Crist wants spam callers jailed

U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist asked the Department of Justice to prioritize punishment for spam callers and consider putting them in jail.

Driving the news: The St. Petersburg Democrat sent a letter to the DOJ last week in light of its report on the success of Crist's Spam Calls Task Force.

• The task force has reduced the number of robocalls by hundreds of millions per month after it was signed into law in January 2020, Crist's office said in a statement.
• It also led to the State Attorneys General forming a Robocall Technologies Working Group to investigate spam calls at a local level.

The big picture: Spam phone calls aren't just a Florida problem. A hiker in Colorado was stranded on a mountain overnight last week after he didn't pick up calls from search and rescue teams thinking they were robocallers.