Re: Is Anonymous Communication only for "Criminals"?

[Tim May <tcmay@got.net>]

At 11:20 AM -0700 12/20/97, Charlie Comsec wrote:

>Why would a pager company want to block calls from pay phones?  Haven't
>you seen that commercial (for MCI?) where the kids crowd into that phone
>booth and page someone to pick them up from school before the big
>storm hits?  Imagine if they had gotten a recording saying "I'm sorry.
>You can't page this number from a pay phone."  Really bad PR!

The general pressure to treat pay phones as things to be regulated away, to
be forcefully shut down (as in Chicago, if I recall correctly), and to be
treated as a Tool of the Devil has to do with the War on Some Drugs, of
course.

Because dealers use pay phones, they must be bad.

In a free society, companies would be free to offer various kinds of
blocking services. I surmise, though, that the pager companies are under
pressure from their friends in government to block pay phones more so than
they normally would.

(Even the _ability_ to block a pay phone, qua pay phone, must imply that
pay phones send out some kind of signal announcing themselves as pay
phones, which I had not heard of before. I assumed a pay phone was Just
Another Phone Number.)


The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^2,976,221   | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."