FCC Approves AI Notice 5-0, Other Items at Open Meeting

FCC commissioners approved an open-ended notice of inquiry Wednesday that asked how AI can fight robocalls, as well as potential risks from the technology. Commissioners also approved an order providing survivors of domestic violence with safe and affordable access to communications and an order and Further NPRM protecting consumers from SIM swapping and port-out fraud. None of the items was controversial and all were approved 5-0.

People are anxious about how bad actors can use AI, Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said of the NOI. “We make a mistake if we only focus on the potential for harm,” she said. “We need to equally focus on how artificial intelligence can radically improve the tools we have today to block unwanted robocalls and robotexts,” she said.

AI “can see patterns in our network traffic unlike anything we have today,” Rosenworcel added. That can lead to “analytic tools that are exponentially better at finding fraud before it ever reaches us at home,” she said: “Used at scale, we can not only stop this junk, we can help restore trust in our networks.”

Commissioner Brendan Carr supported the item but raised concerns about regulatory overreach. “There is no doubt that AI, and the regulation of AI, is what the kids on Twitter would call the current thing,” he said. “We need to put some set of common sense guardrails in place, I’m all for that,” he said. “I do worry that the path we’re heading down is going to be overly prescriptive and too regulatory,” Carr said.

The FCC’s actions support the Biden administration’s executive order on AI (see 2310300056), said Commissioner Geoffrey Starks, who cited growing concerns about using generative AI for voice cloning. “AI is a powerful, and evolving, technology,” he said: “We do not know all of the issues that it may trigger, or all the benefits it may hold. So this item seeks to explore and find out.”

Starks said he asked for and got a few tweaks to the item aimed at enforcement. “At a time when scammers can use tools like WormGPT and FraudGPT to facilitate their crimes, it is critical that the FCC use its enforcement authority to identify what we can about the root causes of AI-driven robocall and robotext scams, and share that information with our sister agencies charged with addressing malicious uses of AI within their domains,” he said.

“Responsible and ethical implementation of AI technologies is crucial to strike a balance, ensuring that the benefits of AI are harnessed to protect consumers from harm rather than amplify the risk they face in an increasingly digital landscape,” said Commissioner Anna Gomez.

An order implementing the Safe Connections Act will help domestic violence survivors gain access to safe and affordable communications services, Rosenworcel said (see 2310230044). The order provides a pathway for survivors to separate their phone lines from family plans, call or text hotlines without the numbers being included in any logs and establishes temporary eligibility for survivors to receive Lifeline support.

“We commend Chairwoman Rosenworcel and the FCC for their work to ensure that survivors of domestic and sexual violence and those in their care can continue relying on wireless services and devices to establish independence from their abusers and regain a sense of safety,” CTIA President Meredith Baker said.

SIM Porting

The goal of the SIM porting item is to “put an end to SIM scams,” Rosenworcel said. The FCC is requiring carriers “to give subscribers more control over their accounts and provide notice to consumers whenever there is a SIM transfer request, in order to protect against fraudulent requests made by bad actors,” she said. “We also revise our customer proprietary network information and local number portability rules to make it harder for scam artists to make requests that get them access to your sensitive subscriber information.”

The FCC is approving “baseline requirements, rather than prescriptive rules,” Starks said. The item acknowledges that “many providers may already have certain protective measures in place that may fulfill some of these new requirements,” he said. It also recognizes that “the threat landscape is rapidly evolving, and providers need flexibility to adopt and adapt their security methods accordingly,” he said.

SIM swap and port-out fraud “is a serious vulnerability for consumers,” said Commissioner Nathan Simington. “It not only allows people to impersonate the real owner of a phone number but it also allows them to receive private text messages and phone calls and thereby to hijack two-factor authentication mechanisms that have become standard in protecting access to bank accounts and other sensitive online services,” he said.

Simington applauded the “broad reasonableness standard” in the order for steps carriers are required to take. “This will prevent our rules from fixing into stone current best practices, which are likely to be superseded as cybersecurity advances and so do the hackers,” he said.

The adopted item has the same implementation dates as proposed in the draft, an FCC spokesperson emailed: “This will ensure that consumers have important consumer protection tools at their disposal as soon as possible and that the SIM Swapping rules are on the same implementation timeline as the Safe Connections Act Rules.” The Competitive Carriers Association and CTIA had raised concerns a six-month implementation time frame would be difficult to meet (see 2311130040).

“Wireless providers have developed and deployed sophisticated safeguards to protect consumers, and a flexible approach to regulations is critical to ensuring that providers can implement changes to protect consumers in a timely manner,” said Avonne Bell, CTIA director-connected life.

Pirate Radio

The FCC unanimously approved three notices of apparent liability proposing almost $6.5 million in fines for three New York pirate radio operators. All three NALs stem from the first ever FCC pirate radio enforcement sweep conducted in New York City, said Reggie Breshears of the Enforcement Bureau’s Office of the Field Director at Wednesday’s meeting. The sweep and high fines demonstrate that the FCC and its field agents "are taking our responsibility as stewards of the public airwaves seriously,” said Rosenworcel. Two of the unauthorized radio operators targeted, Dexter Blake of Mount Vernon, New York, and Johnny Peralta of the Bronx, have been the focus of previous FCC enforcement action. The agency has proposed the maximum allowed fine of $2.31 million for each of them because they're repeat offenders, said an FCC release.

Blake, who reportedly has long operated Caribbean radio stations in New York, was given a $10,000 forfeiture in 2010, which he never paid, and received warnings from the agency in subsequent years when he was found to still be operating, Breshears said. The agency sent a notice of illegal pirate radio broadcasting to the owner of a building hosting the station in 2022, and FCC field agents found his station operating multiple times in 2023. Social media pages for the station, called Linkage Radio (Blake uses the name DJ Linkage), show video of Blake apparently on the air as recently as September. “This Station Rules the Nation” is Linkage’s tagline. Despite Blake’s long history of ignoring the FCC, New York State Broadcasters CEO David Donovan said the large fines will finally change things.

The FCC has no power to enforce collection of such fines, especially from non-licensees. Only DOJ can take delinquent forfeiture subjects to court. But the FCC’s historically smaller fines weren’t an attractive enough target for U.S. attorneys to go after them, Donovan said. A fine upward of $2 million should be different, he said. Peralta, who was also targeted for a proposed maximum fine, has operated Spanish-language station La Mia Radio since 2018. The FCC proposed a $1.78 million fine for Matthew Bowen of Brooklyn, New York, over his Caribbean station Triple9HD. The agency found that Bowen advertised regularly scheduled programming for 89 days, leading to 89 violations, the release said. Blake, Peralta and Bowen didn’t respond to requests for comment.