Forwarded message: Date: Sun, 15 May 1994 21:15:06 -0700
From: Phil Agre <pagre@weber.ucsd.edu> To: rre@weber.ucsd.edu 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: privacy@vortex.com (PRIVACY Forum) To: PRIVACY-Forum-List@vortex.com Subject: PRIVACY Forum Digest V03 #10
PRIVACY Forum Digest Sunday, 15 May 1994 Volume 03 : Issue 10
Moderated by Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com) 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.
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Date: Fri, 6 May 94 12:10:59 PDT
From: carl_page@rainbow.mentorg.com (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...
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Date: Wed, 11 May 94 02:39:45 EDT
From: johnl@iecc.com (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 compilers-server@iecc.com.
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, jlevine@delphi.com, 1037498@mcimail.com
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End of PRIVACY Forum Digest 03.10 ************************
-- Stanton McCandlish * mech@eff.org * 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