On Sept. 11, 2019, the California State Senate approved the
Consumer Call Protection Act of 2019,
SB-208. The measure seeks to protect consumers from fraudulent
robocalls and enact into law provisions that, despite strong
support from Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit
Pai, have not been enacted on the federal level.1 The bill empowers
the Public Utilities Commission of California (Commission) to work
with the attorney general to enforce the law, and also requires
telecommunication providers to authenticate and verify caller
identification for calls made using an internet protocol
network.
Specifically, the bill dictates that telecom companies implement
Secure Telephony Identity Revisited (STIR) and Secure Handling of
Asserted information toKENs (SHAKEN) protocols (or comparable
technology) that require outbound calls to be issued with a digital
"token" that can be verified when received by the call
recipient. If the tokens match, then the call is
