TELECOM Moderator <telecom@eecs.nwu.edu> (04/11/90)
US West in Minneapolis is taking a technological leap backward in an effort to fight the drug problem in that community. What they have done is replaced touch-tone pay phones with rotary dial models at about eighteen locations in Minneapolis and St. Paul to make it harder for drug dealers to conduct business with telephone pagers. A common way of purchasing drugs is to telephone a drug dealer's pager and then punch in a phone number or some other pre-arranged code, according to police. The dealer responds by calling back to the phone number indicated on the digital pager, or by showing up with the drugs in the manner prescribed by the coded message. Because most pagers -- or at least the digital ones which require numeric entry -- won't work unless the caller has a touch-tone phone to use in entering the information, drug buyers and dealers cannot use the rotary phones. According to Minneapolis City Council member Jackie Cherryhomes, there has been a noticable decrease in drug traffic at the locations where the phones have been converted back to rotary. But I always thought modern, well-equipped drug dealers carried portable cellular phones with them, in which case the method of dialing would not matter. According to Ms. Cherryhomes, this is not the case. The use of digital beepers is far more common. US West has also converted a number of payphones in the Minneapolis area and elsewhere to be one-way outgoing lines. This has also helped reduce drug traffic in the area where those phones are located. Although there were requests to remove the pay phones entirely in those locations, US West resisted doing so saying many poor people in the community without phone service of their own depended heavily on the ability to use a nearby pay phone. Patrick Townson
Rich Zellich <zellich@stl-07sima.army.mil> (04/11/90)
Sounds to me like the local Radio Shack should stock up on the little credit-card-size tone generators/dialers ... it shouldn't be too long before the drug dealers and/or their customers realize a $10 shirt- pocket gadget is all they need to resume business as usual. (I can see it now - the city council/aldermen/whatever trying to add pocket dialers to the list of prohibited "drug paraphernalia", followed by the police raiding Radio Shack, Target, and Venture electronics departments.)
karl@ddsw1.mcs.com (Karl Denninger) (04/11/90)
In article <6248@accuvax.nwu.edu> telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) writes: >What they have done is replaced touch-tone pay phones with rotary dial >models at about eighteen locations in Minneapolis and St. Paul to make >it harder for drug dealers to conduct business with telephone pagers. >A common way of purchasing drugs is to telephone a drug dealer's pager >and then punch in a phone number or some other pre-arranged code, >according to police. But the "astute" drug customer does have a way to continue to reach his or her dealer -- simply toddle down to the local Radio Shack store and buy one of their $10.00 tone encoders. Now you are independant of the Bell Co's DTMF pad, and you can still page people. With the amount of money that changes hands daily in the drug trade, I wouldn't be surprised if some dealers start GIVING the encoders to their "better" customers. So much for that strategy. I used to have one of these (before it broke) for a different purpose -- my home phone was rotary dial, and I wanted to be able to use some of the 950xxxx numbers to make long-distance calls -- which required an access code. With rotary service, entering said code was impossible, thus the encoder. I wonder how many DTMF encoders Radio Shack will sell in the next couple of months. I can see it now -- some guy in Radio Shack wanting to buy 100 DTMF encoder boxes.... :-) Karl Denninger (karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM, <well-connected>!ddsw1!karl) Public Access Data Line: [+1 708 566-8911], Voice: [+1 708 566-8910] Macro Computer Solutions, Inc. "Quality Solutions at a Fair Price"
ardai@sun.com (04/11/90)
This is from Tuesday's (4/10) [Washington Post]:
Dialing For Drug Dealers (Assoc Press, St. Paul Minn)
"A telephone company is taking a technological leap backward in an
effort to fight the drug problem.
US West has replaced push button pay phones with rotary models in
about 18 Twin Cities locations to make it harder for drug dealers to
conduct business with telephone pagers, US West spokesman Mike Breda
said.
Because most pagers don't work unless the call comes from a
push-button phone, drug dealers with pagers can't use the rotary
phones.
Pagers have become a way of life for dealers, who often fear their
telephone lines are tapped. Customers order drugs by telephoning a
dealer's pager and then punching in a phone number or a prearrainged
code, police say. "
--------------------
I guess the police have never heard of those little tone pads that can
be picked up at RS! Just another way for the phone company to
complicate the lives of average people without actually having an
effect on the real problem.
Michael L. Ardai Teradyne EDA ...!sun!teda!maven.dnet!ardaiCarl Moore (VLD/VMB) <cmoore@brl.mil> (04/11/90)
I haven't seen the ideas in the moderator's message before, except that I saw (on Washington [DC] Post microfilm) a move in some neigh- borhoods in DC to change payphones to outgoing-only.
tep@logicon.com (Tom Perrine) (04/12/90)
>A common way of purchasing drugs is to telephone a drug dealer's pager >and then punch in a phone number or some other pre-arranged code, >according to police. The dealer responds by calling back to the phone >number indicated on the digital pager, or by showing up with the drugs >in the manner prescribed by the coded message. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ See below. >Because most pagers -- or at least the digital ones which require >numeric entry -- won't work unless the caller has a touch-tone phone >to use in entering the information, drug buyers and dealers cannot use >the rotary phones. I heard the whole story on NPR. One thing that was emphasized was that is *was* still possible to use these phones, by using an outboard (hand-held) touch-tone generator, but as the spokeperson explained, "most of the dealers and buyers aren't sophisticated enough to know that they can buy this device for about $14 at a phone store." They are now :-). >But I always thought modern, well-equipped drug dealers carried >portable cellular phones with them, in which case the method of >dialing would not matter. According to Ms. Cherryhomes, this is not >the case. The use of digital beepers is far more common. It appears that pagers are preferred because *no voice* need be transmitted to set up a deal, e.g. wiretap evidence is just a set of numbers. To be used as evidence, a prosecutor would have to prove that those numbers meant "meet me at place X to do the deal", instead of being just a phone number or "lets do lunch". Tom Perrine (tep) Logicon (Tactical and Training Systems Division) San Diego CA (619) 455-1330 Internet: tep@tots.Logicon.COM GENIE: T.PERRINE UUCP: nosc!hamachi!tots!tep -or- sun!suntan!tots!tep
Dean Riddlebarger <dean@truevision.com> (04/12/90)
Yeesh, what a PR gimmick! It smacks of the bandwagon effect in terms of moral content, but it is elegant in the way it calms the community for a little while. Now let's see ... if I'm a dealer using a paging setup I'm probably not using it for major end-user sales, but rather for a wholesale link. So if this move screws with my logistics in the short term, I just run down to the local electronic supply and grab a handful of the hand-held tone units. [Remember those? Right after divestiture people with rotary home phones were buying them like crazy so they could access their new MCI etc. accounts.] Kinda sounds like another situation along the lines of the '900 numbers for porn' controversy. Pity the telcos have to get dragged into the middle of it all. dean riddlebarger uunet!epicb!dean dean@truevision.com
rpw3%rigden.wpd@sgi.com (Rob Warnock) (04/12/90)
In article <6248@accuvax.nwu.edu> telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) writes: | US West in Minneapolis is taking a technological leap backward in an | effort to fight the drug problem in that community. | What they have done is replaced touch-tone pay phones with rotary dial | models at about eighteen locations in Minneapolis and St. Paul to make | it harder for drug dealers to conduct business with telephone pagers. Minutely harder, maybe. But I've carried a Radio-Shack tone generator pad in my briefcase for years (to pick up messages from my home answering machine). You hold it to the mike and DTMF all you like. At a mere $20.00 (several years ago, gotta be cheaper now), the price isn't gonna stop anyone who wants one... Rob Warnock, MS-9U/510 rpw3@sgi.com rpw3@pei.com Silicon Graphics, Inc. (415)335-1673 Protocol Engines, Inc. 2011 N. Shoreline Blvd. Mountain View, CA 94039-7311
cramer@uunet.uu.net (Clayton Cramer) (04/13/90)
In article <6266@accuvax.nwu.edu>, zellich@stl-07sima.army.mil (Rich Zellich) writes: # Sounds to me like the local Radio Shack should stock up on the little # credit-card-size tone generators/dialers ... it shouldn't be too long # before the drug dealers and/or their customers realize a $10 shirt- # pocket gadget is all they need to resume business as usual. # (I can see it now - the city council/aldermen/whatever trying to add # pocket dialers to the list of prohibited "drug paraphernalia", followed # by the police raiding Radio Shack, Target, and Venture electronics # departments.) Don't laugh -- last year a Congresswoman from Maryland introduced a bill that would make it a 3-year prison sentence for selling, renting, or lending a pager to someone under 21. These morons never learn, do they? Clayton E. Cramer {pyramid,pixar,tekbspa}!optilink!cramer Disclaimer? You must be kidding! No company would hold opinions like mine! [Moderator's Note: And indeed, in the City of Chicago it is against the law for a person of school age to carry a paging device on their person when on school property. Exceptions are made in cases of medical situations or other family emergencies which have been verified. Their thinking was the kids were using the beepers for drug running. PT]
john@bovine.ati.com (John Higdon) (04/14/90)
Clayton Cramer <optilink!cramer@uunet.uu.net> writes: > Don't laugh -- last year a Congresswoman from Maryland introduced a > bill that would make it a 3-year prison sentence for selling, renting, > or lending a pager to someone under 21. I think US West (by installing rotary phones) and our congresscritters (as mentioned above) are going about this all wrong. Without incurring the ire of anyone except possibly the curmugeons reading this forum, the area could be declared a "COCOT Zone" and only COCOTs would be allowed there. This would effectively prevent any useful communications to or from any drug dealers. I don't know how many times a COCOT has prevented me from checking my voice mail. The same roadblocks would also prevent activation of pagers! John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@bovine.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !
Mark Earle <mearle@pro-party.cts.com> (04/14/90)
Patrick,
Well, that's interesting. I wonder how quickly the paging
companies will offer rotary operated service. It is available, but not
generally used, because at peak times (lunch) it keeps the paging
terminal tied up; fewer people can complete pages, since it takes
longer w/rotary. But it *is* available.
On a related note, in my little corner of Texas, built a decoder
which monitors the paging channel with a receiver, and displays on
screen what numbers were sent. The format is widely published. I
further ran it through a simple data base. This showed pager addresses
(no idea what phone number went w/what address; but it let me see who
got a lot of pages) and could flag other than seven digit entries,
i.e., non-phone numbers. Lots of fun. I suspect just from the traffic
pattern alone, lots of 'interesting' things must be done via pagers!
I'm sure if I figured out how to do this, it can be done by any
professional/law enforcement type. Guess the rub would be getting such
collected data admitted as evidence, in light of the ECPA, Comm. act
of 1934 as amended, etc.
I guess the drug dealers don't like voicemail, since retrieving
the messages would be admittable evidence if they did it from a court
approved wiretapped line ... no, wait, they could playback their
voicemail with a cell phone ... yeah, that's it, since cell phone calls
are sacred and private! <grin> Then all the 'customer' needs is a
phone, no signalling at all ... and the 'dealer' just uses his cmt, say,
once an hour, to scoop up the messages ... wonder if this will come to
pass ... you heard it here first.
RE: voicemail. Here, most paging/cmt provideres offer voice mail
in conjunction with your pager/cmt, or as a stand alone, for about
$10/month per mailbox. It's a cheap way to get a remote-controlable
answering machine, special number for promotions, etc. I liked it in
lieu of giving out my digital pager number. The caller had time to
leave a detailed message, and I got the benefit of short term storage
for later replay, and all msgs were date-time stamped -- great for a
service person with a limited response time, prevents fudging the
'start of notification of trouble' time.
Mark Earle
Pro-Sparlkin, Corpus Christi, Tx