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From: tots!tep@logicon.com (Tom Perrine)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: US West and the War on Drugs
Message-ID: <6269@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 11 Apr 90 23:31:23 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 247, Message 5 of 14


>A common way of purchasing drugs is to telephone a drug dealer's pager
>and then punch in a phone number or some other pre-arranged code,
>according to police.  The dealer responds by calling back to the phone
>number indicated on the digital pager, or by showing up with the drugs
>in the manner prescribed by the coded message.
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
See below.

>Because most pagers -- or at least the digital ones which require
>numeric entry -- won't work unless the caller has a touch-tone phone
>to use in entering the information, drug buyers and dealers cannot use
>the rotary phones.

I heard the whole story on NPR. One thing that was emphasized was that
is *was* still possible to use these phones, by using an outboard
(hand-held) touch-tone generator, but as the spokeperson explained,
"most of the dealers and buyers aren't sophisticated enough to know
that they can buy this device for about $14 at a phone store." They
are now :-).

>But I always thought modern, well-equipped drug dealers carried
>portable cellular phones with them, in which case the method of
>dialing would not matter. According to Ms. Cherryhomes, this is not
>the case. The use of digital beepers is far more common.

It appears that pagers are preferred because *no voice* need be
transmitted to set up a deal, e.g. wiretap evidence is just a set of
numbers. To be used as evidence, a prosecutor would have to prove that
those numbers meant "meet me at place X to do the deal", instead of
being just a phone number or "lets do lunch".


Tom Perrine (tep)
Logicon (Tactical and Training Systems Division) San Diego CA (619) 455-1330
Internet: tep@tots.Logicon.COM		GENIE: T.PERRINE
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