Ed Markey: “The reality is that this whole movement began as people several years ago saw what the impact would be of unwanted spam…”

“The reality is that this whole movement began as people several years ago saw what the impact would be of unwanted spam on their home or work computers. As the gentleman from Michigan pointed out, he had in one day 150 unwanted spam messages on his home computer. What this legislation does is to help every American to deal with that problem. What I ask the Members to do as well is to deal with another issue that quite likely is going to rise to a level of being a problem that eclipses even computer spam and that would be cell phone spam. Imagine if you reach a point where there are 150 unwanted rings on your phone, your cell phone, this zone of privacy which we all have as these marketers are calling into your cell phone all day long. What this legislation does is it ensures that the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission take the actions which give protections against this being the new battleground. It is already a full scale epidemic in Europe, in Japan, in South Korea. It is heading our way.”