess was it a year or was it two years ago on a similar bill? I had a conversation with the Assistant Attorney General in Indiana, who is the person who oversees their their in the Indiana has a ban on on robocalls. And and she said, well, I'm you know, I'm glad we have this law, but it is challenging because scammers are already criminals. And so if you make robocalls a crime, it's just one more thing that they're another crime that they're committing. They don't really respond, you know, as as robustly as you might hope. So they felt like she felt like it wasn't something that they really used that much that law. It was a point of frustration for her as well. So I just wanted to weigh in on that. That said, we support the bill. It's always good to try to you have tools in your your toolbox. And so I you know, let me let me say that I do want to just emphasize that we and I don't think that there's an expectation that the Attorney General is going to be able to, you know, pursue some of these robocallers once this bill is passed. But I just want to emphasize we don't have an investigator designated to robocalls overseas or anything like that. There's a lot of unfortunately limitation to the to the enforcement abilities that we would have with this particular bill, just because so many of the perpetrators of robocall scams are overseas, it's just not feasible for us or practical. So I do want to set that expectation. The other thing that I wanted to note that I'm the Federal Trade Commission webpage that David shared was really helpful. The FTC has great resources and I thought that was a really good overview. We I want to emphasize, of course, that you would always want to make sure that robocalls would be permitted for, you know, schools canceled. The political speech issue and those were all really well laid out. So I won't go into those. And the private right of action is good to see. And I wanted to address the one big change was this change in the criminal penalties. I think I testified before the criminal penalties previously were very high. And this is more right sized. So wanted to just say a word of support for that change with the smaller criminal penalties. Other than, you know, just touching on those points and saying that we support the bill, I don't have too much else to say. I want to reassure you that our office is working on some creative solutions to robocalls. And we continue to try to mull over options available to us. It definitely is a big problem that just all day long at the consumer assistance program we hear about. So I'm here. I'm here and right with you, acknowledging that this is a problem. So happy to answer any questions. Questions for charity. I get, you know, every now and then I see some office or something and I see it's not available in Vermont, California, like four or five other states. What wouldn't this be helpful at least to have have it on the books that we have a state law against it? I mean, I like I said, I don't think it's a bad idea to have the tool. You know, enforcement may be difficult. Well, it's all so nice. We can certainly envision something like this happening in Vermont, even just because it hasn't doesn't mean it couldn't and it's nice to be ready. I mean, to the extent that we're all we all laugh about this. I think Senator Baruth got a robo call in the middle of the last time. I mean, it's funny. It's such a it's such a huge problem and widespread and so relatable to all of us because we all receive these robocalls and it's they're literally a joke and I think that that that says a lot that we can all agree it's a problem to have the tool in the toolbox isn't a bad thing, especially as things develop. It's it's nice to have and we would support the bill. Thank you. I appreciate that. There is, you know, I wish somebody would invent a response. You know, we could have an automatic response on our phones to robocalls. We push nine or something like that. It automatically says there are. I don't want your stupid robocall. You don't want to know what my husband says. There are products available that, you know, we would never endorse one product or the other, but there are products available and the Department of Public Service, who knows all about, they're so informative on this topic that they were explaining to me how how these products work and the the miracle of of the telephone all of our federal laws were set up to make the call go through and how truly amazing that is and especially when you think about in rural Vermont that still actually is a challenge to get the call through. And then we arrived at this point with robocalls where it's like oh oh actually no not all the calls. We don't we don't want all the calls to come through. Only this the system that in the infrastructure is set up to make that happen. So they created ways around this. The one that I think of is NoMoRobo that redirects the call to sort of a separate room. It's kind of a legal fiction, but they're still following the law and then they have this list of scam phone numbers that they compare this call to and it will, you know, keep the call from actually being, you know, officially delivered so you don't see that that you get you got that call because it's a scam call. It's NoMoRobo. I can send Peggy the we don't list of all of them on the CAPS webpage. Well that'd be good. Senator White. A question about that. So I the other day got a call and on the ID thing it said it's had the number and then it said landmark college. Well I often get to talk to the the guy at landmark college. That's what it said, but it clearly wasn't at all when it turned out it wasn't them. So I don't want the number, I don't want the calls from landmark college to be diverted. So how would that work with actually numbers that are legitimate and that you might be expecting a call from, but it ends up somebody else has, I don't understand. So then you're not getting even calls that you want to get. The spoofing call. I don't know how that would work. We have to ask DPS like would that show, would NoMoRobo know oh this is a spoofing call. It's actually this other number and they're just showing you on your ID. So they would know oh this is a scam call. I'm not sure. I would I would assume they would have figured that out and I should note because I also know a lot about data privacy that there are products that NoMoRobo is cost money every month and there are products you can get on your phone that are free, but of course those products are collecting your data and that's how they make money. That's what DPS explained to me. They were telling me different products. They're they it's fascinating to hear them talk about this topic, FYI, but NoMoRobo, is that the one that we have? Actually we have in our next hour after the break, we have somebody from the we have actually Charity Clark, Clay Purvis from the telecommunications and connectivity department. I think Chris Curtis, our chief of public protection will probably be there in my stead. Oh, okay. Can you ask Clay about about this? I think we can ask Clay about robocalls if Peggy could alert him to if he could speak a little of that about that when he testifies on data plans, data usage plans at 1015. Will do. Other questions for Charity? So it would be helpful to have that link and maybe get the word out to legislators. I haven't looked at it in a while so when I when I send it to Peggy I'm gonna say this might be a little dusty. Let me have the consumer assistance program take another look and make sure there there aren't updates that we should include, but I'll send it today so that you'll at least have that. Great, thank you. This is one time we probably ought to change the rule about signs in the Senate chamber. Since we won't really be in the Senate chamber we can hold up the sign whoever requests this bill with directions on that. Okay, thank you very much Charity. Appreciate it. Sorry we're not going to see you a little later, but we look forward to Chris Curtis haven't seen you in a while. Chris Delia speaking at Chris, you're muted Chris. Yes, love the dreaded forget to take yourself off mute. So good morning Senator, good morning committee thank you for the opportunity to join you this morning for the record Chris Delia president of the Vermont bankers association. I want to share with you this morning the fact that we support what you're trying to do here in stopping robo calls. I haven't talked to a banker yet that hasn't been frustrated by the calls from Canaan or other locations that are rerouting numbers and calls to homeowners. It's very frustrating for all of us especially when they're trying to sell me a warranty on a vehicle that I don't even own get those calls as well. I think what concerns us with the bill is just the wording if you will in some instances or maybe I should say the lack of wording in some instances. When you have broad definitions or statements like automatic telephone dialing systems and so on which certainly you're defined at the federal level but I'm not aware of definitions in Vermont statute. So what we'd like to try and focus on is whether it's possible to be a little bit more clear in what we're trying to accomplish especially by defining what a robo call is which again I'm not aware that it's defined in Vermont statute. Also focusing on how this applies is because as we've just learned we're all used to getting the phone calls from the school districts or the pharmacies or the doctor's office. Those often imply an existing relationship between the individual receiving the call and the entity making the call. In our case that would be a business relationship and I'll say that for the banking industry there is not a uniform adaption of technology. There are some banks who utilize a variation of robo call and then there are banks who do not use this technology at all and for those who use it the general concern is the unintended consequence. They just don't want to get wrapped up into something that is not clear, it is not all knowing to the reader if you will of the Vermont statute. So I'm thankful that Dave put up some of those examples because that in my mind is an opportunity to offer clarity. So for example in the time of COVID I've had a couple of institutions that have used a automated calling system to let folks know that there has been a change of hours at branching operations because of the pandemic. That is going to the customer of that institution. So there is that business relationship. Again mentioned and as David saw in that FTC document, you've got schools that are using the technology, you've got utilities that use the technology. We had consolidated communication to do some work on our phone line. We got an automated call after the work was done letting us know that they concluded the work and what the outcome was. We've just talked about doctor's offices, pharmacies. We even have the attorney general's office that uses robocalls in their alert system when they're trying to make Vermonters wear of scams that are out there. So it's another tool that can be used. A couple of my banks were thinking have been thinking unfortunately along the lines of the Department of Labor's recent data breach, information breach that may be an automated system could be utilized to inform their customers in the event that the institution were to experience a breach or in the event that something on a wide scale were comments yesterday about Equifax was happening that they could also alert their customers to something like that. I had others who said you know we could envision utilizing this technology to flag for our customers suspicious activity that's going out that's going on out there in the marketplace. So you know think of elder fraud scams or other scams that are happening all too often in Vermont so could you utilize this technology to provide that information to the consumers? And then we have situations going on today where a number of our banks actually have call centers where if I have a problem with my account I could call that call center they could work on it and they use an automatic system to call me back to let me know that the issue has been resolved. And then finally the area that is most recent for a couple of our institutions and that is the issue of spoofing. And Senator Sears this was in your neck of the woods we added in Senator Nick is neck of the woods unfortunately and that's where somehow the bad actors the criminals got a hold of the bank's phone number and they started to make phone calls to all of the bank's customers. And the premise in one instance was we've detected some fraudulent activity on your account and they led the customer to try and get account information or personal identifying information. Unfortunately the customer getting the call thinks it's a legitimate call. And we know of a couple of instances where they've actually given that information up. On those occasions the customers were made whole the bank ended up eating the losses. But spoofing of a legitimate business's number is a very real issue. So all of those relate to unintended consequences that we don't want to have occur with any piece of legislation here in Vermont. So is it possible to narrow the scope of the bill or clearly define what is allowable under the bill as was just outlined by the FTC document that David showed you because again many people are not going to be looking at the federal statutes. They're not going to be perhaps even aware that the federal statutes exist. And then the other thing in looking at the penalty section just trying to do some quick research seems like the Vermont penalty and the federal law penalty may not be aligned. I could be wrong in that. I didn't see any GL time in the federal penalty which seems to be something that was not included in the previous iteration of the bill and honestly I haven't seen it in a lot of like type consumer bills that I've seen over the last few years that the legislature has worked on. So I thought that was a bit unusual. Now bottom line we want to we want to be supportive of trying to stop the robo calls that are going on. I think it is unfortunate that there's no real enforcement mechanism because of where these originate if you will. So I understand Senator your desire to have something on the books as Charity Clark said it probably won't get utilized very much because of the nature of these criminals. But those are some of the areas we wanted to just flag for you and see if you're willing to work on some additional language perhaps just to tighten it up a bit. Senator White. Well I just wondered listening to Chris here if this would have and it wouldn't be applicable now but when we had Vermont Yankee here we had a system set up that if there was some kind of a an incident at Vermont Yankee it would send out a call to everybody in the surrounding towns within a certain mile range. And I wondered if that would have been affected here then in the same way that you're talking about. It possibly could. I mean it falls into that category of informational I think but again looking at the looking at the bill unlike the the FTC document that David showed you the bill doesn't tell you what's allowable I guess and whether it's that existing business relationship or informational or healthcare related. So that's where it's a bit open-ended in our opinion and again if you're willing to offer or allow us to work on some language that would tighten it up just so that you know the parties looking at the statute are pretty clear and what you can do and and if you're outside of that scope what's not allowable we just we don't want to get caught by trying to serve our customers and utilize allowable technology but you know it would fall under whatever the definition is of the robo call. Well yet we use that business relationship with the customer or again I'll go back to the spoofing which is has been the problem for two of my institutions just within the last three months. What would happen if we were to and David maybe you can answer this if we were to take the federal exemptions and add them to this bill so that we're exempting whatever is exempted by the feds which would cover Chris's concern of a thing. But would that be a problematic? It's going to be a longer bill. I think the reason I mean I'm pulling back now to or you could reference I mean you could you could reference that you wanted to shorten the bill you could reference the I'm not at all concerned about the length I that was just a joke. The reason I'm pulling back now to my original conversations with you and Senator Brock and sort of trying to figure out you know the best way to achieve alignment substantively between what's permitted the state and at the federal level I mean the I think the I think the preference was to for the the there to be uniformity and so that the reason that it is written the way that it is in the in addition for it being a little bit simpler is that there is a lot of discretion vested in several different federal agencies to adopt rules and issue orders around this subject and what is permissible at the federal level you know it is changing from time to time with the different with different rules and we you know as I mentioned there was a supreme court case that resolved last year that struck down part of the federal law and I I guess the the the risk to trying to put into Vermont statute now all of the stuff that is in the federal statutes and regulations now is that that freezes the Vermont law at a place in time and if the federal law changes then we could have potentially a different scheme and you know with respect to a bank or a business or emergency call or Vermont Yankee whatever you know those federal laws already apply to everybody so if you know you're going to try to issue robo calls then you you know you need to know what the federal law provides what's allowed and not allowed under the federal law and regardless of what the state law says that you know there's a compliance issue there so by mirroring the federal law and the state law you have automatic compliance with the state law as far as long as you're following the federal law so that's the only risk I see with with fleshing it out more is the divergence of the federal and state standards over time but you know that that that's a that's a risk states take all the time when they try to have a sort of a dual regulatory framework so it's just a policy choice for you guys however you want to construct it okay any other questions comments of is there a interest in making sure that the exemptions that chris noted would be part of the bill sound reasonable I have a relationship with the institution or company or whatever it is a little different than the warranty call keep telling it's my it's my last chance and they never stop charity was able to share with peggy the the directions are walking robocalls so that is now posted on our website and we should is it easier no is it easier dick to simply reference the federal exemptions if yeah heard chris say that his businesses usually know what those federal exemptions are so that we don't have to keep changing the bill of the federal and our government changes its bill right and and i don't know if there's anything you can do uh to address the unintended consequences of spoofing because that's that's something that we'll find out about when we've got customers who are calling and complaining that the bank is calling them and and that i want to try and eliminate any uh of that risk for somebody who's been taken advantage of if possible if i may mr chair um you you folks actually um did uh a similar thing a few years ago in adopting or clarifying for the purposes of state statute that spoofing is illegal to basically to the extent uh of the federal law um it's so as a matter of federal and state law it is illegal to spoof and um it there's some nuance and there's some circuit cases working their way up because sometimes people use spoofing uh for legitimate reasons for instance if they're trying to mask um their their number because they're doing market research and they they don't want to so there's been some court cases on businesses to do that but for the by and large for purposes of of federal and state law as of two or three years ago it's you you are required as a matter of Vermont law to provide accurate caller ID information with very few exceptions and it's it's kind of the same spot we're in with robo calls um I mean we're you know we're trying to make it more illegal than it is what we really need is better enforcement and that's that's really what the traced act is intended to do and uh is to try to get better enforcement but it is an imperfect system as well okay thank you I think that would be a good idea so add to the bill so I think there will be time next Thursday to take this bill up again and and see a re-graph if that's okay David uh with you and Peggy um I don't think we're going to spend that much time on that 45 the probation bill so I think we would have time um we're finished earlier than I anticipated Peggy if we were to take a break until nine I mean it already is until 10 and then see if the witnesses are available to come back to for the for us for the uh discussion about internet charges for uh for going over data planning that there would be available to start at 10 yep I can email them and ask them to start at 10 anything else committee and we're going to stop the live stream okay thank you see you at 10