Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!netsys!vector!telecom-gateway From: att!mtdca!royc@research.att.com Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Calling Party ID Suspension Message-ID: Date: 16 Mar 89 14:27:40 GMT Sender: news@vector.UUCP Organization: AT&T Lines: 191 Approved: telecom-request@vector.uucp X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@vector.uucp X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 97, message 1 of 4 In article , telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) writes: > Yes, it was in the [Chicago Tribune] on Sunday. It really makes me > sick to think about the whiners and complainers who feel they are > somehow entitled to invade *my privacy* anytime they please by making > phone calls anonymously; that you or I have no right to know who is > calling us before we answer the phone. Yes. During the divorce I am still going through, I went through a 2-4 month period where I was getting sporadic "silent" or "heavy breathing" calls; when it finally hit me that this was not a random event, or possibly not, I made a point of raising the topic in conversations with those concerned. I pointedly noted that some of the Telco billing systems noted not only long distance, but also local, telephone calls; not onyl who originated, but who hung up. After that, the pattern changed from10-15 second "silent" calls to 1-2 ring "no party/dial tone" calls. SO, I received some conirmation of the source of the harrassment. (Believe it or not, my attourney advised me to simply let it go... divorce is as bad in terms of legal representation as you may have heard it rumored to be). What I failed to mention was that ringing tome typically did a 2-second here, 2-second there pattern, so that if I was clost to the phone, I had a good chance of getting a pick up in the frst ring. Nor did I mention that billing records not typically printed with the telephone bill would in some ESS areas would ID all local calls. So, I have a very high interest in seeing this type of thing available; I would prefer to have it on my telephone bill as well, in terms of incoming calls to my phone(s). > A group calling itself the American 'Civil Liberties' Union has also entered > the controversy, saying that persons engaged in (what are alleged to be) > illegal activities using the telephone would be forced in effect to give > testimony against themselves when their phone number is revealed to their > victim(s). This _can_be_ an area of great concern. Look back to the 1920s, and later on, when some legislators have made attempts to mandate the use of the social security card as a national identity card. The big thing is that this opens the door on a lot of thing. It is not a trivial matter; fundamentally, your identity is your own, and _no_one_ should be allowed to force you to have to reveal it (all other things being equal, no crime in progress, etc.) This is a basic principle, which I agree with totally. The flip side is, every _other_ individual has the right to require you to identify yourself if they are going to deal with you. This prevents blindside harrassment opportunities. So both sides are in the right in this discussion. > Next thing you know, the ACLU and others will want to outlaw peepholes in > the front door of your home on the theory you have no right to know > ahead of time who has come to visit you. What of the rights of computer > system administrators harassed by phreaks? What of the rights of > people who get anonymous, harassing phone calls in the middle of the night? > Well, so what! Phreaks and weirdos get more rights in this country than > the rest of us. I would hope that the protection of both sides can be arranged. In the past being black, gay, having AIDS (cancer, tuberculosis, leprosy), not being blue eyed Aryan, etc. There is, by the way; read on. > What truely makes me gag -- puts me on the verge of the dry heaves -- by > this stupid court order is that someone managed to convince the judge > -- a know-nothing where telecom is concerned -- that announcing the identity > of a caller when putting through a connection was tantamount to > 'tracing a call'. If the secretary in my office asks who is calling before Yah. Judges have been known to make somewhat less than sanguine decisions; such as having a three year old travel 3.5 hours round trip for a two hour visitation. (OH, I could go on). But they are also human, and prone to all of the ailments involved. Getting the apporpriate information to the judge involved at the right time (yes, it does make a difference; the attourneys I have been involved with have been frank frank in (very, very privately) noting that Judgements change radically if there was no coffee for Him in the morning; they have also commented on how weak a particluar judge may be). Pardon my sexist commentary: coffee for Her in the morning. > she puts through a call to me, are we to now assume she is in > violation of the law? The Call ID equipment is nothing more or less than > an automated version of a human person asking a caller 'who are you? what > is your call about?' Precisely: there is an easy way out of this dichotomy. > So much for the privacy rights of the rest of us. Where people get the idea > they should be able to hide behind their phone is beyond me. The main worry about this is that in a situation involving an overwhelming preponderance of power, the act of attempting communication _at_all_ can be used as a suppressive means to _prevent_ the accurate transmittal of attestments. I have been involved with such a scene, to my horror; being confronted with 4-5 police officers in an encloistered room with no witnesses changes your idea about these protections, rather rapidly. Please note I have no favor with the ACLU: I like their ideals, disagree with some of their decisions and pursuits, and have been in a bad scene with them as well. When I attempted to pass on this particular occurrence to them, they would not even listen to it unless an act of actual _physical_ abuse could be demonstrated. Please note: the Gestapo did not carry out much physical abuse during a large interval of the war; they did not have to: fear of them stopped most attempts at resistance, and for those that did, there were other branches of the "government" to carry out the "appropriate procedures" then in common practique. > Naturally, rebuttal messages will be printed. So here is how to resolve the conflict, really simply: I want to talk to you, and you want to talk to me. I do not want to abridge your rights, and you do not want to enfringe on mine. Neither of us wants to harrass the other. SO, no calling party ID is needed; a verbal "Who are you?" is enough; if you refuse to ID, I can hang up. Given the new service available, the Telco on each end of the conversation can ask each subscriber these questions: - Do you want to ID yourself to the called party? = name or unique identity (credit or calling cards can provide this) = station address (telephone number) = Unique anonymity code on a per call basis (I do not want you to trace me, but I am willing to allow later valid authorities to trace this call to a unique location and time) = Regional anonymity code (identified to a region, a Telco, or some broader form of anonymity); or various flavors if this. = Total anonymity - DO you wish to accept calls from parties who ID corresponds to any of the classes above? Do you wish to place calls to people who will not ID themselves as recipients? - Do you wish your calling party to know who you are? To what level? (The same as s/he is willing to let you know?) - Do you wish to see calling party information on your telephone right away or at billing time? And in the reverse direction? With computers which enable the calling party ID service at all, this type of capability is no additional equipment expense; the additional reverse channel communication should be zero in ALL intraLATA (or whatever they call'em today) calls (the switch has all the pertinent information); and for interLATA calls, a toll chargeback agreement implies reverse channel billing information, along with some kind of a verification protocol; the additional cost would be one more message pass (AT MOST) before the remote would agree to accept the call and the local would agree to continue to place it. In many cases this is already the case just to exchange basic accounting information. Yes, occassionally Telcos are known Not to Minimize Costs By setting the defaults to: - Anonymous caller (I will remain anonymous when I call) with unique anonymity code - Anonymous accept (I will accept calls from people who will not identify themselves) with unique anonymity code - Anonymous receipt (I will call whoever answers) - Anonymous placing (I will not identify myself to the caller) you have the situation just prior to calling party ID services; with the additonal proviso that the Telco should keep records of these anonymous calls for some period of time, or should print on a billing record at the request of the party an anonymous code (different for each end of the link, with only the Telco having the tying information: the rquest of the customer to have it on the billing record would be enough to require it being kept by the Telco). Probably ID'ed caller with anonymous accept & receipt, with unique anonymity code for anonymous placing would be sufficient, as long as some level of trust is placed in our officials (and I do). So both sides of the coin can be satisfied. How about it, folks? roy a. crabtree att!mtdca!royc US 201-957-6033