The phone that doesn’t stop ringing: Congress against telephone harassment
Imagine this: your cell phone vibrates. It is an unknown number. You answer it expecting an emergency, a family member… and it is a recording offering you a loan that you did not ask for or “won” a false raffle. If it happens to you more than twenty times a month, you are not alone. It is a national epidemic.
The Morena parliamentary group, led by Ricardo Monreal, has just presented an initiative to put a definitive stop to this daily martyrdom. It’s not just a nuisance; It is an invasion of privacy that has become normalized.
“There is an alarming increase”, warns the text of the reform. The numbers are scary: the average Mexican receives up to 24 of these unwanted calls every month. More than half of calls from unknown numbers are intrusive advertising or scam attempts.
Mexico has the dubious honor of being the third country in America with the highest volume of junk calls, only surpassed by Brazil and Chile. Despite the efforts of Profeco and Condusef, the legal loopholes are so large that they allow this constant harassment.
The radical change: from ‘silence is acceptance’ to ‘yes I want’
Here is the heart of the matter. Today it works under tacit consent: if you don’t explicitly say no, companies assume you can be contacted. The reform proposes to turn the tables completely.
Express, prior and verifiable consent would be established. In Christian: you would have to give a clear, written (or digital) ‘yes’ before any company can mark you to sell you something. The power would return to your hands.
It is a battle to regain peace in our pockets and our peace of mind. Every time the phone rings, it should be for something important, not for the umpteenth attempt to empty our wallet. The function of the telephone is to connect, not to harass.
The ball is now in Congress’s court. We will see if the other parties jump on the bandwagon to protect something as basic as the right not to be disturbed in your own home.
