FCC Lawyer: "This Time It's Personal."

The two people behind the very neat website PopularityDialer received a nastygram from the FCC recently, a citation that ordered them to cease operations. Reluctantly, they did, although they don't quite understand what law they are alleged to have broken, or how they broke it, or why the FCC claims to have web jurisdiction in the first place.

It seems that an FCC lawyer who was the victim of a third-party prank involving PopularityDialer (some nogoodnik had abused the phone-dialing site to schedule repeated robo-calls to the lawyer's home) went a little nutso and decided to go nuclear on the first target she could think of. Never mind that she could have simply added her number to the site's do-not-call list, right there on the home page, to solve the problem.

"I don't see how a Web site falls within the jurisdiction of the FCC or how it would cause TCPA violations," conceded an FCC official contacted for an explanation. Writes the New York Times' David Pogue, not without reason:

So let me get this straight: The same F.C.C. that sent the citation has no idea why it sent the citation?

It's pretty obvious why: An overreaching government employee with a law degree has abused her power by intimidating and harassing a legal website operation that she had a personal beef with. On her employer's time, too (your tax dollars at work!).

FCC, FU, indeed.