14-Sep-88 14:41:05-EDT,39489;000000000001 Return-Path: Received: from ALMSA-1.ARPA by XX.LCS.MIT.EDU with TCP/SMTP; Wed 14 Sep 88 14:32:36-EDT Received: from almsal by 0.ALMSA-1.ARPA id ab12696; 14 Sep 88 13:11 CDT Date: Wed, 14 Sep 88 12:48:03 CDT From: Will Martin -- AMXAL-RI To: telecom@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU Subject: RISKS Discussion of ANI The following is a collection of all the postings that have appeared in the RISKS Digest over the past couple weeks on the subject of Automatic Number Identification and related telecom issues. I thought it was worthwhile to get this info into the Telecom archives in addition to its being in RISKS. It appears the discussion has ended on RISKS, so I'm sending this now. There's enough of it that the moderator may want to make it an FTP-able file instead of sending out to the list. Regards, Will Martin ********* Date: Thu, 01 Sep 88 09:10:40 PDT From: jon@june.cs.washington.edu (Jon Jacky) Subject: "Pizzamation" traces phone calls, matches addresses Excerpted from a story in THE SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER, 18 August 1988, pps. B5 and B8: CHAINS ARE PUTTING THE BYTE ON PIZZA DELIVERIES by Jim Erickson Tim Turnpaugh was caught off guard recently when he telephoned for a pizza to be delivered to his home. When he got the pizza company on the line, the person taking orders greeted him by name like an old friend -- before Turnpaugh could identify himself -- and cheerily asked if he'd like the same toppings he asked for on a previous order. "I didn't have to give them directions to my house, nothing," he said. Everything the company needed to know was gathered during a previous purchase and stored in the memory of a computer, ready for instant regurgitation. This is the brave new world of pizzamation. Godfather's pizza in Washington [state] is one such firm on the cutting edge of pizza technology. Inside a gray-walled, nondescript building in a Renton [Seattle suburb] business park, 80 desktop computers are lined up in rows at Godfather's state communications center. Not a single pizza oven is in sight. On a hectic Friday night, as many as 50 part-time employees sit in front of the tricolor screens, taking orders. ... If you've called before, the computer instantly identifies and recognizes your telephone number, and retrieves information from previous orders. "Customers don't even know a lot of the time they've reached a centralized system," said Donna Brown, manager of the center. "They still think they're calling a local restaurant." ... After the order is placed, the computer decides which of 51 restaurants or outlets in Western Washington, or 10 in Eastern Washington, is closest to the customer. The computer totals the price and relays the order and delivery instructions to the kitchen of a restaurant or outlet, where it comes out on a network printer. ... Brown said the system allows the company to keep track of sales data, and since it records addresses -- more than 500,000 are stored in Godfather's memory banks -- it can be used for direct-mail marketing. ... Cathy Nichols, owner of four franchised Domino's Pizza stores in Renton and Maple Valley, installed computers early this year ... Since the computer matches phone numbers with addresses, it also helps smoke out young pranksters who habitually order unwanted pizzas for the unsuspecting. ... [Not if they are smart enough to read a phone book. PGN] Some customers may worry that their local pizza retailer may be keeping records on their eating habits as well as detailed directions to their house. It can be unsettling to think that the Big Cheese is watching you. Nichols acknowledged that large, centralized systems are "kind of scary." "There's one number in the state that you call, and they know everything about you." Bill Brown of Godfather's said she could recall only three people who asked that their records be purged, and only because they didn't want to wind up on mailing lists. Their records were immediately removed, she said, adding that Godfather's does not sell its mailing list to other companies. [This is the first confirmed report I have seen of marketing outfits tracing calls, although I have heard rumors of other systems in which calling an 800- number in response to some promotion would put your phone number on a list that would later be matched in order to derive your name and address. It is my observation that most people believe that "tracing a call" is still a difficult, time consuming process that cannot be done routinely. This story shows that it is a service phone companies offer to commercial customers, although I have not seen any reports of it also being offered to residential customers (who would then be able to ignore calls from marketers, cranks, etc.) Jonathan Jacky, University of Washington] [In an unrelated development, some of the pizza outfitters are selling leather pizza outfits -- that is, protective clothing for the pizzas. If the pizza chains are going into leather, maybe S&M now stands for salami and mushrooms. PGN] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 1 Sep 88 22:22:08 EDT From: Mark W. Eichin Subject: Calling party identification >... It is my observation that most people believe that "tracing a call" is >still a difficult, time consuming process that cannot be done routinely. This >story shows that it is a service phone companies offer to commercial >customers, although I have not seen any reports of it also being offered to >residential customers ... I believe the New Jersey telco offered digital display of incoming number to private subscribers a year ago; here at MIT, with the installation of a 5ESS system with full ISDN support available to offices, the digital set automatically displays the phone number the call came from (if it was within MIT; apparently there isn't software in place to track calls from other switches yet, the display merely indicates "Outside"). The documentation for the dormitory phones included mention of a ``privacy code'' which meant dialing 65 before any phone number; the pamphlet with the phone didn't actually explain what the privacy code *did* however. Mark Eichin, SIPB Member & Project Athena ``Watchmaker'' ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 1 Sep 88 22:42 EDT From: TMPLee@DOCKMASTER.ARPA Subject: Calling party identification Phone number tracing Our local cable company must use the same kind of connection to the phone company that the pizza place mentioned in RISKS-7.42 does. They have several pay-by-view channels and a set of incoming phone numbers. To order a pay-by-view event all you do is dial something like 938-77xx where the xx is the "ordering" code for the particular movie or live event (local sports, etc.) you want. A computer answers the call and is somehow told where the call was from; it looks that up in a data base, finds the i.d. of your cable box and enables the show. (It goes on your bill, of course.) Rather clever, actually: no human operators and it works from either a dial phone or a touch tone phone. Don't use it much, and apart from misdialling the only "risk" I have is remembering to use line 1 rather than line 2. Ted Lee ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 1 Sep 88 19:57:52 xDT From: [anonymous] Subject: Calling party identification While there is work going on to allow for the identification of calling parties by the callee, such systems are not generally implemented and won't be for some time to come. There are some limited test projects, but I don't believe that any large-scale operation of the sort implied is currently operational. Most likely what is actually happening is that the first question people are asked when they call the pizza folks is "what is your phone number?" Then the computer operator punches that in and up pops all the info from any previous call. It is unlikely that they are receiving the calling party's number in realtime. It IS true that with some long-distance carriers' 800 callers numbers are made available to the callee, but this is done on a billing cycle basis (i.e., in the billing statement) and not in realtime. If it turns out the pizza folks ARE receiving the number ID in realtime, then they are in one of the test groups and one can't help but wonder how many folks in the area realize the ramifications of this all (see below). Now, in the middle future the issue of the callee being able to receive the number of the caller will be a significant one for us all. The technology is being put into place. At first glance, many people might say, "Gee, how neat, I'll know the numbers of the phone solicitors who bother me." But think again. It would work both ways. Do you really want YOUR phone number recorded (and possibly later called back with solicitations, matched with addresses for mailings, etc.) whenever you call a business, possibly from your private line you only intend to use for outgoing calls, or from some friend's house or business from where you happened to make the call? If you make a business call from home, do you necessarily want the person receiving the call to immediately have your home number? Do they have any right to that number rather than calling you back on the office number you might give them? There are a variety of complex ramifications. Even worse, if YOU could see the callers' numbers on calls YOU receive, you might be disappointed at much of what you'd see. Most big solicitation businesses use special outward-calls-only trunking groups; you would frequently see undialable numbers like 012-4161 on your display. Such info isn't going to do you a lot of good without a lot of hassling with telco for info (which they might well be unwilling to give you). And what about obscene phone calls and such? Won't this system help stop them? Well, maybe some dummies would get caught, but there are one hell of a lot of payphones out there and people could easily move from one to another indefinitely... The issue of privacy of callers' numbers is thus more complicated than it might appear at first. Some proposals call for unlisted numbers not to routinely display on callee displays. Some other plans propose a control prefix (e.g. "*21") which you could dial before dialing a phone number if you want to block number display for that particular call. All in all the issues involved are quite complex. The time to start thinking about them is now. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 3 Sep 88 13:17:29 CDT From: mayo@cs.wisc.edu (Bob N. Mayo @ U.W. Madison Computer Sciences) Subject: Re: "Pizzamation" Godfather's Pizza [phone (206) 223-1111] claims that they don't get told the customer's phone number. This contradicts the previous article which claims that they automatically receive your number, that is then used to display your "pizza-history". When I called them to ask about this, Godfather's claimed that they ask you for your phone number and then set up an "account" for you. They specifically stated that they do not automatically receive customer's phone numbers. Can anybody account for this discrepancy? I can think of several possibilities: + The previous article was in error. + They have discontinued this practice. (Perhaps due to poor reception from the public?) + Godfather's didn't tell me the truth. Anybody know? --Bob [Most likely the first one. PGN] ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 3 Sep 88 02:08:10 EDT From: netxcom!ewiles@uunet.UU.NET (Edwin Wiles) Subject: Re: Pizzamation and FGD lines... Organization: NetExpress Communications, Inc., Vienna, VA On a standard telephone line, it is still difficult to 'trace a call'. In all probability these businesses are using what are known as "Feature Group D" lines; which have aprox 6 to 8 wires, as compared to the 2 to 4 wires of a normal telephone line. Feature Group D service is designed to tell you both the number dialed, and the number that is doing the dialing. The extra lines are used for signaling the address information. [I know whereof I speak, our company is using FGD lines, and I had to design a program to interface with the phone company protocols. Not easy....] Yes, personally I would like one of these lines, with a smart phone to block unwanted calls. However, such phones already exist, that work over standard phone lines, the caller simply has to punch a few more digits (like a PIN) to let your phone know that they are allowed to talk to you. The nice thing about a FGD line, is that you can reject the call without actually having answered it, thereby allowing the caller to avoid paying the phone company for a call that you'd reject anyway. Edwin Wiles, NetExpress Comm., Inc., 1953 Gallows Rd. Suite 300 Vienna, VA 22180 ------------------------------ Date: Sat Sep 3 13:25:31 1988 From: sun!portal!cup.portal.com!Patrick_A_Townson@unix.SRI.COM Subject: Automatic Number ID: Great Idea! [Note: This address for PAT is bogus, and does not work. Try "sun!portal!cup.portal.com!username"@Sun.COM or "sun!portal!cup.portal.com!username"@uunet.UU.NET] A recent article here by Anonymous warned of the 'dire consequences' all of us would face when Automatic Number Identification on a real time basis became a routine feature. I have to disagree, wholeheartedly. ANI will be one of the best, and most useful additions to telephony that I can think of. I consider an unsolicited phone call to be an invasion of my privacy. If you feel you have the right to call me and refuse to identify yourself, then I maintain I have the right to come to your front door and refuse to identify myself. While it is true, as Anonymous pointed out that phone solicitors and the like frequently work from phones with special types of circuit numbers which cannot be easily traced by someone with ANI, the fact remains that ANI will bring a virtual halt to most of the hacking and phreaking and obscene calls which plague many people. Yes, as Anonymous points out (an appropriate handle, considering the gist of his message, no?) people can move around from one payphone to another, endlessly, continuing to create their havoc in whatever form it takes, but in reality, most people will not take portable modems and terminals with them to the pay phone on the corner just so they can call someone's BBS and harass them Anonymously. Having ANI implemented will simply make it too inconvenient for most of the low-life scum who hide behind their telephone to continue their practices. As for legitimate reasons to not want your number displayed to the called party, I can't think of any. Again, you have to make the analogy of going to see someone in person. It is completely unfair and unrealistic to say that you have the right to disturb someone at whatever they were doing and that they in turn have no right to demand to know who you are. In summary, I believe you have the right to use the phone as a method of quick, almost instant communication with others. You do not have the right to use the phone as a way to remain Anonymous. Having a non-published number is a different matter altogether, since you are protecting yourself against persons who might call you. The way you protect your privacy when calling someone else is to *simply not make the call at all* if there is something which will be said which you would not want traced back to yourself. Anonymous is also making the assumption that the people who aquire your number via ANI will automatically abuse the information. This is mostly false. If and when ANI at the subscriber level becomes available here in Chicago, I will be one of the first to subscribe. And when a call is received and the read out shows that the person has deliberatly blocked their number from my view, I will probably answer the phone and state that they are welcome to call back making the information available, and pending that action, the present call is being terminated now. (click). Patrick Townson ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Sep 88 13:47:33 EDT From: Jerome H. Saltzer Subject: Automatic Number ID: Great Idea! (RISKS-7.44) In "Automatic Number ID: Great Idea!", Patrick Townson makes several good arguments favoring Automatic Number Identification (ANI). I agree that on balance ANI will be a good thing once the novelty wears off and people become accustomed to the new rules of the game. But Townson may be carrying a good argument a little too far when he says, > As for legitimate reasons to not want your number displayed to > the called party, I can't think of any. I assume that he took that somewhat polar position in order to draw out suggestions for legitimate reasons, so here are a couple of cases in which maintaining the privacy of the caller does seem to make some sense: 1. Hotlines (e.g., drug-abuse and suicide) and police department tip numbers depend on anonymity of the caller to perform a function that is usually considered to have some value to society. Some police departments maintain a line separate from 911 (which often has an ANI feature) just for this purpose. If the caller of a hotline knew that the calling number would be automatically recorded, at least some of the information that flows in this way would dry up, and some of the help dispensed this way would not be. (The technique of dialing a prefix code to block automatic number identification caters to this requirement. I doubt that many hotlines would take Townson's hard-nosed approach and refuse to accept a call from a prospective suicide who has blocked ANI.) 2. When a private party calls on a "big organization," (for example, making ten queries to stock trading companies about their commission rates in anticipation of opening one account) there is an understandable preference for not leaving one's number, simply to avoid unwanted followup calls (e.g., from hungry brokers). Again, the ANI-blocking prefix satisfies this requirement, because no hungry stockbroker is going to refuse a call that sounds like it comes from a promising prospect. Townson's polar position might be plausible if you assume telephones are answered only by private individuals. He is well-advised to refuse anonymous calls to his bulletin board and welcome to refuse them at his private phone. But I believe that the need for blocking ANI remains for other situations. Jerry ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 06 Sep 88 17:30:25 EDT From: Bruce O'Neel Subject: Re: Display of telephone numbers on receiving party's phone I much prefer using a prefix ( *21 say) only when you WANT the number to be known, rather than when you DO NOT want the callee to see it. bruce ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Sep 88 20:28+0100 From: C H Longmore Subject: Re: Telephones and Privacy Patrick Townson's article in RISKS 7.44 states: > Having ANI implemented will simply make it too inconvenient for most of the > low-life scum who hide behind their telephone to continue their practices. > As for legitimate reasons to not want your number displayed to the called > party, I can't think of any. Again, you have to make the analogy of going > to see someone in person. It is completely unfair and unrealistic to say > that you have the right to disturb someone at whatever they were doing and > that they in turn have no right to demand to know who you are. How could you apply this to a situation where [as in the UK] certain police forces operate systems whereby people can give information to the police *anonymously* by calling a device as simple as an answering machine? How could you apply it to a situation where a potential customer wishes to obtain a quote by phone *without* running the risk of that company using the information so gained to apply the hard-sell. Can you imagine someone using a confidential medical advice line (such as an AIDS advisory service) if there was a possibility of the call being easily traced? How many people would telephone up the Samaritans if their number wasn't confidential? In the UK these are not problems.... yet. Our current telephone network is not capable of supporting these features.... yet. It *should* be possible to conceal your own telephone number from the person you are calling.. however, it is also the right of the person receiving the call to refuse to communicate with anybody who does not want his/her telephone number revealed. The latter is easy enough to implement.... a simple user-settable switch on the telephone is all that is needed. The 'privacy' argument has two sides.... it is the right of an individual *not* to have their phone number displayed, but it is also the right of the individual *not* to answer anonymous calls. A problem to which the solution seems easy enough.... (now prove otherwise!) Conrad H Longmore Computer Science Dept, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK. email: CCAse7-16%multics.bham.ac.uk@cunyvm.cuny.edu ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Sep 88 22:41 MDT From: MCCLELLAND_G%CUBLDR@VAXF.COLORADO.EDU Subject: Automatic Call Tracing and 911 Emergency Numbers Our local county government just worked a deal whereby for a small fee added to each customer's phone bill, the county's centralized 911 emergency switchboard would be provided with a display of all incoming phone numbers and addresses. I'm rather glad that the next time I call 911 all that information will be communicated automatically (but I hope it will still be verified orally whenever possible). However, I suppose that once we pay for the installation of the necessary technology the local telco will be able to sell it as a service to other businesses. As previous notes have suggested, there are many privacy issues to consider here but there are benefits that also need to be considered as well. Gary McClelland ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Sep 88 11:00:22 PDT From: Andrew Klossner Subject: Automatic Number ID: Bad Idea! [This discussion has gotten pretty far from RISKS.] "I consider an unsolicited phone call to be an invasion of my privacy. If you feel you have the right to call me and refuse to identify yourself, then I maintain I have the right to come to your front door and refuse to identify myself." This is the wrong analogy. Consider a world in which, when you wonder into a shop with an idle question, the shopkeeper can, without your permission, divine your identity. There's a world of difference between "Good afternoon, what's your name? If you won't tell me, get out" and "Good afternoon, I have recorded your name and there's nothing you can do about it." [Also remarked upon by Hugh Pritchard. PGN] "Anonymous is also making the assumption that the people who a[c]quire your number via ANI will automatically abuse the information. This is mostly false." This is a Pollyanna attitude. I have worked for telephone/junk-mail solicitors (in my starving student days) who would drool at the thought of abusing this information. As an example of privacy abuse, consider Radio Shack's policy of demanding full identification, even of cash customers, for purposes of composing a mailing list. -=- Andrew Klossner (decvax!tektronix!tekecs!andrew) [UUCP] ------------------------------ Date: 8 Sep 88 13:41:00 EDT From: John (J.) McHarry Subject: Calling number delivery The telephone feature of delivering the calling number to the terminating line is part of a group of features called 'CLASS', although there are other ways it could be done in certain special cases. There are a number of Bellcore publications that describe it in some detail. Among these are TR-TSY-000031 on the basic feature, (TA) 000030 on the signalling between office and customer terminal, 000391 on the feature to block delivery of the calling number, 000218 on selective call reject, and (TA) 000220, also related to selective call reject. TAs are an early version of TRs. If you don't find one in a reference,look for the other. There are several other TRs that relate to these features, but this list should sate most of us. Calling number delivery, selective call reject, and calling number delivery blocking are all involved with the 'Signalling System 7' which is just beginning to be deployed amongst local exchanges, although some of the long distance carriers are much farther along. Among other advantages, SS7 enables the transfer of much more information between network nodes than was previously generally available. This should allow the introduction of many new network services in the near future. On the other hand, CLASS and calling number delivery in particular will not likely become common until large areas are cut over to SS7, since otherwise they would not work much of the time. (Only within the local switching office, or among those that had already implemented SS7) It looks to me like a subscriber to calling number delivery gets telemetry intended to allow display of the number calling concurrently with ringing. I suppose proper customer premise equipment could pick this off and feed it into a computer or use it to determine what to do with the call, eg. route to an answering machine only if not long distance. If the number isn't available, as would be the case if the originating and terminating offices were not linked by SS7, the telemetry sends ten 0s. If the number is available but the originator is blocking delivery, it sends ten 1s. Calling number delivery blocking is itself a CLASS feature that can be set on by a service order or, depending upon the tariffed offering, turned on or off on a per call basis. How it is offered, if at all, is up to the local telco and PUC. The TR makes it look to me like it is not available to party line subscribers. I think there is a technical reason for this. Selective call reject allows the subscriber to set up a list of up to N directory numbers (N might be on the order of 6 to 24) that would be sent to 'treatment' instead of ringing the subscriber's phone. A caller using blocking could be put on this list after one call by using a control that says, in effect, add the last caller to my list, but that number could not be read from the list by the subscriber. It doesn't look to me like the blocking code itself can be put on the list; maybe somebody else knows a way or has tried it. Call reject can be turned on or off also, and can be maintained from either a DTMF or dial phone. There might be something here for everybody. If I can block delivery of my number and Mr. Townson can send me to treatment we would be almost as well off as with Internet addressing from Bitnet to Portal. The foregoing opinions and interpretations are mine, not my employer's. My interpretations of the referenced documents are based on a cursory reading. They probably contain some errors. John McHarry McHarry%BNR.CA.Bitnet@wiscvm.wisc.edu ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 08 Sep 88 16:47:11 EDT From: Robin j. Herbison Subject: More on Automatic Call Tracing and 911 Emergency Numbers A co-worker of mine called the Police last year to report a burglar alarm in his neighborhood which was going off. (He lives in Baltimore County, Maryland.) The dispatcher received the phone number, his name and an address automatically. The 911 dispatcher read back the address that was displayed. It was where they had lived two(2!) years previously. When they moved, they kept the old phone number and gave the phone company his the address. Unfortunately, the change of address was not passed on to 911. Although it would be nice to have 911 come if you were in trouble and and could only lift the phone, I would like them to arrive at the Current address. (I know the people who live at my old address do not know my current address, although I assume they have a current phone phone book. Since I am listed, They could direct the police to my home.) Quite a waste of time, esp. in an emergency. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Sep 88 08:38:42 PDT From: forags@violet.Berkeley.EDU Subject: ANI on 911 calls The Alameda County phone book has a privacy notice right below the 911 number which warns callers about ANI and advises them to use the regular 7-digit number if they don't want their number displayed on the dispatcher's console. -Al Stangenberger ------------------------------ Date: 8 Sep 88 13:15:59 GMT From: brent%itm@gatech.edu (Brent) Subject: Another ANI scam (Re: RISKS-7.45) Here's another scam for ANI. Set up a free phone service: time and weather, point spread predictions, sports score line, Dow Jones business news brief. It's just a taped message someone can call into. Now set up a PC to capture the ANI information on people who call. Take the diskette of phone numbers to a service that offers CNA (customer name and address) and presto! You have yet another profiled mailing list ready to be sold to hungry marketers of sports equipment, business journals, etc. Where'd they get MY name? you ask. You'll never know. ANI is going to be big business. Just north of Atlanta is one of the new AT&T regional billing centers. Their goal is to fully integrate ANI with their customer inquiry department. So when you call 1-800 whatever, the AT&T rep will answer "Good morning Mr. Jones, how's the weather in Macon? I'll bet you're calling about that collect call to Bogota." They'll have your name, address, and billing info on the screen in front of them as they answer your call. Hmmm... try forwarding your calls to AT&T. What will happen? Brent Laminack (gatech!itm!brent) ------------------------------ Date: Thu Sep 8 17:48:01 1988 From: sun!portal!cup.portal.com!Patrick_A_Townson@unix.SRI.COM Subject: ANI Response Recent correspondents in RISKS have challenged my comment 'no good reason to conceal telephone number'. Examples of 'good reasons' include calls to hot lines, counseling services, police officials, and others. Here in Illinois, the law which enabled 911 Service, and required its implementation in all communities in the state also required that every Police Department have a seven digit administrative telephone number to receive non-emergency calls and calls made 'in confidence' by the caller. The Chicago Police Department & Fire Department can be reached through the main centrex number for the City of Chicago Offices: 312 - PIG - 4000. To reach individual police officers, etc, just dial PIG and the desired 4 digit extension. And not that I would expect everyone to know it, but you *can* override ANI on 911 calls in most cases by knowing which *seven digit number* 911 is translated into by your local phone office. Here in Chicago it is (or was) 312-787-0000. Calling that number reaches 'Chicago Emergency' just as surely as 911, and with only a blank screen for the dispatcher to look at in return. Apparently when you dial 911, your central office translates it into a seven digit number and sends encoded information containing *your number, and address* to the dispatcher when it puts the call through to the ACD (automatic call distributor) at the police station. Since posting my original article a couple days ago, I have researched this a bit further and find the general thinking among folks I have contacted at Illinois Bell is that there will be specific exemptions in the tariff for calls to crisis lines, counseling services and similar where those groups will NOT be permitted to subscribe to ANI signaling service. And those exceptions mentioned by the writers here do make good sense. As for stockbrokers and others who are likely to try and make a hard sell, what do you do now when these people routinely ask for your phone number in the process of taking your order/giving information? Refuse to give it? Give a false number? Whatever happened to your spines? Just say NO to the broker. Just say no to the Operator Who Is Standing By To Take Your Call Now.... Patrick Townson ------------------------------ Date: 09 Sep 88 00:30:10 EDT From: ROB.B%te-cad.prime.com@RELAY.CS.NET Subject: Proposed ANI Enhancement If digital data is going to be transmitted with phone calls, why not add a "classification code" (perhaps 3 digits) which may optionally be sent by the caller. Add to this legislation which requires all human telephone solicitors to send a digital class code of "001" with their calls, and all tape playing sales machine generated calls to carry a class code of "002". The phone company could then offer a "class selection" service whereby the subscriber could make his phone inaccessible to selected classes of calls. This is not without (manual) precedent. All companies using tape playing sales machines within Massachusetts are required by law to check the numbers they will call against a phone company maintained list of subscribers who have requested not to be bothered by these machines. This list must really work - I was on such a list and have only recently begun to recieve that form of harrassment, commencing right after my area code was changed from 617 to 508. Rob Boudrie ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Sep 88 10:09:55 EDT From: philhowr@unix.cie.rpi.edu (Bob Philhower) Subject: ANI blocking defeats purpose It is naive to think that an ANI system with a blocking feature (i.e. you prepend the number you dial with something like *21 to prevent your own phone number from being available to the party you call) would have any effects on those who abuse the anonymity of the current system. Anyone that concerned about his/her privacy would purchase a device to sit on the phone line and recognize the first dialed number, delay it, and send *21 before it. (If these don't appear immediately, I would certainly market them myself.) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Sep 88 11:00:46 EDT From: Dave Robbins Subject: ANI/911 Misconceptions It may be worthwhile to clear up some small misconceptions that have been appearing in the Automatic Number ID discussion. More than one correspondent has equated the 911 automatic identification with the calling-number identification just now becoming available to local subscribers. In fact, the two are entirely different features -- implemented differently and having nothing little more than their general behavior in common. In particular: 1) "Enhanced 911" (as it is properly called -- regular 911 is nothing more than an easy-to-remember and quick-to-dial number; it does not identify the caller) is implemented by essentially the same mechanism as ANI for toll calls. In both cases, the calling number is sent out over a trunk line, not over a local subscriber loop. As far as I know, this type of calling number identification has never been made available to businesses, as one correspondent suggested it might. 2) Calling-number-identification (there is a marketing name for this, but I forget it offhand) is a feature available only from the newest ESS and competing switches, and requires special equipment on the subscriber's premises as well as special hardware and software on the switch (and of course more money from the subscriber :-). As far as I know, each subscriber has the option of specifying -- permanently -- whether or not his number will be disclosed to others via this feature; the default value for this option would reflect the subscriber's current selection of a published or non-published number. In addition, as mentioned by some correspondents, on a given call a subscriber may choose -- via a dialed prefix -- whether or not to allow the display of his number on the called phone. Caveat: although I do work for a "phone company" my knowledge of the above is not necessarily 100% accurate or up-to-date, since I have not been directly involved with the gory details of these particular technologies. RISKS relevance? My concern is twofold: 1) Confusion between two apparently similar but in fact considerably different systems can result in the risks of the one being *assumed* to be identical to the risks of the other, when in fact this is not the case. In the example at hand, there is no assumption of a right of privacy when calling 911, but there is an assumption of such a right when calling everyone else. These assumptions are made by the respective systems, reflecting what is presumed to be the same assumptions made by the general public. Viewing one system as though it were the other changes the perceived risks. 2) Much of the discussion in RISKS on this topic (and others, of course) is based upon incomplete information and therefore incorrect assumptions about the technology involved. This is, I realize, a general problem, and perhaps unavoidable. However, when discussing the risks of technology, computer or otherwise, we need to take particular care to base the discussion upon the facts, so that we can discuss the risks of the system as it actually is implemented. Dave Robbins, GTE Laboratories Incorporated, 40 Sylvan Rd., Waltham, MA 02254 ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Sep 88 00:25:03 EDT From: attcan!utzoo!henry@uunet.UU.NET Subject: Re: Display of telephone numbers on receiving party's phone People are missing an important issue here: there is no one-to-one correlation between the number you are calling from and your identity. In particular, it is quite possible to have situations in which a call is not anonymous -- in the sense that the caller has no intent to hide his identity -- but does not want his location known. This is also the underlying problem behind having phone solicitors calling from uncallable numbers: what you want is identity and contact information, not just the number used to make the call. Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology ------------------------------