Mitchell Philipp

Mr. Greenlee

AP Computer Science, Period 6

7 November 2018

Summary: The FCC wants to ensure that phone service providers are doing whatever they can to filter out robocallers from their networks. People recive over a billion robocalls a year. Ajit Pai, the FCC Chairman, has asked companies to implement an industry-wide system to combat automated calls. The system "signs" legitimate phone calls so that receivers can either see the signature and accept the call or see the missing signature and automatically reject it.

Opinion: I'm very glad the FCC is finally planning to do something about those annoying robocallers; however, I think it could be done a bit better. Here's my plan for what I would do:

  1. Set up an infrastructure of several different kinds of automated bots to be administrated by the FCC:
  2. When the FCC receives a report of a serial robocaller, assign a BirdsNest bot to their case.
  3. Have the assigned BirdsNest use NSA backchannels to listen in on the robocaller's communications to determine if they are an actual robocaller.
  4. If the robocaller is confirmed, their details are passed to a PythonVenom bot, and the BirdsNest continues monitoring the situation.
  5. Upon receipt of instructions, the PythonVenom begins to flood the robocaller's lines with calls, clogging its network and stopping it from making any calls.
  6. All of the calls made by PythonVenom to the target contain the voice of Amazon's Alexa reading the following excerpt from James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, page 1:

    7. riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

    Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passen-core rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all's fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a peck of pa's malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.

    The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later on life down through all christian minstrelsy. The great fall of the offwall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan, erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes: and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the park where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since devlinsfirst loved livvy.

  7. Once the target's calling capablities are disabled, the BirdsEye again uses NSA methods to infiltrate the Robocaller's system and find all phone numbers associated with its administrator.
  8. BirdsEye passes the phone numbers on to several DevilsAcid targeting bots, which each begin repeatedly calling the number they've been assigned.
  9. The content of all the DevilsAcid calls is the song Despacito overlaid with the sound of flames and the Soviet National Anthem.
  10. The BirdsNest also uses CIA hacking tools to change the target phone's ringtone to the same audio as in the call.
  11. Remaining vigilant, BirdsNest notices when the target blocks DevilsAcid's calls, and instructs DevilsAcid to pass the number off to a different DevilsAcid to continue calling.
  12. After 24 hours of constant digital bombardment, all bots cancel their target and are assigned to other jobs.
  13. One week later, BirdsEye checks up on the target to see if it is still making robocalls. If so, bombardment resumes for 48 more hours, increasing by 24 hours for each offence thereafter.
I think that by implementing my system, the FCC could seriously curtail robocallers' power.

Citation: Chris Welch, "FCC will 'take action' in 2019 if carriers aren't doing enough to fight robocalls", The Verge, 5 November 2018, https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/5/18066436/robocalls-fcc-take-action-against-carriers-call-authentication