https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/texas-firm-allegedly-behind-fake-biden-robocall-that-told-people-not-to-vote/
Tech and telecom firms helped New Hampshire AG trace call to "Life Corporation."
issued a cease-and-desist order
WTF, shouldn't interfering in an election on that level deserve a 5yr prison term?
This is the first half of a proper sentence. The second is personal charges against all directors or and/or major stockholders for the crimes had they been committed personally.
And cops arriving with a warrant to search and preserve their records before even announcing anything.
Seems like this should fall under 18 U.S. Code § 912 - Officer or employee of the United States
Whoever falsely assumes or pretends to be an officer or employee acting under the authority of the United States or any department, agency or officer thereof, and acts as such, or in such pretended character demands or obtains any money, paper, document, or thing of value, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
It would hinge on whether or not the company could be said to have obtained a "thing of value(PDF)" which if you read the linked PDF you'll see is a complicated question. This passage from the PDF seems relevant to me.
The words “thing of value” “are found in so many criminal statutes throughout the United States that they have in a sense become words of art,” wrote the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. “The word ‘thing’ notwithstanding, the phrase is generally construed to cover intangibles as well as tangibles.”Federal courts have consistently applied an expansive reading to the term “thing of value” in a variety of statutory contexts to include goods and services that have tangible, intangible, or even merely perceived benefits, for example: promises, information, testimony, conjugal visits, and commercially worthless stock.
I would say that gaining the benefit of influencing the outcome of an election should be considered a thing of value for this purpose. If the authorities do not come down hard on this behavior then there is no reason for the billionaire class not to bury every election in false and misleading robocalls that seem to come from reliable and trusted sources.
I agree with your reasoning, but wouldn't this still allow for faking candidates who are not currently in office? We should, if we don't already, have laws to protect the interest of the public in having reliable information.
I agree with you 100%. We really do need laws require some sort of political truth in advertising.
Whoever falsely assumes or pretends to be an officer or employee acting under the authority of the United States or any department, agency or officer thereof, and acts as such, or in such pretended character demands or obtains any money, paper, document, or thing of value, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
This is about pretending to be an officer of the US and getting something because of the office, not pretending to be someone who happens to be an officer of the US and acting in their private capacity. Impersonating a police officer and telling people it's illegal to vote is a special crime, impersonating Joe, who happens to work as a police officer, and telling his Facebook friends it's a waste of time to vote is not.
This is not sedition...
Frankly, sedition has become the new communist or fascist. A word with real meaning, turned into a slur, and then hurled at people with complete disregard for what the word actually means.
I'll go a step further and say that even the legal charges of sedition is something that the pubic should view with great skepticism.
Otherwise, it may becomes the new terrorism boogeyman and the FBI will start entrapping people for that instead, or alongside, the terrorists they create, and then arrest.
Honestly, the investigation shouldn't have been to able to do it this easily.
The only reason I can think of is that the organizers figured their only penalty would be fines and lawyers expenses, as long as they didn't go to the necessary lengths to hide themselves.
They could have purchased pre-existing shell companies, or created one overseas, and used those dummy corps to pay some American VOIP provider to run their automated call campaign.
Maybe they thought that if they did go that route, and somehow eventually got found out, their might actually be consequences.
Who knows. We'll just have to wait and see what comes of this.
I love how Texas is always trying to convince everyone they want to succeed and then they pull shit like this. Listen, Texas, you're poking the fucking bear and you're gonna get eaten up by the feds if you can't behave yourself.
Not a threat, just an honest promise of outcomes to your games.
Damn, you're right. I want to fix it but it is pretty funny how that changes the tone of my message.
Too bad it'll be lost on texans'.
😬 I'm Texan, born and raised, and unfortunately still living in Texas. No personal offense taken btw. Love the place, hate (some of) the people.
The DOJ prosecuted some dumbshits who made and shared memes on Twitter about voting by text.
That, in my view, was terrible prosecutorial discretion and a very slippery slope, that we're now sliding down.
This, is not that. This is a good old fashioned well funded, organized, and coordinated criminal conspiracy to improperly influence an election.
Who wants to take bets on whether any of the people responsible will be prosecuted, much less get any jail time?
I'll bet that they will be prosecuted, but they'll get a $50 fine and 2 months of unsupervised probation.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
An anti-voting robocall that used an artificially generated clone of President Biden's voice has been traced to a Texas company called Life Corporation "and an individual named Walter Monk," according to an announcement by New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella yesterday.
The robocalls "illegally spoofed their caller ID information to appear to come from a number belonging to a former New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair," the AG's office said.
Formella, a Republican, said that "AI-generated recordings used to deceive voters have the potential to have devastating effects on the democratic election process."
The New York Times reports that "a subsidiary of Life Corporation called Voice Broadcasting Corp., which identifies Mr. Monk as its founder on its website, has received numerous payments from the Republican Party’s state committee in Delaware, most recently in 2022, as well as payments from congressional candidates in both parties."
"The FCC may proceed to require other network providers affiliated with Lingo to block its traffic should the company continue this behavior," the agency said.
The FCC is separately planning a vote to declare that the use of AI-generated voices in robocalls is illegal under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.
The original article contains 638 words, the summary contains 193 words. Saved 70%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!