Johnny lets loose on this podcast. I’ll try with this article to bring it within a clear and linear progression of thought.
Do not invest in memecoins
I do not recommend investing in meme-coins, see this example $Hawk memecoin on why it’s a bad idea. Eric owns the majority of $CZAR GOLD, and does not recommend investing in it, as stated in the above video. I am not Johnny’s keeper.
Johnny explains why he’s the world’s biggest Czar fan. How the focus on free speech given the change in administration, and a focus of Eric Troutman’s throughout the time we’ve known him are going to significantly impact calling and messaging in the US.
REACH filing with the FCC
Eric explains the importance of REACH’s FCC filing, “R.E.A.C.H. requests the Commission review the illegal—and unregulated—10 digit-long code registration process currently run by a foreign-owned company, The Campaign Registry (TCR). ”
Eric explains how the wireless carriers are censoring content transmitted over their network through A2P messaging and voice. For example with T-Mobile, it’s in their terms of service in using their network.
The FCC has generally ignored the censorship. The carriers and CTIA set the tone of what content is acceptable, and the aggregators who provide access act as the censors on behalf of the carriers. For example, CTIA’s S.H.A.F.T. (Sex, Hate, Alcohol, Firearms, and Tobacco) guidelines.
Which appear reasonable, however, the actual implementation has gone beyond what is covered by the CTIA. The FCC allows reasonable analytics to avoid citizens being spammed. But this has ended up with censorship to the point of putting some companies out of business.
REACH has asked the FCC for clarification on whether constitutionally protected speech can be censored across both SMS and voice. Whether such communication can be labelled as spam-likely, forcing the company to pay for services to protect their communications. It’s a request to the FCC to define the guardrails.
The first step we’ll see is next month when the FCC votes on SIP code 603+ to inform businesses that their calls are being blocked. Today they do not know.
The last part of the REACH petition covers the TCR (The Campaign Registry), a foreign owned entity that has made registering campaigns challenging. And stores much campaign data. Eric highlights he does not know where the data is stored and who has access to that sensitive data. Johnny explains the access China has to that data, as described by Rick Joyce and Bill Peters (founder of TCR, Father of SMS in US).
Rick Joyce was the chair of telecommunications at Venable LLP, Alston & Bird LLP, and Joyce & Jacobs LLP; and former Chief Counsel for Chief Information Officer/Assistant Commandant for C4IT at U.S. Coast Guard, and holds the highest security clearance. Rick is uniquely qualified to understand the risks of TCR foreign ownership.
Election Interference, Kari Lake’s Arizona Campaign
This is covered in Bill Peter’s complaint.
“In September 2022, Campaign Registry operations personnel discovered election interference aimed at certain Republican campaigns and in particular, the Kari Lake campaign for Arizona Governor. In September of 2022, someone using the handle “Forum83” and the email address Forum83@yahoo.com was able to ultimately convince the companies delivering political messaging to Arizona to stop all Republican messaging for the state for a couple weeks in September of 2022. Forum83 claimed it was all spam and played on the lack of knowledge of support desk personnel. The company that shut down the messaging was based in Chicago, but the support desk person who shut off the messages for Arizona was a foreigner based in Australia. Forum83 also interfered with Republican campaigns in parts of California during October 2022. Mr. Peters learned all of this (and received the emails) from Ricardo Cavero (TCR Head of Operations). Mr. Cavero ended up dealing with Forum83 directly on a phone call, and that is how Mr. Peters discovered Forum83’s identity.”
“When Mr. Peters and others learned what was happening, Mr. Peters asked Mr. Cavero to report what he had learned to Campaign Registry management, specifically to Soren Schafft (TCR CEO), Tor Soevik (TCR COO), Stefan Heller (TCR VP Business Development) and Michael Ford (TCR VP Operations). They told Mr. Cavero to let it go and not do anything.”
“Mr. Peters reported this to the FBI through his attorney in September 2022 and by direct interview in Washington, DC on October 20, 2022.”
Johnny also reported this to Robert Gerstmann of Sinch, as the person (Forum83) was a Sinch employee. Subsequently Johnny discovered the person was fired. Please understand when Don Dario accuses me of lying, he is covering up a litany of crimes. And if you repeat his lies, you too are doing the same.
Twilio’s TCR prepayment, and consolidated A2P position
Johnny and Bill Peters helped Avi clean up Kaleyra so it could be sold. We reported on some of the issues in a 2 part series:
One of the discoveries made was that Twilio gave a $7M prepayment to TCR, which resulted in an 80% discount for Twilio on registering campaigns. The discount meant TCR could not compete with Twilio, they were losing business. When Bill investigated he discovered the design of TCR had changed, so it no longer stored the phone numbers for campaigns, a violation of its core design to enforce compliance.
Last year there was a claim TCR now stores campaign phone numbers, but this has not been verified. The racist texts sent shortly after the election show if that claim is true, it is not working.
Why was Johnny involved? He was brought in to help the management team buy the Campaign Registry. When the Kaleyra chairman (Avi Katz) learned of this potential management buyout, it was stopped. Likely because a Tata Communications deal was possible after the IPO. Across the Italian management team, US management team, and the chairman (SPAC owner, Avi Katz). Kaleyra is a multi-headed beast with patchy understanding of its business.
But back to Twilio, for a time they dominated 10DLC with the sweet TCR deal. They also bought Zipwhip, so had control over 800 SMS. And the investment in Syniverse gave them access to a category of SMS called unsanctioned 10DLC. Twilio is the dominant A2P provider in the US, with multiple routes for delivery. As Johnny puts it, Twilio unleashed SMS spam from the world onto the US. Twilio has customers around the world.
As a result of all these shenanigans REACH members, often small and medium US businesses have been disproportionately impacted, as foreign spammers get away scot-free. Yet action needs to be demonstrated, and REACH members get the unfairly blamed.
The position Twilio has created for itself in the US a2p SMS market is also unfair to the other aggregators like Infobip, Sinch, etc.
Johnny makes an important point, the carriers are just following the rules set by the current administration. The new administration is focused on free speech. The SMS aggregators tend to be smart wheeler dealers, taking advantage of the current rules and carriers slow response to fraud over their networks. See the definitive guide to A2P SMS for the multi-decade history.
Eric and Johnny’s Q&A
Eric asked a simple question, which he’d asked previously. Where does all the TCR data go? It’s a trove into commercial and political campaigns.
Johnny explained that China has access data, as described by Rick Joyce and Bill Peters (founder of TCR). An important factor is Kaleyra works with development consultants. It’s not a development shop. Hence the slow rate of change in discovering and closing doors.
Eric pushed on the point that somebody does know what is happening to the data, and the FCC likely does not know. Back in November 2013 Breitbart ran a story on TCR, https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2023/11/17/lawsuit-alleges-campaign-text-robocall-infrastructure-tied-china-biased/. Johnny’s position is the change in administration will lead to this story finally gaining broad attention in the press and a full investigation to discover that is happening to the data.
Before the TCR acquisition Bill Peters notified Tata Communications on what was going on before the Kalyra acquisition was complete. Below is the letter and exhibits Bill sent to Amur Laksminarayanan, Managing Director & CEO at Tata Communications, source Giovanni Tarone. Here are the exhibits, and the detailed letter. Tata Communications had all the facts before buying Kaleyra.
Industry fora, such as the MEF (Mobile Ecosystem Forum) have aided TCR / Kaleyra in covering up what they’ve been getting up to. Hence the discussion moved onto the terrible treatment of Puja Amin, a partner at Eric’s law firm. Among many other data points, but to keep the story focused I’ll draw to a close.
The final topic was raised by Eric, why has spam exploded? Chairman Ajit Pai ruled that SMS would remain an information service as the volume of spam was low, to enable carriers to easily filter bad traffic keeping it an information service was in their interests. However, since then with the introduction of TCR, which was supposed to protect customers, spam has exploded.
Johnny explained it’s a complex situation, however, Twilio plays a critical role, for a time they dominated 10DLC with the sweet TCR deal. They also bought Zipwhip, so had control over 800 SMS. And the investment in Syniverse gave them access to a category of SMS called unsanctioned 10DLC. Twilio is the dominant A2P provider in the US, with multiple routes for delivery. As Johnny put’s it, Twilio unleashed SMS spam from the world onto the US. Twilio has customers everywhere.
This is not a simple linear story, but my hope is it achieves enough in explaining the enormity of what happened, the main players, and an industry-wide cover-up. Action is desperately needed to bring order to this chaos.
