Cybersecurity Policy Report, Senate Commerce Committee Approves Foreign Robocall Bill, (Oct 21, 2025)

By Lynn Stanton

The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee today approved by voice vote without discussion as part of a bloc of several bills the Foreign Robocall Elimination Act (S 2666).

Introduced by Sen. Ted Budd (R., N.C.), S 2666 would direct the FCC to establish a task force to study and report on unlawful robocalls, foreign sources of such calls, ways to encourage the adoption of caller identification technology in foreign countries, and options for international cooperation in authenticating and verifying international calls.

The amended version of the Foreign Robocall Elimination Act approved by the committee included four amendments backed by Sen. Ed Markey (D., Mass.). One offered in concert with Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D., N.M.) would impose “a new bond requirement when telephone companies register in the Robocall Mitigation Database (RMD),” Sen. Markey noted in a press release. Although the FCC “has removed providers from the RMD that upload incomplete information, such fraudulent providers can easily re-register with the RMD at effectively no cost. This amendment would require providers, with certain exceptions, to post a bond up to $100,000 to register with the RMD, imposing real costs on scammers,” he added.

Two other amendments offered by Sens. Markey and Luján would expand “the report required by the Foreign Robocall Elimination Act to consider the impact of publicly releasing private tracebacks of unlawful robocalls” and help “clarify the report required by the Foreign Robocall Elimination Act.”

An amendment offered by Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) and Sen. Markey “includes their legislation, the Robocall Traceback Enhancement Act, which the lawmakers introduced in 2021. The amendment helps bolster privately led efforts to trace back the origins of illegal and bothersome robocalls, helping to identify and stop bad actors,” according to Sen. Markey’s press release.

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