Date: Wed, 08 Sep 93 16:36:30 EST
Errors-To: Comp-privacy Error Handler <comp-privacy-request@PICA.ARMY.MIL>
From: Computer Privacy Digest Moderator <comp-privacy@PICA.ARMY.MIL>
To: Comp-privacy@PICA.ARMY.MIL
Subject: Computer Privacy Digest V3#025
Computer Privacy Digest Wed, 08 Sep 93 Volume 3 : Issue: 025
Today's Topics: Moderator: Dennis G. Rears
should gas siphoning be de-criminalized
Does Anybody Care About the Right to Privacy?
Boston Globe Articles
privacy advocate position (Forwarded>
Re: Caller ID and 911
Re: Caller ID Blocking and 911
The Computer Privacy Digest is a forum for discussion on the
effect of technology on privacy. The digest is moderated and
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(Moderated). Submissions should be sent to
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Back issues are available via anonymous ftp on ftp.pica.army.mil
[129.139.160.133].
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Date: Fri, 3 Sep 93 22:42:35 PDT
From: Kelly Bert Manning <ua602@freenet.victoria.bc.ca>
Subject: should gas siphoning be de-criminalized
Reply-To: ua602@freenet.victoria.bc.ca
In a previous article, 0005066432@mcimail.com ("Tansin A. Darcos & Company") says:
>From: Paul Robinson <TDARCOS@MCIMAIL.COM>
>Organization: Tansin A. Darcos & Company, Silver Spring, MD USA
>
>I believe ANI on calls has been available for more than TWENTY YEARS.
>It has only been since the ordinary guy on the street has been able
>to obtain the identifying number of a caller in real time that there
>has been any bruhaha about this. Large businesses have been able to
>get real-time ANI by paying a small fortune. It is only since people
>discovered that their alleged private calls are not really private
>that there has been any question about this.
On the face of it you seem to be implying that the general public has
been aware of this for 20 years, instead of it being a dirty secret.
The exercise of privacy with regard to this "service" by the Telco's
and their customers is very ironic.
The general availability of caller ID is to ANI like PCs with CD-ROM
homebases are to the big iron. Caller ID made people aware that this is
happening so it became an issue. ANI isn't an issue yet because most
people haven't even heard of it.
Getting back to my revised title line, it does occur to me that your
point may be *so what if people haven't known, they haven't noticed
any negative effect in 20 years, so what could possibly be wrong*.
This is were the gas siphoning analogy comes in. If a few gas thieves
steal a few litres from you occassionaly in the middle of the night
you may never notice, apart from wondering why your fuel consumption
varies. If they start doing it openly in the middle of the day and
line up to do it you are going to complain and few people are going
to object to you exercising your property rights.
ANI steals privacy like a middle of the night gas thief. You seem to
think that it is more like a car reposession. The difference is that
someone who is defaulting on a car knows they are legally liable to pay,
and that they can't hang onto the car if they don't. Why aren't businesses
that use ANI honest with their customers? Why don't they tell them
that if they call an 800 number they have to pay with their phone
number, plus class of service and other personal data?
Whatever happened to informed consent?
>
>Funny, but whenever someone calls collect, the called party is given
>the number, just not in real time. And on a third-party billing, the
>number being billed gets to know *both* numbers.
And the caller knows exactly what is going on. Why don't they have a
right to be fully informed with ANI?
>
>> > Now there really is very little the CRTC can do anyway, if the
The least that it could do is require long distance carriers to fully
inform customers, at least by putting a warning in the information
pages about long distance dialing.
>
>Someone might want to ask, why all this sudden fear of something that
>has been status quo for twenty years or more?
Because suddenly people are aware of it and are experiencing the
consequences, just as they see the effects of cheap digital processing
everywhere they turn, instead of just in a few glass houses.
[Moderator's Note: Several things wrong here. First it was never
a secret. It was part of the process of how it worked. It was no more a
secret than North American Number Plan. Second, ANI does not steal
privacy, at worse you could make a case for anonymity. Third, theft of
gas is a crime, disclosure of a phone number isn't.
By, implication you are accusing businesses who use 800 service of
being dishonest. What would you have them do? State "If you dial this
800 number, the billing number will be shown to us?".
Fourth, inform consent, who should inform who? Should it be the
provider of 800 service (e.g. Sprint), the LEC (e.g. NJ Bell), the guy
provides the wiring (Acme Electrical)? Are you one of these people who
actually wants pages upon pages of mandatory disclosures? ._dennis ]
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 4 Sep 93 16:00:13 PDT
From: Kelly Bert Manning <ua602@freenet.victoria.bc.ca>
Subject: Does Anybody Care About the Right to Privacy?
Reply-To: ua602@freenet.victoria.bc.ca
>[Moderator's Note: Mr. Higdon is a big time user of 800 services as well
>as his clients. I do not disagree with your contention that "most people
>do not know that the 800 provider gets the caller's number". I would
>contend that 1) most people don't care 2) ignorance is bliss. His
>solution is simplistic but in reality that's the only solution. The
>delivery of ANI to 800/900 numbers is not going to stop because people
>want it to stop. ._dennis ]
>
I don't know where you are coming from with point 1 above. Every opinion
survey I've seen, such as the recent "Equifax Canada Report on Consumers
and Privacy in the Information Age", shows that the majority of people
in the both the US and Canada are very concerned about the right to privacy.
I'm responding to your comments because I've seen similar comments coming
from other people who should know better and I suspect that something is
happening that hasn't reach the state of open public debate yet. It sounds
as though those who oppose legislated privacy rights are making a case that
since most people don't seem to care about personal information in most cases
there is really no need to give privacy protection the force of law.
News broadcasts about the last US election mentioned that only about half of
US voters actually cast ballots. Journalists who made the effort to ask had
no trouble finding people who had never voted in their lives.
A right does not have to exercised, either consistently or ever, for
people to care about it and want it protected.
Applying similar logic to this would suggest that universal US voter
registration should be abandoned as a waste of time and money, and that
those individuals who wish to have some say in who governs them should
make individual arrangements and spare the rest of the taxpayers the
financial burden of voter registration and the cost of running elections.
Even people who have never voted would probably resist this, just as they
would resist attempts to make voting compulsory, or to make voting
rights dependent on consistently voting in every/most elections.
In an orderly law abiding society few people have much cause to fear
the release of personal information, but they have no difficulty finding
enough imagination to understand how others, such as stalker targets,
could need the protection of Privacy Rights. They also understand that
their own circumstances could change if some nutcase fixates on them
or someone in their family.
"I know where you live." has become something of a cliche, but it is based
on a grim reality that most people understand without having it spelled
out for them.
Few people expect to ever be tried for a major crime in their lifetimes,
but most are glad that they would have a right to a fair trial if they
were accused of a crime.
How many people will ever file a Freedom Of Information request in their
lifetime? A lot less than care about FOI rights.
Direct marketers claim that somebody out there just loves all the waste
paper and time wasting phone calls they harasses us with. I have never in
my life met one of these people. Everyone I've ever discussed this with
has no use for junk mail and resents their address being passed around
by anonymous companies without their consent. Is there anyone who likes
getting tele-marketing cold calls? By using coded initials and confronting
entities that refuse to treat my addresses as confidential I have been
able to eliminate all personalized junk mail at my home.
I still get some crap mail at my PO box from Realtors who haven't heard
that the use of Public Record addresses for solicitation or compiling
address lists is prohibited by BC's new Freedom Of Information and
Protection of Privacy act(public sector).
I like to flatter myself by thinking that my pursuit of this issue with
politicians such as the Former Minister of Finance, and with opposition
MLAs, such as the now Minister of Consumer Affairs, is responsible for
this restriction being included in the draft of this law under the former
government and the new one that was passed after the last election. Junk
mail with my name and address arrives so infrequently that I was able to
document 3 cases in which Realtors used property tax rolls for sending
me personalized solicitations. I also changed my tax billing address to a
PO box, but don't feel that this gives adequate protection protection for
reasons that I don't want to spell out to those that may not be smart
enough to think of for themselves.
The government body involved has agreed to suppress my street address
on the published tax rolls, but the arrival of another real estate
solicitation demonstrated that this is inadequate as relief. I will be
asking BC's new Privacy Commissioner to consider this matter when Bill
50 is proclaimed later this year.
I have been at this one matter since 1988 and am not about to quit until
the will of the public is given the force of law. Does this demonstrate
that someone cares and is doing something? If it ever is resolved I will
probably go on to other privacy issues.
Some claim that the high level of demand for Caller ID shows that the
public doesn't care about phone number privacy. The statistics for unlisted
numbers show quite the opposite. "Privacy Journal" recently published a
table of these for a number of US Cites. Rates ranged from the 30%s in
places like Seattle to over 60% in Los Angeles. Should Caller ID even
be offerred in cities where about 2 out of 3 home numbers/addresses are
unlisted?
[Moderator's Note: You're making a big jump going from ANI to privacy in
general. I just took a short poll of 10 of my coworkers. None of them
knew about ANI delivery and none cared either. As John Higdon says, it
just a phone number. ._dennis ]
--
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 5 Sep 1993 18:45:10 -0400 (EDT)
From: Eugene Levine <elevine@world.std.com>
Subject: Boston Globe Articles
For those who can get access to the Boston Globe, that newspaper has just
begun a series on privacy. It started on the front page of the Sunday
edition (September 5, 1993), and they say it will continue through
Wednesday. Article titles: "Data Rape. Privacy under assault in the
information age." (Sunday); "The list makers. How marketing giants dissect
our private lives." (Monday); "Fighting back. Europe draws a line while
America lags." (Tuesday); "Decisions to make. How can privacy be saved?"
(Wednesady).
This will probably arrive too late to let anyone catch the articles the
first time around, but the first article was good enough to look for.
Gene Levine
elevine@world.std.com
------------------------------
Organization: CPSR Washington Office
From: Dave Banisar <banisar@washofc.cpsr.org>
Date: Mon, 6 Sep 1993 15:34:55 EST
Subject: privacy advocate position (Forwarded>
>From CPSR FWD>>privacy advocate position (
Forwarded message:
>From oravec@cs.wisc.edu Wed Sep 1 06:16:36 1993
>Date: Wed, 1 Sep 93 06:16:34 -0500
>From: oravec@cs.wisc.edu (Jo Ann Oravec)
>Subject: privacy advocate position
>
>Privacy Advocate... Madison, Wisconsin
>
>The State of Wisconsin is seeking a person responsible
>for support and advocacy in development and implementation
>of state and local government policies that protect personal privacy.
>This position reports to the Privacy Council. Background
>in business and government application of information
>technology. Salary $33,000 per year plus excellent
>benefits. Applicants should submit a detailed resume
>and a statement outlining their perspectives and approaches
>to privacy concerns to Mary Becker (608-266-0058,
>FAX 608-264-9500), Department of Administration, 9th Floor,
>101 E. Wilson, P.O. Box 7869, Madison, WI 53707-7869.
>Materials must be received before 4:30 PM on September 27,
>1993.
>
> thanks--
>
> Jo Ann Oravec
> Chair, Privacy Council
>
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 7 Sep 93 11:19:04 PDT
From: Kelly Bert Manning <ua602@freenet.victoria.bc.ca>
Subject: Re: Caller ID and 911
Reply-To: ua602@freenet.victoria.bc.ca
In a previous article, wb8foz@skybridge.scl.cwru.edu (David Lesher) says:
>Others said:
># > How Does Line Blocking Work With Emergency Calls?
># > If you have Line Blocking and an emergency service provider
># > has Caller ID, the provider will NOT receive your number
>
>Typical Bell misdirection.....
>
>Notice the modifier "If" in the sentence. 911 does not use CLID. Never
>has. I suppose if you started up "Joe's Fire Dept. and Storm Door
>Company" you might get it CLID. But what good will the number do you?
>Do you go flying out onto the street in your ladder truck, while
>looking up the number/address in your Haynes Directory ;-?
Some communities may just be using basic Caller Id as a low cost form
of 911 service.
Here in BC 911 is something which individual communities negotiate the
details of with BC Tel. A recent news broadcast from Vancouver mentioned
that there had been a series of problems in responding to 911 calls on
one particular day because the computer that supplies the address of the
callers to the 911 operators had failed. The details vary from community
to community, with some paying for more sophisticated operations and some
refusing to pay BC Tel for any 911 service.
>
It doesn't seem to be a standard Caller ID setup, so I doubt that the
standard blocking method would apply here.
BC Tel also recently reminded subscribers of their right to list just their
number, as a free alternative to an unlisted number. This was included with
an announcement that they are now providing a locator service. Anyone who
wants an address which is listed can obtain it by calling BC Tel and paying
a fee. This applies even if the number has not been published yet. They will
provide exactly the information that would be published in the next phone book.
Canadian phone directories were reported to be one of the primary data sources
for Tetragon's "Homebase", which came out about 3 years before anyone heard
of Lotus Corp's plan for a similar US CD-ROM database of home addresses and
other personal information. The publishers said that they sent directories
to the Phillipines to be key entered.
--
------------------------------
From: Jacob DeGlopper <jacob@mayhem.student.cwru.edu>
Subject: Re: Caller ID Blocking and 911
Date: 7 Sep 93 21:24:05 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio
In <comp-privacy3.24.3@pica.army.mil> David Lesher <wb8foz@skybridge.scl.cwru.edu> writes:
>Notice the modifier "If" in the sentence. 911 does not use CLID. Never
>has. I suppose if you started up "Joe's Fire Dept. and Storm Door
>Company" you might get it CLID. But what good will the number do you?
>Do you go flying out onto the street in your ladder truck, while
>looking up the number/address in your Haynes Directory ;-?
Bethesda-Chevy Chase Rescue Squad, in Bethesda, MD, has CLID on their
incoming DC emergency line. This number is intended for residents of
Northwest DC who need EMS but don't want to wait for DC Fire to respond;
even though BCC is running into DC from Maryland, it's still faster.
Since it's not 911, they don't get ANI or E911 information, but depend
on CLID instead.
--
Jacob DeGlopper, EMT-A | Case Western Reserve University
jacob@mayhem.cwru.edu | Wheaton (MD) Volunteer Rescue Squad
deglop@snowhite.cwru.edu | Opinions my own...
------------------------------
End of Computer Privacy Digest V3 #025
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