phil@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Phil Howard) (09/09/89)
Since I just started reading this newsgroup, can someone (appointed by the
moderator?) give a summary of the reasons people believe that letting who
they call, in one form or another, know who they are that is calling, is
more a violation of privacy than is an anonymous phone call. I have heard
some legal arguments involving freedom of speech that indicates that
speech in an anonymous way is not protected. If courts accept that argument
I would surely expect it could be extended to Caller ID. It just depends.
When I worked at Ohio State, I received at my work phone literally HUNDREDS
of phone calls for a "Dave Applegate". A variety of different voices made
these calls, though I think there were some repeats. At first I told the
callers that no such person works there, lives there, or has ever been known
to be there. No such person was listed in the campus phone directory. The
callers always hung up without saying anything. Soon I started just asking
them who they were, but they hung up immediately. I was suspecting some
telemarketers. Eventually, after about two years of this (yes, TWO YEARS
averaging 1 every 2-3 days), I finally "trained" myself to make a totally
different response:
****RING****
Me: I R C C
Them: Dave Applegate, please
Me: Could you hold please.
(pause with handset mic covererd)
Me: He's not in, right now, may I take a message?
Them: No thank you.
(They hung up)
This repeated a few times, and I still wasn't finding out anything. So after
a few more months I got even bolder:
****RING****
Me: I R C C
Them: Dave Applegate, please
Me: Speaking
Them: Yes sir, I'm calling to let you know that your stock purchase has
been completed and you may pick up the certificates at any time.
Me: Thank you.
(They hung up before I finished)
After I did this, there were no more calls ever again. I suspect this was
a drug shipment!! Any ideas?
[Moderator's Note: I cannot see any reason at all to go back and hash over
all the pros and cons of Caller ID again. If you want to know all the
opinions on the subject, simply check out the last couple dozen or so issues
of the Digest. If you don't have access to these, I'll try to select the
ones which had Caller ID articles in them and sent them along to you.
Seriously, I think Caller ID has been worked to death here in the past month.
There is little more to say which has not already been said; and the messages
are going now more in the direction of telephony only coincidental to
politics rather than the other way around. I will print whatever messages
are left in the queue on this subject, then let's find something new to
cuss and discuss. The next time an *original* post comes in on Caller ID,
someone kick me if I print it and invite such a barrage of "re: mail" again. It
should be obvious by now no one solution will work for everyone. It should
also be obvious by now that this issue has sharply divided many people in
the industry itself. Consider how many rebuttals and counter-rebuttals have
been printed in our little Digest alone.
You'd think that people would realize the telcos have never sold *privacy*
as part of the deal. They sold only communication links, and the fact that
until recently the caller's identity was hard for the telco to ascertain
is not a valid reason to insist on the same 'privacy' now. The basis for
the industry is communications between people; not the privacy rights of
either, one it gets past the directory non-pub stage.
Don't everyone send this chap copies of the last two dozen Digests at one
time and cause his mailer to break or something. I'll select them if he
can't do it himself. PT]