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(credit: D J Shin)

New data shows that the majority of robot-enabled scam phone calls came from fewer than 40 call centers, a finding that offers hope the growing menace of robocalls can be stopped.

The calls use computers and the Internet to dial thousands of phone numbers every minute and promote fraudulent schemes that promise to lower credit card interest rates, offer loans, and sell home security products, to name just a few of the scams. Over the past decade, robocall complaints have mushroomed, with the Federal Trade Commission often receiving hundreds of thousands of complaints each month. In 2013, the consumer watchdog agency awarded $50,000 to three groups who devised blocking systems that had the potential to help end the scourge. Three years later, however, the robocall problem seems as intractable as ever.

On Thursday at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, a researcher said that slightly more than half of more than 1 million robocalls tracked were sent by just 38 telephony infrastructures. The relatively small number of actors offers hope that the phenomenon can be rooted out, by either automatically blocking the call centers or finding ways for law enforcement groups to identify and prosecute the operators.

BlackBerry has filed a patent lawsuit (PDF) against internet telephony firm Avaya. The dispute marks a turning point for Blackberry, which pushed into the Android market last year but has been struggling.

In making its case that Avaya should pay royalties, BlackBerry's focus is squarely on its rear-view mirror. The firm argues that it should be paid for its history of innovation going back nearly 20 years.

"BlackBerry revolutionized the mobile industry," the company's lawyers wrote in their complaint. "BlackBerry... has invented a broad array of new technologies that cover everything from enhanced security and cryptographic techniques, to mobile device user interfaces, to communication servers, and many other areas."

This is the booking photo of Stockton Mayor Anthony Silva. (credit: Amador County Sheriff)

The mayor of Stockton, California was arrested Thursday and charged with felony eavesdropping, among other misdemeanor charges, related to a strip poker game that he allegedly played with teenage counselors at a camp for economically disadvantaged kids last year, according to prosecutors in neighboring Amador County.

Mayor Anthony Ray Silva was taken into custody Thursday morning at the annual mayor’s Youth Camp in Silver Lake, just outside of Stockton, an inland port city approximately 80 miles east of San Francisco.

N. Allen Sawyer, Silva's attorney, told Ars that his client remains mayor, has posted bail, and has returned Thursday afternoon to the camp to help final clean up. The City of Stockton said in a statement that law enforcement are on site at the camp, presumably to keep the peace.