Critical Infrastructure Security, Generative AI, Government Regulations

Telecom to pay $1M over Biden deepfake robocalls

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Today’s columnist, Stephen Kovac of Zscaler, offers four ways the industry can embrace the zero-trust goals set by the Biden administration and make our cloud apps more secure. (Photo by Pete Marovich-Pool/Getty Images)

Telecommunications firm Lingo Telecom agreed to pay a $1 million fine after the Federal Communications Commission sought enforcement action against the company for transmitting fake robocalls imitating President Joe Biden, CyberScoop reports.

The robocalls relayed an AI-generated impersonation of Biden’s voice, urging New Hampshire voters not to vote in January's Democratic primary. Authorities claimed that around 9,581 such calls were directed toward voters in New Hampshire. The campaign was headed by political consultant Steve Kramer, who has been charged by the New Hampshire state attorney general's office with multiple counts of impersonating a political candidate. The Federal Communications Commission stated that Lingo Telecom failed to implement and enforce STIR/SHAKEN protocol for the robocall case. As part of the settlement, the FCC said the company will also have to implement a plan to follow the agency’s set of caller ID authentication rules and adhere to requirements to more thoroughly check that information provided to customers is accurate.

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