{"id":20278,"date":"2026-09-12T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/?p=20278"},"modified":"2026-09-12T16:52:31","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T22:52:31","slug":"ag-labrador-demands-feds-strengthen-rules-to-fight-illegal-robocalls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/ag-labrador-demands-feds-strengthen-rules-to-fight-illegal-robocalls\/","title":{"rendered":"AG Labrador Demands Feds Strengthen Rules to Fight Illegal Robocalls"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>BOISE, ID \u2013&nbsp;<\/strong>Attorney General Ra\u00fal Labrador and a bipartisan coalition of 48 other attorneys general are pushing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to strengthen its \u201cKnow Your Upstream Provider\u201d (KYUP) requirements to help prevent scammers from using the U.S. phone network to make illegal robocalls. KYUP rules require voice service providers to ensure that they receive calls from legitimate and responsible providers and do not regularly pass through lots of illegal calls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><em>\u201cEvery Idahoan is fed up with robocalls and scammers,\u201d&nbsp;<\/em><\/strong><em>said Attorney General Labrador.<strong>&nbsp;\u201cThe FCC needs to hold telecom providers accountable at the source for allowing and profiting from the illegal traffic in the first place. I am urging the FCC&nbsp;to strengthen&nbsp;its rules and crack down on scammers before they can target Idaho families.\u201d &nbsp;<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Phone calls&nbsp;get routed&nbsp;through a series of phone companies before they reach your phone. The FCC requires&nbsp;all voice service providers to take&nbsp;reasonable measures&nbsp;to&nbsp;vet&nbsp;the phone companies that&nbsp;originate&nbsp;and route&nbsp;calls.&nbsp;However, some&nbsp;voice service&nbsp;providers&nbsp;fail to&nbsp;do so, allowing illegal&nbsp;robocalls&nbsp;onto&nbsp;the U.S. communications network.&nbsp;Last year, Americans received more than 29.6 billion&nbsp;scam&nbsp;robocalls and texts and lost&nbsp;nearly $2 billion&nbsp;to these&nbsp;scams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The&nbsp;attorneys general&nbsp;are asking the FCC to strengthen&nbsp;voice service&nbsp;providers\u2019 obligation&nbsp;to&nbsp;vet their&nbsp;upstream provider&nbsp;customers,&nbsp;and&nbsp;to&nbsp;require the same&nbsp;scrutiny and&nbsp;diligence&nbsp;of the entities involved&nbsp;in&nbsp;the implementation of&nbsp;STIR\/SHAKEN,&nbsp;which is&nbsp;the&nbsp;framework&nbsp;developed&nbsp;to prevent caller ID spoofing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In addition to what the FCC is already doing, the attorneys general urge it to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Mandate\u00a0five categories of\u00a0baseline KYUP measures.\u00a0<\/strong>The attorneys general\u00a0are asking the FCC to\u00a0demand that\u00a0voice service providers collect\u00a0more detailed\u2014and verified\u2014information\u00a0from\u00a0their\u00a0upstream provider\u00a0customers. The\u00a0attorneys general\u00a0also urge the FCC to require voice service providers to more thoroughly vet upstream providers\u2019 compliance with FCC rules,\u00a0monitor\u00a0those\u00a0upstream providers regularly, and refuse or\u00a0end\u00a0service to upstream providers\u00a0that\u00a0aren\u2019t\u00a0following the law.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Require\u00a0additional\u00a0triggers for KYUP\u00a0monitoring.\u00a0<\/strong>Right now, a voice\u00a0service\u00a0provider\u00a0generally\u00a0monitors\u00a0or reviews\u00a0information\u00a0about, or the conduct of,\u00a0their upstream provider\u00a0customers\u00a0when they are entering into or renewing an agreement with the upstream provider,\u00a0or when they receive evidence that an upstream provider may be breaking the law. The attorneys general argue that the FCC should\u00a0require\u00a0upstream provider\u00a0monitoring\u00a0more regularly to help prevent bad actors from\u00a0operating\u00a0unchecked.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Strengthen STIR\/SHAKEN protections.\u00a0<\/strong>STIR\/SHAKEN is a\u00a0framework\u00a0to ensure that\u00a0a caller is\u00a0placing calls from\u00a0phone numbers that are\u00a0not\u00a0being\u00a0spoofed.\u00a0The FCC should ensure that providers are aware of and comply with their caller ID authentication obligations, and that these rules\u00a0are being\u00a0followed and\u00a0applied\u00a0similarly\u00a0to and by\u00a0everyone with responsibility for making sure that a call is really coming from the number\u00a0a consumer\u00a0sees\u00a0as the\u00a0caller ID, regardless of where they are\u00a0in\u00a0the path of\u00a0a call.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Implement\u00a0new rules quickly,\u00a0establish\u00a0enforcement penalties,\u00a0and require retention of KYUP\u00a0data.\u00a0<\/strong>The attorneys general\u00a0ask\u00a0that any rules to\u00a0help cut down on\u00a0illegal robocalls should be implemented as soon as possible.\u00a0They also\u00a0support base penalties\u00a0for providers that\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0meet upstream provider monitoring requirements or violate STIR\/SHAKEN. They are also asking the FCC to require voice\u00a0service\u00a0providers to collect and\u00a0retain\u00a0data\u00a0related to\u00a0KYUP\u00a0verification and monitoring, so that\u00a0these data will be available to\u00a0law enforcement or attorneys general for future investigations.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Attorney General Labrador is part of the&nbsp;Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force, which launched Operation Robocall Roundup in 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In Phase 1 of the operation, the task force sent warning letters to 37 smaller voice providers that were&nbsp;disregarding their&nbsp;obligations to&nbsp;mitigate&nbsp;the&nbsp;origination and&nbsp;transmission of illegal and\/or suspicious robocalls&nbsp;by failing&nbsp;to comply with certain baseline mandates from the FCC. &nbsp;<strong>Just&nbsp;two&nbsp;weeks ago, the FCC issued&nbsp;an&nbsp;order to six of those companies, ordering them to fix their robocall protection issues or risk losing the ability to route&nbsp;any&nbsp;calls&nbsp;across the U.S. telephone network.&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In Phase 2, the task force:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Expanded\u00a0its\u00a0crackdown to four of the country\u2019s largest intermediate voice service providers.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Pushed the FCC to strengthen its Know Your Customer rules to require phone companies to verify who is making calls using their networks and what kinds of business their customers are conducting.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Attorney General Labrador is joined in signing this letter by the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, American Samoa, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico,&nbsp;New York,&nbsp;North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island,&nbsp;South Carolina,&nbsp;South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BOISE, ID \u2013&nbsp;Attorney General Ra\u00fal Labrador and a bipartisan coalition of 48 other attorneys general are pushing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to strengthen its \u201cKnow Your Upstream Provider\u201d (KYUP) requirements to help prevent scammers from using the U.S. phone network to make illegal robocalls. KYUP rules require voice service providers to ensure that they [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":81,"featured_media":20279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[243],"tags":[1373,1453,1601],"class_list":["post-20278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinions-op-eds","tag-consumer-protection","tag-fcc","tag-robocalls","cat-243-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/81"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20278"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20280,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20278\/revisions\/20280"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}