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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 <eichin@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>
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 <Saltzer@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>
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 <XRBEO%VPFVM.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
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 <CCAse7-16@birmingham.ac.uk>
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 <andrew%frip.gwd.tek.com@RELAY.CS.NET>
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 <MCHARRY@BNR.CA>
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 <LADY%APLVM.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
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
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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
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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.)
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Date: Fri, 9 Sep 88 11:00:46 EDT
From: Dave Robbins <dcr0%uranus@gte.com>
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
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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
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