Chairman Pai Proposes Mandating STIR/SHAKEN To Combat Robocalls

[mike at mtcc.com (Michael Thomas)]

On 3/6/20 2:34 PM, Sean Donelan wrote:
>
> https://www.fcc.gov/document/chairman-pai-proposes-mandating-stirshaken-combat-robocalls 
>
>
> Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai today proposed a 
> major step forward to further the FCCâ??s efforts to protect consumers 
> against
> spoofed robocalls: new rules requiring implementation of caller ID 
> authentication using socalled â??STIR/SHAKENâ?? technological standards. 
> STIR/SHAKEN enables phone companies to verify the accuracy of caller 
> ID information that is transmitted with a call. Industry-wide
> implementation would reduce the effectiveness of illegal spoofing, 
> allow law enforcement to identify bad actors more easily, and help 
> phone companies identify calls with illegally spoofed caller ID 
> information before those calls reach their subscribers.
>
> The FCC will vote on these new rules during its Open Meeting on March 31.


In my opinion, STIR/SHAKEN is solving the wrong problem. e.164 addresses 
are dinosaurs and pretty irrelevant for identity. Cryptographic 
protection of the From: address in SIP would be a lot more sane because 
we already know how to do that. Since it's basically an all SIP world 
these days, we should just retire e.164'isms and move on.

Mike