Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Caller ID Question Message-ID: <2209@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 15 Dec 89 17:00:16 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Organization: TELECOM Digest Lines: 86 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 9, Issue 577, message 3 of 5 russ@alliant.com (Russell McFatter) writes: Ah... the topic that won't die... >I want to change the topic: I think that while Caller ID is an >improvement over no identification at all, it doesn't really resolve >the ACTUAL issue at hand: knowing who is at the other end of the >phone. No matter how much effort we put into identifying the PHONE >that a particular call comes from, we will never be able to solve >certain problems: [... the mostly-clear problems inherent in CID...] >An apparent (oh so obvious) fix to all these problems is to identify >the CALLER, not the phone being used to make the call. In the UNIX >world, we don't identify people by the TTY they're using, do we? We >have usernames and passwords. Why not eventually implement this idea >for the dial network as well? This would solve a host of problems... Just as I opined, about a year ago: the I-can't-deal-with-answering-the- phone-and-just-hanging-up crowd will figure out that CID really doesn't do much for any _real_ problem, and that the "ansering a phone is *privacy* but doing electronic identifying isn't" folks will soon be asking for things like: >2: A tremendous fix to the privacy problem. When placing a call, the use > of a personal ID is OPTIONAL... If I don't want to voluntarily give away > my identity, I don't dial a PID. I then take the risk that the number > I am calling may not be accepting "anonymous" calls, of course. Won't that be good --- a nice, nation-wide electronically-tracked database of *everyone* who wants to __USE__ a phone. Not even a matter of conditions on *having* a phone.... and he calls this a tremendous "fix" to the privacy problem... I guess in his worldview the "problem" is that it might still be possible to do *somehting* without the gov't tracking you every step of the way. >5: Makes dozens of features that we've always wished for possible. Yeah... everything except privacy.. :-( [PS, as an aside I'm curious: when did this notion that "answering the phone" was somehow related to "privacy" in the Constitutional sense? It seems totally bizarre to me. People keep talking about the "peephole" analogy, but the reality is very different: peepholes protect you from *physical* threat, and in some sense DO have to do with your privacy [since the person can see if you're dressed or not, or where the stereo is, or if your new copy of the heavy breathers journal is on the coffee table]. Answering the phone embraces no such threats --- it seems that asking who is calling and if you don't get an answer you like hanging up more than adequately protects your "privacy". Now, you can complain that your *peace* has been disturbed, and I totally agree, but the peephole analogy doesn't work there at all. IF the doorbell rings, you have to go figure out who is there ANYWAY [and if it is an otherwise undistinguished person, you'll STILL have to ask them who they are and what they want... just like answering the phone. [Unless your world is different than mine: no one is "ID"ed on my front porch... the very best I can do is only the crudest of physical guesses about who's there [thereby displaying all your latent fears and prejudices about which book-covers conceal real threats inside-the-book]. That stranger on the porch is as liable to be a new neighbor from the next block as another Jehovah's Witness as a person selling storm windows]. Accepting privacy threat (as I see it) of CID as the response to the breach of your *peace* sure seems like overreaction --- killing a fly with a sledgehammer. There are MUCH easier ways [IMHO] to effect some kind of effective screening of your incoming calls [probably better than CID could ever dream to be unless the CID-likers get their apparent wish and we go to a fully-electronically-tracked society]. When we should be up in arms about the abuses to our privacy *already* being done, it is astonishing that there are knowledgable folks seriously arguing that that we should have *less*. If anything, instead of lobbying my PUC to get CID available, I'd be fighting to get *tougher* laws to make it mucho mucho mucho harder to let **ANYONE** see the CID info. Oh well... sorry to flame on again on this long dead topic, but that turn of phrase: that to really "fix" the privacy problem we need *better* electronic tracking of us all really got to me... :-( /Bernie\