Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: Mark Earle Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: US West and the War on Drugs Message-ID: <6398@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 14 Apr 90 13:47:45 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Organization: TELECOM Digest Lines: 46 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 255, Message 5 of 9 Patrick, Well, that's interesting. I wonder how quickly the paging companies will offer rotary operated service. It is available, but not generally used, because at peak times (lunch) it keeps the paging terminal tied up; fewer people can complete pages, since it takes longer w/rotary. But it *is* available. On a related note, in my little corner of Texas, built a decoder which monitors the paging channel with a receiver, and displays on screen what numbers were sent. The format is widely published. I further ran it through a simple data base. This showed pager addresses (no idea what phone number went w/what address; but it let me see who got a lot of pages) and could flag other than seven digit entries, i.e., non-phone numbers. Lots of fun. I suspect just from the traffic pattern alone, lots of 'interesting' things must be done via pagers! I'm sure if I figured out how to do this, it can be done by any professional/law enforcement type. Guess the rub would be getting such collected data admitted as evidence, in light of the ECPA, Comm. act of 1934 as amended, etc. I guess the drug dealers don't like voicemail, since retrieving the messages would be admittable evidence if they did it from a court approved wiretapped line ... no, wait, they could playback their voicemail with a cell phone ... yeah, that's it, since cell phone calls are sacred and private! Then all the 'customer' needs is a phone, no signalling at all ... and the 'dealer' just uses his cmt, say, once an hour, to scoop up the messages ... wonder if this will come to pass ... you heard it here first. RE: voicemail. Here, most paging/cmt provideres offer voice mail in conjunction with your pager/cmt, or as a stand alone, for about $10/month per mailbox. It's a cheap way to get a remote-controlable answering machine, special number for promotions, etc. I liked it in lieu of giving out my digital pager number. The caller had time to leave a detailed message, and I got the benefit of short term storage for later replay, and all msgs were date-time stamped -- great for a service person with a limited response time, prevents fudging the 'start of notification of trouble' time. Mark Earle Pro-Sparlkin, Corpus Christi, Tx