Indiana Senate Bill 180 making progress
Senate Bill 180 is on its way for a vote with the Senate Appropriations Committee after successfully making its way out of the Indiana Senate Family and Children Services Committee Monday. It now heads to the Senate appropriations committee before it could be voted on by the full state Senate. The Bill would ensure that each foster child in the state would have an Attorney assigned.
The goal of Bill 180 is to help expediate the process of getting kids out of the foster system and into permanent homes. Other states which have implemented similar laws have reportedly seen the time cut in half for children being caught in the foster system. Some of the funding and implementation logistics are still being worked out.
Attorney General Todd Rokita calls on FCC to protect Hoosiers against foreign robocallers
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita called on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to put measures in place to better prevent foreign-based illegal robocalls aimed at scamming Americans.
“Hoosiers are sick and tired of getting scam calls, along with everyone else in the country,” Attorney General Rokita said. “Bad actors who willfully or blindly enable illegal robocalls have no place in the calling ecosystem. We will continue to fight to stop those calls. We will keep working to protect Hoosiers’ privacy and hard-earned money.”
In October, Attorney General Rokita filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against an Indiana company that allegedly acted as a gateway into the United States for robocallers in India, the Philippines, and Singapore. The robocallers allegedly made more than 5 million phone calls to Hoosiers and hundreds of millions of calls to other states.
Now Attorney General Rokita and a bipartisan group of attorneys general are calling for the FCC to require gateway providers — companies that allow foreign calls into the United States — to take steps to make it more difficult for robocalls to enter the U.S. telephone network. This includes implementing STIR/SHAKEN, a caller ID authentication technology that helps prevent spoofed calls.
Gateway providers, the Attorneys General argue in a letter, should be required to implement this technology within 30 days of it becoming a rule. This step would help eliminate spoofed calls — calls deceptively made to appear to originate from numbers other than their actual source. In December, Attorney General Rokita and a coalition of 51 attorneys general successfully helped to persuade the FCC to shorten by a year the deadline for smaller telephone companies to implement STIR/SHAKEN.
The attorneys general are also asking the FCC to require these gateway providers to take additional measures to reduce robocalls, including:
- Responding to requests from law enforcement, state attorneys general, or the FCC to trace back calls within 24 hours.
- Blocking calls when providers are aware of an illegal or likely fraudulent caller.
- Blocking calls that originate from numbers that are on a “do not originate” list — such as government phone numbers that are for incoming calls only.
- Ensuring that foreign telephone companies they partner with are ensuring that calls are being made from legitimate numbers.
City Invites Public to Celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Birthday Celebration
The City of Bloomington invites the community to the 2022 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Birthday Celebration, Monday, January 17 at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater*. The event will include remarks by Deputy Mayor Don Griffin, members of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Birthday Celebration Commission, and others starting at 7pm. This year’s theme is “The Challenge of Action and the Challenges of Action” and will feature a keynote presentation by Dr. Eddie Cole. Admission to attend is free.
The event will also feature music and dance performances by the Indiana University African American Choral Ensemble (directed by Dr. Raymond Wise) and the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music Ballet Department, as well as the presentation of the Commission’s MLK Legacy Award.
This Week in Hoosier History
1825 – The first session of the Indiana General Assembly convened in the new state capital of Indianapolis. The seat of government had moved from the original capital of Corydon. The Marion County Courthouse served as the home for the state legislature until the new Statehouse opened in 1834.
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