Re: Position escrow

[Bill Frantz <frantz@netcom.com>]

At 5:01 PM -0800 4/21/98, Dan Geer wrote:
>    This is a really difficult issue.
>
>And how.
>
>How does this interact with phones whose
>access (telephone) number is non-unique?
>Could where I am calling from be divorced
>from what instrument I am using to call?
>Is there a parallel between smearing the
>signal over a spectrum of radio frequencies
>and smearing the identifying information
>over a spectrum of numbers? Could calls
>to 911 carry no phone number but just
>"here I am" information -- a panic button
>function, in other words?

Part of the problem in devising technical fixes for this problem is that
the technology needs some idea of position in order to operate.  Even if we
keep it to, "somewhere in cell X", there is incentive to make cells smaller
as usage increases.

One interesting, but unlikely possibility is an originate-only phone which
pays for calls with cash (e.g. Digicash, or a prepaid phone activation
card).  Since it can't receive calls, it doesn't need an identity.  What
would come out of the system is, "Someone in cell X called telephone number
Y."


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