I'm all for requiring businesses to get explicit permission from me before they can make the little box in my pocket buzz and interrupt me.
I wouldn't want to see statistical surveys, polling and other grey area items here impacted.
I know the FCC doesn't have express legislative power here, but can't they impose fines or am I mistaken-on either or both?
Since literally everyone I personally know has given up answering calls because of all the spam, I'd say that your "grey area" items are already being impacted.
That was the case before. Political polls and other related things were explicitly exempted.
For example, you "survey" people with questions like "Are you aware that Hello Fresh delivers in your area?" and "Would you be more or less likely to vote for Barack Hussein Obama if you knew he was a Muslim?"
Sadly surveys and polling are already spam, anyone who wants to get rid of phone spam will have to ban nonconsensual telephone polling as well.
At least some of the robodialer operators programatically check out a block of numbers from a VoIP vendor, make a bunch of calls, then release the numbers. If all they have to do is correctly report the number they're calling from, that's pretty useless. The called party has practically no recourse because the number that called them never accepted inbound calls, and has been disconnected by the time you call it back anyway.
How could 'valid caller ID' be defined so that robocallers can be identified?
They simply aren't going to do that unless they're forced by law or regulation.
With spoofed numbers, I’ve seen calls appear to come from an FBI office in Virginia, local and state police divisions, state troopers, and random businesses. There isn’t any way to really deal with those kinds of calls - and you can’t reasonably screen them out.
Honestly, I'd be utterly stunned if this made any noticeable impact at all.
[1] I'm sure it is someone's.