salex@central.cis.upenn.edu (Scott Alexander) (11/11/89)
The decision was made yesterday regarding Caller ID in Pa. Here's the
text of the [Philadelphia Inquirer] article about it. One thing that I
felt the article didn't make clear is that the administrative judge's
recommendation was that Caller ID be made available with optional
blocking on a per call basis. He felt that this would not infringe on
the wiretap law.
From The Philadelphia Inquirer, 10 November 1989:
Caller ID is Approved With Slight Changes
by Larry Fish, Inquirer Staff Writer
Despite warnings that some lives might be endangered, the Pennsylvania
Public Utility Commission yesterday voted to allow Bell of
Pennsylvania to offer Call ID, a service that allows customers to see
the phone numbers of callers before answering the phone.
On a 3-to-1 vote, the PUC made only minor modifications in plans for
Caller ID, which vice chairman William H. Smith described as a
valuable service to help fire and ambulance companies save lives and
to discourage obscene phone calls and false alarms.
But commissioner Joseph Rhodes Jr., who wanted to permit Caller ID
only if telephone subscribers could protect their privacy by being
able to block identification, said in a statement that he feared that
"unblockable Caller ID will sooner or later cause the death or serious
injury of persons who have good reason to keep the identity of their
calling numbers anonymous."
For instance, critics fear that it would deter people from calling
suicide, AIDS, or domestic-violence hotlines.
In voting to allow Caller ID, the commission disregarded the findings
of one of its own administrative law judges, who ruled in September
that the service should be blockable, and also disregarded much of the
testimony at public hearings on the issue.
The commsision voted to require Bell to modify its plans for Caller ID
so that "private, nonprofit, tax-exempt, domestic-violence-intervention
agencies," the home phones of their staff members and law-enforcement
personnel could get free call blocking if they wanted it, so their
calls would not be traceable.
Under the PUC's order, no other Pennsylvanian would be able to get
call-blocking. Critics also fear that provision could discourage
people from giving anonymous tips to police, newspapers or other
investigators.
"I'm very concerned about this. It doesn't seem logical to extend
blocking to domestic-violence shlters and not extned it to rape-crisis
hotlines." said Karen Kulp of Women Organized Against Rape in
Philadelphia. "It may cause some people not to call."
To deal with such problems, the PUC's order requires Bell to help
social agencies advertise the fact that they do not use Caller ID.
Bell has seven days to modify its plan to meet the PUC order, a
timetable that the company said it could meet. The commission then
has one day to review the changes, after which Bell would be free to
offer it.
Bell plans to charge $6.50 a month for Caller ID. Users would have to
buy a device to display the incoming phone number, at a cost of about
$70. A Bell spokesman yesterday said that it most likely would be
about Jan. 1 before Caller ID became available.
But some opponents may try to derail Caller ID in court before then.
Rhodes, a former legislator who helped draft Pennsylvania's Wiretap
Law, has said that Caller ID violated one of its provisions, and a
challenge could come on that ground.
Dan Clearfield, senior assistant in the state Consumer Advocate's
office, said that the commission "only addressed a tiny percentage of
the problems" with Caller ID. He said that "we plan to study it
carefully."
If the consumer advocate decides to challenge the decision, he said,
it could either ask the commsision to reconsider or it could appeal to
Commonwealth Court.
Barry Steinhardt, executive director of the American Civil Liberties
Union in Philadelphia, said that "we intend to pursue the subject,"
though he did not yet know what course would be taken.
"We believe that Caller ID in the hands of the general public will
result in a signficant invasion of privacy," Steinhardt said.
Both sides of the Caller ID issue have claimed to be preserving
privacy and protecting lives.
Bell and others favoring Caller ID say that the service can speed
emergency teams to someone calling for help, and that it can
discourage obscene or nuisance calls. They also point out that
subscribers can choose not to answer the phone calls from numbers they
do not recognize, discouraging telemarketers, for instance.
Opponents cite, in addition to their concerns about crisis-hotline
calls, the prospect that businesses might use Caller ID to compile
lists of potential customers. Others point out that some Bell
customers are charged extra for unpublished phone numbers, and that
Caller ID would circumvent that service.
Caller ID, without blocking, has been offered for about two years in
northern New Jersey, and was recently introduced in Virginia, West
Virginia, and Maryland.
Bell says none of the dangers its critics fear has developed in those
areas. Opponents say there has not been enough experience to judge.
Scott Alexander
salex@cis.upenn.edu