The US neo-Nazi Scott Rhodes is said to be fined almost ten million US dollars for forging his caller ID in racist spam calls. That was decided by the US regulator FCC. The man called thousands of US citizens automatically and harassed them with recorded messages. These included xenophobic lies, racist attacks on politicians, attempts to influence jurors and threats against journalists.

Originally would the perpetrator even have 12, 91 Millions of dollars for 6. 455 known spam calls. For 1. 496 of the automatic calls, however, he was able to prove that he had used a phone number that had actually been assigned to him as a caller ID. Accordingly, the FCC has the penalty at 9. 918. 000 dollars (a good 8.2 million euros) reduced. In the USA it is forbidden to falsify the caller ID if you want to cheat or otherwise cause harm in this context.

US constitution does not protect Nazi codes in telephone numbers The neo-Nazi insisted in vain on alleged errors by the authorities and his constitutionally protected right to freedom of expression: The falsified phone numbers were not just any digits but contained well-known Nazi codes. Therefore, according to Rhodes, the wrong phone numbers themselves constitute a political message. The deception would be covered by his right to freedom of expression.

The argument is true creative, but not sound from the FCC’s point of view. On the one hand, the perpetrator had claimed elsewhere that he was not involved in the selection of the phone numbers. On the other hand, the Supreme Court of the United States has already ruled in another case ( Spence v. Washington that freedom of expression only is protected if the utterance wants to transmit certain content and the recipient is likely to understand this content.

But because Rhodes has not shown that his spam victims interpret the falsified caller IDs as Nazi codes The regulatory authority does not recognize a case of free speech. If the neo-Nazi does not pay the nearly ten million dollar fine by mid-February, the US Department of Justice will take over the case.

FCC notification 21-16 in the case Scott Rhodes aka Scott David Rhodes, Scott D. Rhodes, Scott Platek, Scott P. Platek (ds)