Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!casbah.acns.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: sneaky!gordon@utacfd.uta.edu (Gordon Burditt) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Why 900-STOPPER Message-ID: Date: 19 Feb 91 03:54:58 GMT Sender: news@casbah.acns.nwu.edu Organization: Gordon Burditt Lines: 47 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 137, Message 4 of 6 Originator: telecom@delta.eecs.nwu.edu >[Moderator's Note: The thing is, anyone who could subpoena your >records looking for certain connections would surely see the calls to >the 900 service, then supoena those records as well. All it would seem >to do (in the case of a professional investigator) is add an extra >step in the process. For the average John Doe whose only immediate way >of call tracing is via Caller*ID then the 900 service is virtually >useless at this time. Or is the 900 guy saying he would not respond to >a subpoena either? PAT] It is possible for someone to actually accomplish this, provided that: (1) The service has numerous incoming lines, say, 50, and an equal number of outgoing lines. (2) The service connects incoming lines to available outgoing lines randomly. (3) The service keeps no records itself that won't be on its phone bills anyway. (It doesn't really need them anyway, except maybe for line utilization studies.) (4) The traffic on 1-900-STOPPER is high enough so that, say, there's an average of ten calls per minute. Assuming call records are kept by minute, a given outgoing call might have come from ten incoming ones. Matching up call durations would probably leave two or three incoming calls that might have originated it, which might be sufficient legal doubt even if the police really know who did it. (5) Adding random delay times of zero to a few minutes would be viewed as user-hostile but would significantly increase the doubt over who originated which call. So would randomly disconnecting half of the callers before they were given a chance to dial. (6) The caller is careful to make use of the service ONCE ONLY for each other party where he doesn't want to be traced. Don't repeatedly use it to arrange selling classified information to a foreign power. The guy who makes a 3 AM ransom demand via 1-900-STOPPER is still likely to get nailed because there wasn't any other traffic. Expect feature (3) to quietly go away without anyone being told after an incident of gross misuse of the service. Gordon L. Burditt sneaky.lonestar.org!gordon