Remailers/PayPhones and Today's NYT

[Peter Wayner <pcw@access.digex.net>]

Today's NYT has an article on PayPhone salons that
offer phone booths to their customers. They buy the
long distance connection in bulk and resell them
to the customers so the customer doesn't have to
pay the high payphone charge. They're quite common
in poor sections of town.

The article mentions that the phones can be problematic
because drug dealers can use them to avoid phone taps,
but it seems to conclude that this is a small price to
pay for bringing the connection to the poor. Most customers
use the service to call their home country and speak to
relatives. 

I thought it was interesting that the danger of untraceable
drug dealers popped into the reporters mind when they were
researching the article. After all, they don't tend to 
mention illegal problems when they speak about used car dealers
or other services. 

-Peter