TORONTO – Ottawa is abuzz with a growing robocall scandal. Elections Canada’s chief investigator says ‘Pierre Poutine’, a name registered with an account at an Edmonton-based automated dialing service, was clearly a fake name. He says it was likely used to cover the tracks of whoever was behind misleading and harassing calls to voters in Guelph, Ontario, in the last federal election.
Global News wondered – how does this robo-business work anyhow?
What is a robocall?
‘Robocall’ is a term often associated with political and telemarketing phone campaigns. It uses automated phone call that uses both a computerized auto-dialer and a computer-delivered pre-recorded message that often sounds like a call from a robot. Auto-dialers use a computer networking technology that allow them to make a large number of simultaneous calls and also provide an application programming interface (API) for system integration.
This means potentially tens of thousands of households can be reached in a very short amount of time.
Does robocalling work?
Different telemarketing and online voice calling centers have customized systems to set up interactive phone calls, but here’s the gist – anybody can register to sign up for an account either online or by talking to an agent.
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Once the credit card information is approved for the customer, the customer can upload an excel sheet of phone numbers to target, and schedule a campaign that starts within a few hours of registering, depending on the size of the target audience.
Globalnews.ca spoke to a large U.S.-based online voice calling centre called Voice Shot to help explain the process.
A customer agent at the company said that just like other phone companies, rather than charging for the number of people targeted, the fees are associated with minutes used during the calls. The more minutes bought, the cheaper the fee.
This can start at 0.12 cents for 200 minutes and increase to 0.8 cents per minute for the calls if you’re buying 100,000 minutes. The minutes are only charged for answered calls.
According to the Ottawa Citizen, RackNine, the dialing service associated with the robocall scandal, charged about 1.9 to 3.5 cents per minute for the calls.
Is robocalling legal?
Canada and the U.S. both have National Do Not Call Registries to help consumers manage telemarketer calls. In Canada, the National Do Not Call List was designed to help Canadians avoid unwanted telemarketing calls, including automated calls. However, there are certain kinds of telemarketing calls that are exempt from the list, including registered charities, newspapers soliciting for subscriptions, political parties, riding associations and candidates.
In short – the act of automated calling by political parties is legal. So what was illegal about robocalls in this case? According to former elections czar Jean-Pierre Kingsley, any tactic that can affect a vote is illegal under the Elections Canada statue. Fraudulent automated phone calls that mislead or harass voters would fall into that category.
In the U.S., while political robocalls are permitted under Federal Trade Commission rules, there are Federal Communications Commissions rules that prohibit making these calls to cell phones and other numbers. Some states including California, Indiana and North Dakota prohibit automated political calls.
Shaun Dakin, founder of StopPoliticalCalls.org based out of Washington says his non-profit, non-partisan company called Political Do Not Call Registry will allow citizens to opt-out of receiving robocalls. However, since Dakin has no force of law, he says often times he has to beg politicians to join the organization. Dakin says since 2008, 30 state level politicians joined (no Presidential candidates) and the organization has impacted about 4 million voters who saw an absence of robocalls.
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