Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!casbah.acns.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: kadie@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Many Software Designers of Caller ID Also Disliked it Message-ID: Date: 12 Feb 91 07:29:34 GMT Sender: news@casbah.acns.nwu.edu Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Urbana, IL Lines: 61 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 115, Message 5 of 6 dave@westmark.westmark.com (Dave Levenson) writes: >Ideally, however, the telco should be required to provide a service >where the calling party is advised that the call is being refused >*because* the calling number is being blocked, and that the way to get >through is to call again without invoking the anonymous-caller >feature. The {Chicago Tribune} had a article about this about a month ago. They called the feature "block-blocking". They said it had the support of almost everyone involved in the issue. As you point out, it allows you to screen calls. A phone system with Caller-ID and block-blocking will be just as effective in eliminating unwanted calls as one with caller-id and no blocking. At the same time, you will be able to block your number when you call a business, and so you will be able to avoid being automatically placed on their mailing list. [Except Radio Shack, which will probably not accept blocked calls :-)] It seems like a perfect solution; it provides people with the most service; and yet, the phone companies are against it. Why? >On a related topic, why is Caller ID considered a privacy issue? >Aren't people confusing privacy with anonymity? Privacy and anonymity are intertwined: [From the ACLU handbook "Your Right To Privacy", Evan Hendricks, et al, 1990] 'Privacy' can be many things to many people. Some associate the term with right to abortion. Others think of the right to choose a sexual preference. Many simply consider it 'the right to be left alone' in any number of contexts. This book does not cover those notions of privacy. Instead, it focuses on information privacy, which involves the legal rights of individuals in relation to information about them that is circulating throughout society. [...] Many of the data[base] networks are seen as a benign response to societal demands for faster service and greater efficiency -- at least in terms of the way in which they've been operated to present. Nevertheless, information is power. The advent of the computer age -- control of personal data by large institutions and the leverage this provides over individuals -- clashes with the American tradition of privacy and often with desirable limits on institutional intrusion into private lives." >Are the states like >Pennsylvania now asserting that their citizens have the right to >anonymity when they disturb others by telephone? The principle in states like Pennsylvania is that phone calls cannot be recorded and phone numbers cannot released without the consent of both parties. Block-blocking provides a mechanism for providing this consent. Carl Kadie -- kadie@cs.uiuc.edu -- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign