Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!umich!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request
From: wicat!meph!gsarff@cs.utah.edu (Gary Sarff)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Phone Harassment
Message-ID: <5457@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 20 Mar 90 23:00:15 GMT
Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu
Reply-To: sarek!gsarff@cs.utah.edu
Organization: WICAT Systems Inc., Orem Utah
Lines: 38
Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 192, Message 6 of 10


I have been wondering something for some time about tracing of phone
calls.  This may not be possible since it doesn't seem to be done,
but...

When one makes a toll-call, the information about the call shows up on
your bill.  So, some equipment somewhere is communicating with a
billing computer, and it seems to me that the billing informaation for
the calls you make are, by necessity, stored for some period of time,
up to the time of printing of your next bill.  This could be as much
as one month.

So, to find out where a call is coming from, say in the case of
harassment, or kidnapping ransom calls or some such thing, why can't
the billing records of telco's be searched?

If for example, you received a call, at 1pm in the afternoon, and say
given as a starting point, that it is believed to have originated from
the same state you are in, somewhere there could be (if it wasn't a
local no-charge call) a billing record on someone else's phone bill
with your number on it at a time of 1pm. Is this a jurisdictional
thing?  Technologically not feasible?  It seems that it would be
easier than trying to put a trace on a line at just the time needed to
catch someone and hoping that the caller stays on long enough to
complete the trace.


  signed, very curious.


[Moderator's Note: For that matter, in ESS offices, even local calls
are logged. Now and then to audit my bill I ask for a print out for
the past month of all calls charged as 'units'. You'd think something
similar to 'grep' could be used to scan a few million records in a
fairly short time looking for all instances of calls to a given
number. That's not to say they would always get an answer -- certainly
not from non-ESS offices -- but frequently they'd get a very good idea
of who was connected to whom, and when.   PT]