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caller ID outrage from the FCC -- time to act (fwd)

Looks like the 2-pronged assault on privacy from Clipper and Digital
Telephony just grew another prong...


Forwarded message:
Date: Sun, 15 May 1994 21:15:06 -0700
From: Phil Agre <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: caller ID outrage from the FCC -- time to act

I've enclosed two messages from the Privacy digest about an outrageous 
FCC plan to undermine crucial privacy protections on caller-ID systems 
for telephones.  Caller-ID exists so that marketing companies can collect
information on unwitting consumers, and those same companies have lobbied
long and hard to eliminate simple, ordinary schemes to give people control
over whether this information is made available from their telephones.
Having lost this battle in many states, they have evidently moved to the
federal level.  But time remains for your comments to make a difference.
Please read the enclosed messages, judge for yourself, and act.

Phil

Encl:

Date: Sun, 15 May 94 13:23 PDT
From: [email protected] (PRIVACY Forum)
To: [email protected]
Subject: PRIVACY Forum Digest V03 #10

PRIVACY Forum Digest      Sunday, 15 May 1994       Volume 03 : Issue 10

          Moderated by Lauren Weinstein ([email protected])
            Vortex Technology, Woodland Hills, CA, U.S.A.
	
                     ===== PRIVACY FORUM =====

   	  The PRIVACY Forum digest is supported in part by the 
	      ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 6 May 94 12:10:59 PDT
From: [email protected] (Carl Page @ DAD)
Subject: FCC attacks

Private Unlisted Phone Numbers Banned Nationwide.
Law Enforcement Explicitly Compromised.
Women's Shelters Security Threatened.
Telephone Rules of 30 States Overturned.
Direct Marketing Association Anticipates Profit.

The FCC released its Report and Order And Notice of Proposed Rulemaking of
March 29th, 1994 (CC Docket No. 91-281)

With the arrogance that only federal bureaucrats can muster, the Federal
Communications Commission has turned the clock back on Calling Number ID
and privacy protection rules nationwide.

Have you ever had any trouble giving a direct marketer your phone number?
You won't any more.  Your Per Line Caller ID blocking will be banned,
thanks to the FCC Order which preempts the privacy protections provided by
30 states.

The order carefully enumerates the concerns of law-enforcement agencies
which need per-line blocking to do their jobs.  It mentions the need
Women's shelters have for per-line blocking.  (A matter of life and death
on a day-to-day basis)  It mentions that the customers who attempt to keep
unlisted numbers confidential will be certainly be thwarted.  (Can one
train all kids and house-guests to dial *67 before every call?  Can you
remember to do it yourself?)

But the Order dismisses all of these problems, and determines that the
greatest good for the greater number will be accomplished if RBOC's can
profit a bit more by selling our numbers and if the direct marketers have
less trouble gathering them.

The FCC doesn't seem to trust consumers to be able to decide whether they
want per-line blocking.  It praises the $40 cost of an automatic *67 dialer
as an appropriate disincentive that will benefit the nation by discouraging
people's choice of per-line blocking.

There was one part of the order I was pretty happy about, until I read it.
The FCC has also banned the sale of numbers gathered by 800-900 number
subscribers using the ANI system, unless they obtain verbal consent.  (Note
that no rules prevent sale of numbers from the presumably blockable CNID
system.)  The problem is that the only enforcement of the rule seems to be
that the requirement must be included in the fine print of the ANI sale
contract between the common-carrier and the ANI subscriber.  So it seems to
be up to the common-carrier to enforce a rule which is contrary to their
financial interest.  How can a person who suffers from publication or sale
of their number recover compensation?

The FCC is soliciting comments, due May 18th
in their Further Notice Of Proposed Rulemaking on two issues:

o       Whether the Commission should prescribe more precise educational
	requirements.
o	Whether and how the policies adopted on caller ID should be extended to
	other identification services, such as caller party name or CPNI.

I can think of some suggestions...

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 11 May 94 02:39:45 EDT
From: [email protected] (John R Levine)
Subject: FCC order on interstate Caller ID

	[ From TELECOM Digest V14 #208 -- MODERATOR ]

I picked up a copy of the FCC's Caller ID order, which is available by
FTP as /pub/Orders/Common_Carrier/orcc4001.txt or orcc4001.wp.  (Kudos
to the FCC for making this info available so easily and quickly, by
the way.)

Much of the order is straightforward and not contentious, e.g.
delivering CNID between local and long distance carriers is so cheap
to implement that neither may charge the other for the data.  They
also note that per-call blocking is a good idea, and that *67 should
be the universal code to block CNID delivery.

But the arguments they list against per-line CNID seem, to me, to be
astonishingly specious.

There are three blocking options 1) per call for anyone, 2) per line
for anyone, and 3) per line for special groups.  The FCC thinks, not
unreasonably, that it's a mare's nest to ask the telco to implement 3,
since they have to determine who's in the special groups and who
isn't.  Then they say:

	 43.  In the NPRM, we tentatively concluded that per line
    blocking unduly burdens calling party number based services
    overall by failing to limit its applicability to those calls for
    which  privacy is of concern to the caller.  The Commission noted
    that even in the case of law enforcement personnel, there may be
    a need to maintain calling number privacy on some calls, but that
    the same number may be used to telephone other law enforcement
    personnel, victims of crimes, cooperative witnesses, and family
    or friends.  The Commission asserted that in these types of
    calls, calling number privacy is not needed and calling number
    identification can actually be a valuable piece of information
    for both the caller and called parties.  The record reflects the
    useful nature of CPN based services, and the comments of
    Rochester illustrate that callers are likely to be interested in
    blocking only a small percentage of their calls.  The comments of
    USCG illustrate the usefulness of caller ID to emergency
    services.  In contrast, Missouri Counsel's analogy to unlisted
    numbers is inapposite because caller ID only permits parties
    called by the calling party to capture the calling party number,
    and then only if the calling party has not activated a per call
    blocking mechanism.  We find that the availability of per call
    unblocking does not cure the ill effects of per line blocking. 

    Moreover, in an emergency, a caller is not likely to remember to
    dial or even to know to dial an unblocking code.  For the
    foregoing reasons, we find that a federal per line blocking
    requirement for interstate CPN based services, including caller
    ID, is not the best policy choice of those available to recognize
    the privacy interests of callers.  Thus, carriers may not offer
    per line blocking as a privacy protection mechanism on interstate
    calls.  We agree that certain uses of captured calling numbers
    need to be controlled, and address that issue infra.  


In other words, per-line blocking is a bad idea because subscribers
are too dumb to unblock calls when they want to unblock them, although
they're not to dumb to block calls when they want to block them.

In paragraph 47 they note that where per-line blocking is offered,
telcos use *67 as a blocking toggle, so users can't really tell what
*67 does, but it doesn't seem to occur to them that the problem is
easily solved by requiring a different code for unblock than for
block.  In paragraph 48 they wave their hands and say that people who
care about privacy can just buy a box for "as little as $40.00 per
unit" that will stuff *67 in front of each call.  Thanks, guys.

The docket number is 91-281, with comments due by May 18th.  Comments
must reference the docket number.  Send ten copies (yes, 10) to:

Office of the Secretary
Federal Communications Commission
Washington DC 20554

Before you fire off a comment, please get a copy of the order, since
there's a lot of material beyond what I've summarized.  For people
without FTP access, I've put them on my mail server.  Send:

send fcc-cnid.txt	(for the text version)

send fcc-cnid.wp.uu	(for uuencoded compressed WP version)

to [email protected].


Regards,

John Levine, [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

------------------------------

End of PRIVACY Forum Digest 03.10
************************



-- 
Stanton McCandlish * [email protected] * Electronic Frontier Found. OnlineActivist
"In a Time/CNN poll of 1,000 Americans conducted last week by Yankelovich
Partners, two-thirds said it was more important to protect the privacy of
phone calls than to preserve the ability of police to conduct wiretaps.
When informed about the Clipper Chip, 80% said they opposed it."
- Philip Elmer-Dewitt, "Who Should Keep the Keys", TIME, Mar. 14 1994