fred@dtix.ARPA (Blonder) (03/22/89)
Regarding the brouhaha over the privacy issuse of ANI: I suggest that,
rather than displaying the caller's phone number, the system display a
caller-selectable id. Perhaps the encoding scheme and display units
could be expanded to include alphabetic text, and these ids would be
used the same way as .signature files are.
That way the caller could include whatever information they consider
relevant, wherether it be their phone number, P.O. Box number, or shoe
size, complete with a snappy quote. Most likely you would want to have
a half-dozen or so to select from, with varying amounts of information,
depending on who you were calling. (If you like to order merchandise
from 800-numbers in late-night TV ads, you might be insane enough to
include your credit card number.) When you call the local Pizza-by-phone
joint, you might want to give your street address, but not your phone
number. You could display your business number when calling from home,
and vice-versa.
The exact content of the messages would be up to the discretion of the
person in whose name the phone is listed, with the only restriction
being that the local phone comany wouldn't permit a message that is
criminally fraudulent.
Regarding the argument: "Suppose I miss an emergency call because it
came from a 'strange' phone: Currently, if you are willing to declare
an emergency you can have an operator cut in on a call-in-progress;
why couldn't an operator put a call through with some appropriate
status ("911"?) as the originating code, if the caller is willing
to declare an emergency, and with the usual penalties for abusing
this service?
-----
Fred Blonder <fred@dtix.arpa>
David Taylor Research Center
(202) 227-1428