Re: Is Anonymous Communication only for "Criminals"? (was: Re: UCENET II and Peter duh Silva)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- gburnore@netcom.com (Gary L. Burnore) wrote:
On 19 Dec 1997 23:01:59 +0100, Charlie Comsec wrote: :Actually in the case of anonymous e-mail you have one additional :safeguard. You can ask to be blocked from receiving anonymous e-mail. Try :telling the telephone company that you want to be blocked from receiving :calls from any pay phone!
It's available now. The first to use it are pager companies.
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!
- ---
Finger
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."
At 10:56 AM 12/20/97 -0700, Tim May wrote:
I assumed a pay phone was Just Another Phone Number.)
My caller ID unit often identifies an incoming call as "Payphone". I also had an interesting thing happen to me about ten years ago. My home phone got listed as a payphone. When I moved and asked for a phone number, I was told none were available. The area I moved into was the fastest growing section of the fastest growing county in the country for two or more years running. It took about a month to get a phone number from an exchange that was from an area several miles form me. Then an odd thing happened. I never got a phone bill. I forget the exact details, but after several months of "free" telephone service, my phone went dead one day. When I called to inquire, I was told that my number was a pay phone, not a residential number. They finally fixed things up, and got my service restored. But there appears to be a database field that says a number is or isn't a pay phone. -- Robert Costner Phone: (770) 512-8746 Electronic Frontiers Georgia mailto:pooh@efga.org http://www.efga.org/ run PGP 5.0 for my public key
On Sat, Dec 20, 1997 at 06:20:04PM -0000, Charlie Comsec wrote:
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gburnore@netcom.com (Gary L. Burnore) wrote:
On 19 Dec 1997 23:01:59 +0100, Charlie Comsec wrote: :Actually in the case of anonymous e-mail you have one additional :safeguard. You can ask to be blocked from receiving anonymous e-mail. Try :telling the telephone company that you want to be blocked from receiving :calls from any pay phone!
It's available now. The first to use it are pager companies.
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!
War on (some) Drugs... they don't want to, they have been asked to... Most payphones can no longer receive calls because of this as well, and there are far fewer of them around in certain areas than there used to be ... Pagers are a favorite communications vehicle amoung drug dealers... As of course are pay phones... Public safety, service and conveniance come second ... -- Dave Emery N1PRE, die@die.com DIE Consulting, Weston, Mass. PGP fingerprint = 2047/4D7B08D1 DE 6E E1 CC 1F 1D 96 E2 5D 27 BD B0 24 88 C3 18
War on (some) Drugs... they don't want to, they have been asked to...
Most payphones can no longer receive calls because of this as well, and there are far fewer of them around in certain areas than there used to be ...
More like simple economics; after the breakup, a lot of pay phones were operated by companies specializing in this type of service. Pay phones are high maintenance, and their operators can only turn a profit by charging very high rates; if you make a quick call and ask the other party to call you back at the pay phone, the pay phone operator doesn't make much money. Can you site any legislation barring pay phones from receiving calls? I'd think that most pay phone operators would be glad to deny incomming calls if they were allowed to (as they often are), and wouldn't need to be forced. (If you carry a pager only so a select group of people can reach you, you may want to block pay phone calls - beats having crack-heads paging you instead of their dealer by mistake at 4:00 a.m. - OTOH, you meet a lot of interesting people this way ... :) ) -r.w.
At 10:36 97/12/20 -0500, Rabid Wombat wrote:
More like simple economics; after the breakup, a lot of pay phones were operated by companies specializing in this type of service. Pay phones are high maintenance, and their operators can only turn a profit by charging very high rates; if you make a quick call and ask the other party to call you back at the pay phone, the pay phone operator doesn't make much money.
Can you site any legislation barring pay phones from receiving calls? I'd think that most pay phone operators would be glad to deny incomming calls if they were allowed to (as they often are), and wouldn't need to be forced.
Can't a pay phone operator get paid a portion of incoming calls as well? If they can set outgoing rates to be very high, couldn't they set their incoming rates as well? (This is not an opinion, but a question.) I do know that depending on the arrangement, phone companies either carry all incoming call for free or cross bill incoming minutes to each other. - Joi -- PGP Key: http://pgp.ai.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x2D9461F1 PGP Fingerprint: 58F3 CA9A EFB8 EB9D DF18 6B16 E48D AF2A 2D94 61F1 Home Page: http://domino.garage.co.jp/jito/joihome.nsf To subscribe to my personal mailing list send mailto:friends-subscribe@ji.to
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In <199712210732.QAA12422@eccosys.com>, on 12/21/97
at 04:32 PM, Joichi Ito
At 10:36 97/12/20 -0500, Rabid Wombat wrote:
More like simple economics; after the breakup, a lot of pay phones were operated by companies specializing in this type of service. Pay phones are high maintenance, and their operators can only turn a profit by charging very high rates; if you make a quick call and ask the other party to call you back at the pay phone, the pay phone operator doesn't make much money.
Can you site any legislation barring pay phones from receiving calls? I'd think that most pay phone operators would be glad to deny incomming calls if they were allowed to (as they often are), and wouldn't need to be forced.
Can't a pay phone operator get paid a portion of incoming calls as well? If they can set outgoing rates to be very high, couldn't they set their incoming rates as well? (This is not an opinion, but a question.) I do know that depending on the arrangement, phone companies either carry all incoming call for free or cross bill incoming minutes to each other.
Currently I believe that pay phones are treated like any other phone number for incoming calls and billing to the customer (what money exchanes hands between telco's is another thing). While it would be possible for the telco to charge an inflated rate for calls to a pay phone some mechanism would need to be in place to inform the caller that it was a toll call (all payphones had a 999 area code as an example). - -- - --------------------------------------------------------------- William H. Geiger III http://users.invweb.net/~whgiii Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0 Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail. OS/2 PGP 2.6.3a at: http://users.invweb.net/~whgiii/pgpmr2.html - --------------------------------------------------------------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3a-sha1 Charset: cp850 Comment: Registered_User_E-Secure_v1.1b1_ES000000 iQCVAwUBNJzc/I9Co1n+aLhhAQJe7wQAhe/7licgPy91jlV1JQ1XzDgExE/YNdNX w07MD4DVS8KIpFfWIo702MXOe9TwfAC9j9SikPhycngIwrFTtv96lG+2xzvUjpTb ZIUICp3+2O2NE4WljkgK1p6KquHth9uWa02E5qAIDdd6x8OK+sJ1EaHxaz3mD9sp Kc56voHCuwo= =0iax -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
At 03:05 97/12/21 -0600, William H. Geiger III wrote:
(what money exchanes hands between telco's is another thing).
Actually, I was talking about the telco-telco billing arrangements... - Joi -- PGP Key: http://pgp.ai.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x2D9461F1 PGP Fingerprint: 58F3 CA9A EFB8 EB9D DF18 6B16 E48D AF2A 2D94 61F1 Home Page: http://domino.garage.co.jp/jito/joihome.nsf To subscribe to my personal mailing list send mailto:friends-subscribe@ji.to
Rabid Wombat
War on (some) Drugs... they don't want to, they have been asked to...
Most payphones can no longer receive calls because of this as well, and there are far fewer of them around in certain areas than there used to be ...
More like simple economics; after the breakup, a lot of pay phones were operated by companies specializing in this type of service. Pay phones are high maintenance, and their operators can only turn a profit by charging very high rates; if you make a quick call and ask the other party to call you back at the pay phone, the pay phone operator doesn't make much money.
That's a very accurate analysis, and that's precisely what's been happening in NYC, where a lot of pay phones are owned by small businesses now. They also want to either block the 800 numbers, or charge for calling them from their pay phone. Of course they'd feel differently if there was some way to pay for receiving calls there... :-)
Can you site any legislation barring pay phones from receiving calls? I'd think that most pay phone operators would be glad to deny incomming calls if they were allowed to (as they often are), and wouldn't need to be forced.
This is a comp.telcom question, but to the best of my knowledge, no, and it has little to do with the war on (some) drugs. --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- gburnore@netcom.com (Gary L. Burnore) wrote:
:> :Actually in the case of anonymous e-mail you have one additional :> :safeguard. You can ask to be blocked from receiving anonymous e-mail. Try :> :telling the telephone company that you want to be blocked from receiving :> :calls from any pay phone! :> :> It's available now. The first to use it are pager companies. : :Why would a pager company want to block calls from pay phones?
Because they (the pager companies) have been ordered to pay the charges related to calls made to their service from pay phones. 18.5 cents per call was the number the fed agreed to. Keeping up with the telecommunications industry is difficult, eh?
First of all, I was not aware that Politas was running a pager company when I suggested that it might be difficult for HIM to ask the telephone company to block all calls from pagers. Presumably an individual would have a lot less clout in such situations than a high volume customer such as a paging company might have. Second, as you can probably tell from his return address, Politas is located in Australia, where different rules apply. Third, I doubt that the telecommunications industry is any more difficult to keep up with than any other industry, provided you have some need to do so. Of the thousands of industries out there, telecommunications is not one that I follow intensely.
: 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?
Yeah, corny commercial.
: Imagine if they had gotten a recording saying "I'm sorry. :You can't page this number from a pay phone." Really bad PR!
Just as bad as the PR when you tell everyone your new 800 pager number and tell them "But you have to call from a real phone not a pay phone" and then explain why a pay phone isn't a "real phone".
Just don't sign up for pager service with a company that blocks calls from
pay phones, then. Then you don't have to try to re-educate everyone whenever
the definition of "real phone" changes. Let the pager companies pass along
the surcharge to customers who choose to be pager-accessible from pay phones.
I figure if an extra 18.5 cents is going to make that much of a difference to
me, I probably didn't want to talk to that person that badly, anyway. So I'd
either opt to not pay extra for 800 access, and let people page me at their
own expense, or else be more selective who I gave my toll-free access
number to.
I have a friend who has basic pager service with a local, non-toll-free
access number. He also has separate 800 service that rings through to his
pager number. The more expensive 800 number is given out more selectively
than the local number.
- ---
Finger
At 10:36 97/12/20 -0500, Rabid Wombat wrote:
More like simple economics; after the breakup, a lot of pay phones were operated by companies specializing in this type of service. Pay phones are high maintenance, and their operators can only turn a profit by charging very high rates; if you make a quick call and ask the other party to call you back at the pay phone, the pay phone operator doesn't make much money.
Can you site any legislation barring pay phones from receiving calls? I'd think that most pay phone operators would be glad to deny incomming calls if they were allowed to (as they often are), and wouldn't need to be forced.
Can't a pay phone operator get paid a portion of incoming calls as well? If they can set outgoing rates to be very high, couldn't they set their incoming rates as well? (This is not an opinion, but a question.) I do know that depending on the arrangement, phone companies either carry all incoming call for free or cross bill incoming minutes to each other.
There's probably is little incentive for the originating carrier to share their revenue with the phone operator. The originating carrier could try and pass on the added cost of the payphone usage to the caller but this complicates the call completion arrangements, including (probably) the use of an Automatic Voice Response notifying the caller of the additional charges. I've heard some U.S. cellular carriers are experimenting with "caller pays" billing. Does anyone on the list have experience with "caller pays"? An alternative to a change in billing arrangements might be to enhance the payphone. All the phone manufacturer needs is to add a feature which disconnects the audio from the handset, alternately displays the incoming caller's number and a request for payment in order to complete the call. The display continues and the audio is disconnected for as long as the incoming call is present. Deposit the money and the call's audio is connected to the handset. Operator is paid. If desired, the phone can request payment in amount and frequency which corresponds to a easily understood rate (e.g., a local call.) Possible problems: 1. Lack of information/loss of anonymity--if the caller has their Caller-ID blocked and neglects to temporarily turn it off the receiving phone will only be able to display "Unknown Caller," causing person waiting for a call to gamble that the caller is from the party expected, if caller turns off their Caller-ID block anyone near the phone can see their phone number whether or not the call completes or the expected receiving party is present. 2. Possible incompatibilities with existing payphone payment signaling systems. --Steve
Tim May wrote:
(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.)
Telephone switches generate (receive) a digit that is known as Call Type. Simplistically, Call Types may be 1+ for regular calls, 800 for 800 calls, Conference, and 0+ for operator/payphone call. One of the switch features may be some kind of call type blocking, or passing the call type to the termination side, such as the pager company computer. - Igor.
Steve Schear
I've heard some U.S. cellular carriers are experimenting with "caller pays" billing. Does anyone on the list have experience with "caller pays"?
I was totally amazed when I heard from a US friend that US cell phones
don't bill the caller! My immediate thought was "people can spam call
you and run your bill up, ouch!"
Must be weird having a cell phone where people can run your bill up
just by calling you.
In the UK to my knowledge all GSM mobiles and POTS lines are caller
pays all. The obvious thing to do is for the US cell phone suppliers
to "experiment with caller pays" billing, the only way that makes
sense.
(With the logical exception of 0800 (freephone) and 0345 (lo-call
half way between 0800 and 0345)).
(0800 = BT free phone, 0500 = mercury freephone; 0345 = BT lo-call,
0645 = mercury lo-call, 0845 = energis lo-call).
Adam
--
Now officially an EAR violation...
Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/
print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<>
)]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0
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:Why would a pager company want to block calls from pay phones?
Because they (the pager companies) have been ordered to pay the charges related to calls made to their service from pay phones. 18.5 cents per call was the number the fed agreed to. Keeping up with the telecommunications industry is difficult, eh?
Very interesting. That hasen't hit my area, as far as I know.
In addition, paging from a pay phpne (at least, where I'm located)
is of no use unless you're using a telephone number to alert the
owner of the pager to your location (which makes it easier to find
my friends, granted), since pay phones have been re-hardwired to
reject incoming calls.
Best wishes and fresh-roasted peanut taste,
The Sheriff. -- ***
I've heard some U.S. cellular carriers are experimenting with "caller pays" billing. Does anyone on the list have experience with "caller pays"?
I was totally amazed when I heard from a US friend that US cell phones don't bill the caller! My immediate thought was "people can spam call you and run your bill up, ouch!"
UK cellphone companies used to charge a rate to both the caller and the recieving party for cellphone calls (if I recall correctly the only companies operating then were cellnet and vodaphone, now there are two other PCS networks, orange and mercury one2one), are any US companies operating the same schemes as the new ones being offered over here (that is, one buys a cellphone then pays no line rental, just call charges up front, the advantages are obvious for those who make very few calls as there is no $40 per month line rental charge, but the calls are expensive (around $1 per minute)). Datacomms Technologies data security Paul Bradley, Paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul@crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul@cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: FC76DA85 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"
At 04:32 PM 12/21/1997 +0900, Joichi Ito wrote:
Can't a pay phone operator get paid a portion of incoming calls as well? If they can set outgoing rates to be very high, couldn't they set their incoming rates as well? (This is not an opinion, but a question.) I do know that depending on the arrangement, phone companies either carry all incoming call for free or cross bill incoming minutes to each other.
It's difficult to do, given the standard settlements arrangement, though perhaps that may change under the latest confusing rules. On the other hand, a pay phone carrier _could_ set up their pay phones with 1-900 numbers (which charge the caller extra) or similar arrangements. (To avoid burning many 900 numbers, they could have the caller call 1-900-PAYPHON and type in N more digits to specify the phone.) Besides the privately owned payphones not wanting to receive calls, the local telephone monopolies would prefer not to have poor people receiving their phone calls at the local payphone instead of paying for monthly telephone service, so they don't mind blocking incoming calls. And mobile business people who use beepers who used to get very annoyed because they be reached at payphones will just have to buy cellphones; cellphones cost much less now than a few years ago, and often the local telephone monopoly is one of the cellphone carriers. (They're usually also a beeper seller, but that's much more competitive.) (The last time I went looking for an apartment, I only had a beeper, and it was _extremely_ annoying not to be able to get callbacks.) That just leaves sellers and buyers of politically incorrect substances; the seller can afford a cellphone, but that's too easy to trace, or a stolen cellphone, but changing the number often makes it hard for your customers to know your new number. Meanwhile, the customer can't easily have the seller call back to a payphone. So the Drug Warriors like banning incoming calls at payphones (I doubt there's national legislation, but I think there are local laws in some cities, and the states telephone regulators probably make it easy also) and the payphone companies don't mind. The biggest losers are poor people, but nobody cares about them. Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
At 07:15 PM 12/22/1997 GMT, Adam Back wrote:
I was totally amazed when I heard from a US friend that US cell phones don't bill the caller! My immediate thought was "people can spam call you and run your bill up, ouch!"
Must be weird having a cell phone where people can run your bill up just by calling you.
You're actually using more cellular infrastructure resources for the call if you're the callee, because the carrier has to hunt down your phone to connect to you, and then tie up the same resources during the call. On the other hand, you can hang up on spam callers, and many services give you caller id as part of the cell service, so you can trace who the spammer is that called you much more easily and harass them right away, as well as getting a bill for it at the end of the month which you can also use to harass them. Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
participants (14)
-
Adam Back -
bill.stewart＠pobox.com -
Charlie Comsec -
Dave Emery -
dlv＠bwalk.dm.com -
ichudov＠Algebra.COM -
Joichi Ito -
Paul Bradley -
Rabid Wombat -
Robert A. Costner -
Steve Schear -
The Sheriff -
Tim May -
William H. Geiger III