[Tyler]

Robocallers Annoy Voters as US Election Approaches
     

With a major US election approaching, nearly everyone in the US is
receiving daily calls from automated systems, known as robocallers. In
contested states, callers are receiving 10
to 15 calls per day. These
unsolicited calls are the audio equivalent to spam and our politicians
are the spammers. Politicians have exempted themselves from most laws
that protect consumers from unsoliticted calls, such as the national
do-not-call list. The only federal law that these robocall machines are
subject to requires the delivered message to identify who initiated the
call and include a telephone number or address to reach them. The worst
phone
spammer of
this political season, John McCain, appears to be violating
that law with his latest series of robotic negative campaign spam.
While his campaign is setting new records for unethical behavior in this
regard, he's certainly not alone. The Obama campaign and many other
candidates from both parties are using robocall systems to saturate the
phone networks with unwanted phone spam. One group is trying to fight
these political spam bots by creating a political do-not-call
list. Referring to these automated phone dialers as robots is
probably overly generous for such primitive machines but robot is a word
with a very fluid definition these days.
   

http://robots.net/article/2673.html