A 1-900 number to ensure non-tracibility. Does anyone have this number?
I would not trust this for hiding from law enforcement. You can get the 900 service's fone records with a warrant. If not law enforcement, then who do you need this to hide from? You can use a pay fone to fool caller-id boxes. Well, I guess they dont hide the city.
I would not trust this for hiding from law enforcement. You can get the 900 service's fone records with a warrant. If not law enforcement, then who do you need this to hide from? You can use a pay fone to fool caller-id boxes. Well, I guess they dont hide the city.
Well, if you have a pair of pay phones nearby, and the wires are concealed but accessable, you could rig it to answer calls on one line and then let the caller dial out on the other line. Only problem is that you have to use a calling card...unless you have a red box or rig a COCOT. ;)
We take for granted that long distance companies must record who called whom, and when, in order to tally the bill. The 900 redialer doesn't obviate this; it simply adds an expensive level of indirection. Could not the need for such records be eliminated by real-time payment of digital postage? Debit cards for phone calls already exist along these lines, but they are restricted to public phones; I envision home use to eliminate the need for monthly bills and the accompanying recordkeeping. Scenario: long distance company receives a call from one of its customer phones. It doesn't know which phone, only that the phone's local service area provider is requesting a connection. It notes the area code/country to and from to determine the rate, and receives the proper digital postage payment from the calling phone. It notes the destination phone number only in order to pass it on and complete the circuit. The long distance provider doesn't know the caller's phone number and doesn't keep a permanent record of the other information. The incoming d-stamp serial numbers are checked to make sure they have not already been used, added to the used list, and a corresponding amount of time is added to the call. A simple LED on the customer's phone displays the duration and amount of billing as the call progresses. When the phone runs out of d-stamps it could be refreshed from magnetic strips on cards bought at the local drugstore. In addition to new-found privacy, real-time billing would be more customer-friendly, providing the real-time feedback on charges that is expected for most other transactions (eg retail purchase of a good). No more phone bill surprises! (But please, let's not replace bills with rude robot operators: "deposit fifty cents, please"). Alas, there might be regulations requiring some kind of traffic recording to be dealt with in some jurisdictions. But then again maybe not, since such recording has been taken for granted. During the Ma Bell breakup here in the U.S. there sprung up a bunch of Mom & Pop long distance companies. Some of these, providing specialized services, still exist. Assuming no deadly flaws in this real-time postage scheme, if none of the major long-distance companies are willing to implement it, a small startup might rent bulk long-distance time from the majors and concentrate on the anonymous real-time billing system. Nick Szabo szabo@netcom.com
We take for granted that long distance companies must record who called whom, and when, in order to tally the bill. The 900 redialer doesn't obviate this; it simply adds an expensive level of indirection. Could not the need for such records be eliminated by real-time payment of digital postage?
Better yet, use an Internet based phone system. The phone companies draconian policies of billing for distance, time, and social standing are antiquated With the Internets method of billing for maximum usable bandwidth or connect time, it costs the same to send e-mail to another continent or just accross town costs the same. Distance based billing isolates people by preventing them from communicating with anyone but their neighbors. Internet style billing serves to create a sense of global unity limited more by language and access to technologie instead of geographical or political boundaries. A side effect of simplified billing and connectionless systems is that no records are kept of who contacted whom. In fact, it would be difficult even to make such records w/o having a specific target. brad
Nick Szabo <szabo@netcom.com> writes:
Scenario: long distance company receives a call from one of its customer phones. It doesn't know which phone, only that the phone's local service area provider is requesting a connection. It notes the area code/country to and from to determine the rate, and receives the proper digital postage payment from the calling phone. It notes the destination phone number only in order to pass it on and complete the circuit. The long distance provider doesn't know the caller's phone number and doesn't keep a permanent record of the other information.
It's been tried before. That's how calling cards worked in the mid 1980's. The long distance company had no idea where the call was coming from when it went into their credit card port. It didn't take the hackers long to figure out how to exploit the anonimnity of that system! Now all credit card calls are automatically traced. I like the billing indicator on a LED on the phone tho... It would be easy to implement too. Right after the call was dialed, the phone company could send a short tone to indicate the cost per minute, which would be interpreted by a microchip in the display. When the receiving party answered, a second connect tone (or even a click by change in voltage) could signal the indicator to start counting time... The call would still be billed at the end of the month, but at least you could see what your phone bill would be before you got it.
participants (4)
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Brad Huntting -
charliemerritt＠BIX.com -
Matthew J Ghio -
szabo＠netcom.com