A move to restrict political robocalls

WASHINGTON -- When Congress passed a law in 2003 creating the Do Not Call registry to block unsolicited phone contacts from telemarketers, lawmakers exempted political telephone calls.But voter anger generated by the widespread use of robocalls -- automated, prerecorded messages that sometimes advocate a candidate and sometimes attack a candidate -- has Congress looking at whether some restrictions are in order.At a hearing Wednesday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said the calls "have become, for many people, very invasive when they come sometimes eight to 10 times a day and sometimes in the middle of the night."Feinstein has authored legislation that would ban robocalls before 8 a.m. and after 9 p.m. and require the callers to identify themselves at the beginning. Moreover, the phone number of the caller would have to be displayed on the receiver's caller ID.She said she plans to modify her bill to allow people to sign up for a registry similar to the Do Not Call list.In the 2006 election season, nearly two-thirds of registered voters received recorded telephone calls, according to a study by the Pew Research Center. That's about 90 million people.Shaun Dakin, who started an organization called the National Political Do Not Call Registry, said he receives hundreds of e-mails every day from people frustrated with robocalls.According to North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper, the calls can be more than an annoyance; they can be life-threatening, particularly those that continue even when the receiver hangs up.Cooper said he brought charges against one robocall operation that disrupted a hospital's phone system. In New York, he said, a mother couldn't make an emergency call for medical help for her daughter because her line was tied up by a robocall.An Indiana attorney who specializes in First Amendment law and who has represented some robocall organizations testified Wednesday that Feinstein's bill to restrict robocalls and her proposal to create a political Do Not Call registry would run afoul of the Constitution.James Bopp Jr. said the calls are "core political speech" that has received the highest protection from the Supreme Court.He said Supreme Court rulings have allowed people not only to advocate their causes but to choose their methods of delivering their messages.Bopp said all attempts to restrict political speech -- whether yard signs or door-to-door canvassing -- have been justified on the grounds that the method was "annoying." He said the market would ultimately resolve the issue since candidates wouldn't want to do something that alienated people rather than persuaded them.Even using a voluntary registry to block the calls would be unconstitutional, he said, because people would be "enlisting the government" to punish people for exercising their First Amendment rights.But Cooper, the North Carolina attorney general, said Feinstein's proposals would be deemed constitutional since she is not trying to regulate the content of the calls."Politicians should have to abide by the same rules as people who are peddling their wares," Cooper said."This is not a speech issue. This is a privacy issue."(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)