FCC Record, Volume 26, No. 7, Pages 4843 to 5761, March 28 - April 08, 2011 Page: 5,556
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up power and system redundancy to prevent call interruptions) can endanger the lives or safety of deaf
callers who make emergency calls,53 and further suggests that at-home working conditions are more
prone to eavesdropping, random interruptions, and violations of a caller's confidentiality.4 Hamilton
argues against authorizing unsupervised CA activity for any form of TRS because it increases the
potential for fraud.ss
16. Discussion. We agree with commenters who suggest that allowing VRS CAs to work from
their homes poses substantially more risks than benefits. Based on the evidence provided in the record,
we have serious concerns about allowing CAs to handle VRS calls from their homes, where they do not
have the direct supervision that is available in a call center environment. Specifically, we are concerned
that an unsupervised home environment is more conducive to fraud than a supervised call center with
on-site management. In the course of the Commission's ongoing investigations of fraud in the VRS
industry, we have identified numerous incidents in which unsupervised VRS CAs may have been
complicit in facilitating fraudulent calls.s6 We agree with Hamilton that on-site supervisors "serve as an
additional layer of fraud protection [and that] removing the CA from the same workspace as the
supervisor simply increases the potential for fraud."" Although some commenters suggest that we
permit home-based call handling only as a supplement to call centers rather than the principal means of
handling VRS calls," we decline to permit situations that we know to be susceptible to fraud under any
circumstances. As noted by Sorenson, although most CAs have high ethical standards, "if even a small
percentage of [CAs] are predisposed to commit unscrupulous acts absent supervision, allowing [CAs] to
work from home could cause a significant increase in waste, fraud, or abuse.""
17. Even were we to accept the argument that the fraud associated with the VRS program could
be contained in home environments through off-sight supervision, we remain concerned about the ability
of these arrangements to achieve full compliance with the Commission's TRS mandatory minimum
standards. First, we are not convinced that call handling in a home environment can meet the
Commission's TRS standard requiring strict confidentiality of all relay calls.60 The functional
equivalency principle dictates that a relay user has the same expectation of caller privacy as a non-relay
3 Id. at 4.
54 Id.
5s Hamilton Comments (September 7, 2010) at 4.
56 For example, the Commission is aware of circumstances in which VRS CAs working from home handled lengthy
relay calls solely on behalf of family members who placed these calls daily. In one situation, a family member
regularly placed VRS calls to another family member through yet a third family member serving as a VRS CA, and
spent the entirety of those calls reading from a book for hours at a time. See Transcript of Testimony at 197-199.
United States v. Pena, D.N.J. (2010) (No. 09-858) (VRS CAs knew that caller was being paid to make bogus calls);
See also United States v. Hawkins et al., Criminal No. 857, D.N.J. (Nov. 18, 2009); United States v. Version et aol.,
Criminal No. 859, D.N.J. (Nov. 18, 2009).
57 Hamilton Comments (Sept. 7, 2010) at 4. As Hamilton further explains, givenvn the fraud issues that are still
prevalent in this industry . . now is not the time to liberalize the CA workspace rules. Id.
" See, e.g., CSDVRS Comments at 4; Convo Comments at 6-7, suggesting permitting the use of CAs for night and
weekend shifts, when the number of calls make call center operations less cost efficient. But even Convo notes that
such practice should only be permitted if we "assume[] that security issues are resolved to the FCC's satisfaction."
Id. at 7.
59 Sorenson Comments (Sept. 7, 2010) at 5.
60 47 C.F.R. 64.604(a)(2).5556
Federal Communications Commission
FCC 11-54
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United States. Federal Communications Commission. FCC Record, Volume 26, No. 7, Pages 4843 to 5761, March 28 - April 08, 2011, book, April 2011; Washington D.C.. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc52169/m1/728/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.