Date: Thu, 27 Oct 94 00:01:43 PDT
From: carl_page@MENTORG.COM (Carl Page @ DAD)
United States of America
Before the
Federal Communications Commission
In the Matter of
Rules and Policies Regarding ) CC Docket No. 91-281
Calling Number Identification )
Service -- Caller ID )
Reply to Oppositions
filed by
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR)
Carl Page
For:
CPSR
P.O. Box 717
Palo Alto, CA 94301
(415) 322-3778
CPSR/Portland
710 SE 73rd St.
Portland OR 97208
(503) 255-1309
August 17, 1994
Table Of Contents.
Summary 1
Introduction. 1
On Line Blocking Availability and Discrimination 1
Evaluating the Costs and Benefits of New Product Offerings 1
CPN Ineffective for Residential Customers 1
CPN's Value Minor for Business Communications 2
The Importance of Unlisted Numbers 2
CPE for Line Blocking 4
On the Appropriateness of This FCC Decision At This Time 5
Summary
The CPN and related Bellcore "Class" services have been carefully
implemented in most states in a process involving a great deal of
energetic public participation. The FCC's order would effectively turns
the clock back on public safety and privacy by preempting the actions
that the states were forced to take due to citizen involvement. One
respondent noted that it would be reactionary to withdraw features such
as line blocking that have already been instituted to provide public
safety and privacy.
Several responses to the Petitions for Reconsideration expressed sympathy
for the plight of law enforcement and domestic violence shelters under the
FCC's order, but the true extent of citizens who require line blocking
for their personal safety defies categorization, so the choice must be
left to the individual. No bureaucracy can respond quickly enough to
personal crises that create an urgent need for reliably anonymous
calling. For this reason, the FCC should require free per call and per
line blocking, preempting those states that donUt provide currently
provide free per line blocking.
Several respondents evaluated the costs of line blocking and compared them
to the benefits of the Calling Party Number (CPN) service. This invites
a comparison of the costs of CPN versus the benefits of confidential
unlisted numbers (the premier privacy protecting product), and other
benefits provided by the existing network. The convenience of being able
to screen calls using CPN probably would be offset by the increased number
of calls to screen. If we had to choose between confidential unlisted
numbers and CPN, we would have to reject CPN service altogether.
Fortunately, the free availability of per line blocking allows both
services to coexist gracefully.
It was noted in the responses that the value of CPN has been inflated by
the FCC. Actually it is a poor match for residential customers needs, and
is only temporarily valuable for business to business communications.
U S West argued that unlisted numbers are ineffective because even without
CPN they cannot be kept confidential. Actually unlisted numbers are the
most popular and important privacy and safety enhancing frequently
feature available, and they are frequently kept confidential. Several of
the respondents claimed that the availability of "cheap" imported CPE
devices which attempt to mimic the functionality of per line blocking
eliminates the need for the LEC to provide the service. CPSR contends
that CPE devices are not reliable enough to be used to protect personal
safety, and that relying upon them is inherently discriminatory because of
a deficit of multilingual customer education and technical knowledge.
Requiring the purchase and installation of CPE devices for line blocking
is also inefficient and harmful to the US economy.
Introduction.
The Calling Party Number service (CPN) is a "hot button" issue for many
citizens. It drew unprecedented public involvement in most of the States
of the union, which helped shape the service offerings in place now.
Without public involvement and without considering the requirements for
public safety established in the state hearings, the FCC has ordered a
stunning reversal of the major personal safety protections currently
provided in several states.
The FCC's order on CPN generated many requests for reconsideration. The
current FCC order looks a lot like the state's draft orders before the
public requirements for public safety and privacy were evaluated and
incorporated.
On Line Blocking Availability and Discrimination.
Many respondents to the petitions for reconsideration expressed laudable
sympathy for the plight of law enforcement and domestic violence shelters
who will face direct violent personal encounters if the Commission's
order is adopted as it stands. The danger to them of attempting to use
unreliable manual per-call blocking or CPE devices has been well
established in state hearings. For example Sprint supports line blocking
for law enforcement and domestic violence shelters, when approval is
granted by state legislatures or agencies. (Sprint's Opposition to
Reconsideration p. 6)
But many other people need line blocking. For example, it is not the
domestic violence shelters that need line blocking, but the victims of
domestic violence and their counselors, a minority of whom are housed in
shelters. Many of these victims stay in the homes of friends or
volunteers. In any of these locations, CPN is a threat because it enables
the abuser to monitor and control their communications.
But there are many other classes of professionals who deserve protection.
Many medical professionals who call their patients from home need line
blocking- particularly psychologists and drug counselors. Process
servers, AIDS clinics, and others can also make a case for why it is
important and in the national interest for them to be allowed to have
line blocking. Doctors may no longer make house calls, but they do still
make calls from home, and line blocking makes it feasible. Many of these
institutions, such as domestic violence shelters, are just scraping by
financially and are unable to afford to spend any money on CPE devices
that mimic line blocking.
The true numbers of people who need line blocking defies categorization.
By eliminating the option altogether, the FCC adopts a position which can
be described as murderously absolutist.
The FCC should require free per call and per line blocking, preempting
those states that do not currently provide these services.
Evaluating the Costs and Benefits of New Product Offerings.
Several of the Local Exchange Carrier's (LEC) Opposition to
Reconsideration submissions express concern about excessivly diluting the
potential of CPN by allowing customers to use per-line blocking to
prevent the carrier from selling their number to CPN customers.
(Bellsouth "Comments and Opposition" p. 16)
CPN is no more the primary business of the common carriers than timber
clear cutting is to the managers of New YorkUs Central Park. The earning
potential of such a business would be diluted if individuals were allowed
to prevent their favorite trees from being cut. But there are other
factors that make Central Park logging, like CPN, counter-productive to
society as well as unprofitable in the long run.
We need to consider the negative revenue implications of CPN as well as
the economic benefits of it. Some people will stop paying for unlisted
numbers when the service is compromised by Caller-ID. Some people will
be forced to purchase an expensive and inconvenient form of call
screening service or simply stop answering their phones when the ratio of
desired to undesired callers diminishes. The inability to control the
electronic distribution of oneUs phone number and personal profile will
impose many hidden costs on society as frustrated citizens withdraw from
some forms of commerce and communication. For example, some people
already avoid calling advertised 800 numbers because of the horror
stories circulating about the abuse of ANI derived numbers.
If you have a confidential unlisted number, your phone only rings when an
invited guest is calling, except for the occasional misdial. No one would
trade that for a freely available number that rings for all the riff-raff
that target you. It is costly to get up, stop what you are doing, and
study a Caller ID display and try to quickly guess who is calling based
upon the number or name associated with the phone they are using at the
moment. The CPN option also costs more money, which makes the unlisted
number choice even more preferable. But this poor trade is exactly the
choice that the FCC plans to force upon everyone.
CPN Ineffective for Residential Customers
CPN wasnUt designed from the ground up to be useful to residential
customers. It grew out of the obvious applications of SS7 switching, which
was implemented to improve the efficiency of the carrier's internal
operations. Because it grew out of the capabilities of the existing
hardware and software instead of being intentionally designed, glaring
deficiencies exist in the system from the perspective of a residential
customer.
The first deficiency most people notice is that in an ironic contradiction
of the service's most common popular name RCaller IDS, most calls cannot be
placed with the calling partyUs identity. The identity of the phone lineUs
bill payer will be sent instead. Many wives prefer not to introduce
themselves by their husband's name, but that is the only affordable option
provided by this offensive system. In fact in most cases the RidentityS is
just a phone number, which people are not used to recognizing by sight.
This is most useful to businesses who have computers to interpret the phone
numbers for them. Sprint Corporation (Petition for Reconsideration p. 9)
actually calls the FCCUs statement on the benefits of CPN, Rnothing more
than Tmotherhood and apple pie.U S when pointing out that no data are
available to suggest that CPN will have a dramatic positive secondary
effect on the economy.
CPN's Value Minor for Business Communications.
Nor does CPN provide much utility for the future of business to business
communications. Real digital communications such as internet based e-mail
are superior for business-to- business communications such as order entry.
They can provide privacy through the Digital Encryption Standard, security
through the Digital Signature Standard, and precision due to the use of
written language rather than the telephone network's obsolete reliance on
the human dictation of spoken orders. Digital communications also can
allow the interpretation or fulfillment of a purchase order to be
automated.
Adding less than 256 bytes of incomplete digital data to a telephone call
as CPN does is a far cry from the information superhighway. Digital
business-to-business communications such as e-mail or fax are growing
tremendously, and these services will continue to eclipse the value of CPN
for business to business communications.
The Importance of Unlisted Numbers.
Because unlisted numbers are compromised by a CPN system that does not
allow per line blocking, there has been an effort by parties that oppose
the reconsideration to diminish the value of this essential service, which
is in fact the most important privacy protecting telephone feature
available. For example U S West makes a surprising and perhaps offensive
statement about how their customers are incapable of keeping their unlisted
numbers secret.
> These kinds of remarks are themselves remarkable for the environmental
> factors they ignore. They suggest that the _only_ way, or at least the
> primary and most significant way, that a telephone number-- whether
> published or unpublished -- makes its way into the marketing industry is
> through the making of a telephone call. That is just plain wrong.
> (Emphasis in original. Comments of U S West Communications, p. 6.)
Actually CPSRUs comments addressed only Rconfidential unlisted numbersS
which are unlisted numbers whose distribution has been carefully controlled
by their owners as far as is possible. U S West continues,
> Like addresses, telephone numbers often appear Rin many public records:
> voting registration rolls, property assessment rolls, motor vehicle
> registration rolls, etc., all of which are open to public inspection. R
U S WestUs claim that residential customers are required to place their
unlisted numbers on publicly accessible government documents is incorrect.
US citizens are not required to have a phone, so they cannot be required to
provide a phone number. If institutional demands for telephone numbers
could not be evaded it would be possible to obtain a listed second number
or answering service. U S West continues,
> CPSRUs suggestion is logically flawed in its most fundamental
> particulars. A phone number of an individual is undoubtedly already in
> various databases. No single phone call made in 1994 or later is going
> to significantly affect that fact one way or the other.
The question is not how most people obtain the phone numbers they call -
the answer to that is obvious - the white pages. The question is whether a
person who asks for and receives a unlisted number should be given a fair
chance to keep it confidential, or whether the LEC will instead instantly
breach its contract as the customer understood it.
Suppose I obtain a new unlisted number today, and keep it secret, but call
RThe Fantasy LineS (an ANI subscriber that sells a list of their callers)
or a CPE based telemarketing data gatherer such as a ski resort. In a
direct contradiction to U S West assertion, a significant and unfortunate
change will have occurred with a single phone call. That single phone call
will have published the formerly confidential unlisted phone number in
widely available lists. A number that was secret one day will be available
the next for a small fee to every detective agency or telemarketer on the
information super-highway.
It is easy to keep an unlisted number secret when Caller-ID and ANI are not
in the picture. Just get the number, and tell it to nobody untrustworthy.
Millions of people have done this successfully for years. This is why our
famous and infamous notable citizens can have bedside phones that do not
ring all the time. Why US West claims that everyone's number is
"undoubtably already in various databases" is a mystery.
We should be careful not to assume that residential telephone customers are
happy with the current situation. In fact many recent media exposs such
as PBSUs NOVA entitled RWe Know Who You Are.S have shocked and alarmed many
citizens, who did not know how efficiently information on purchases,
sweepstakes entry forms, ANI calls and warrantee registration cards is
currently being distributed and collated.
Widespread availability of lists of unlisted numbers seems to be increasing
as information surreptitiously gathered from 800 and 900 number ANI
subscribers such as RThe Fantasy LineS are distributed.
The fact that many customers donUt keep their unlisted numbers closely held
secrets doesnUt imply that they want the carriers to distribute them to
everybody they dial or misdial. Unlisted numbers are essential for the
personal safety and political rights of many citizens. It would place a
profound chilling effect on public discourse if people taking unpopular
political positions knew that they were giving up the ability to have a
usable home phone. Even citizens who do not posses unlisted numbers depend
on their integrity for possible future use.
If we had to choose between a system that protects confidential unlisted
numbers, and the CPN system as a whole, we would have to choose to keep the
unlisted option. The presence of free line-blocking is all that keeps us
from having to oppose Caller-ID in general, since it provides a way to have
both the personal safety provided by the privacy of unlisted numbers and
Caller-ID.
CPE for Line Blocking.
Several of the respondents claimed that the availability of "cheap"
imported CPE devices which imitate line blocking eliminates the
responsibility of the LEC's to provide the real line blocking service.
(See Comments of U S West p. 11)
These imported CPE devices attempt to mimic the functionality of per line
blocking but without the trustworthy reliability provided by American
central office switching technology which was specified by Bellcore and
which has been implemented by the switch vendors at a considerable cost.
The order and some of the respondents praise the cost of CPE devices by
suggesting that they will encourage people to think seriously about whether
they really want to choose line blocking. But the cost of CPE devices is
not uniform and is therefore unfair and unreliable as a deterent. Relying
on a physical gadget unfairly penalizes rural customers who would have to
travel to a major city or pay a high ordering and shipping surcharge to
obtain one. It is difficult to explain why there should be a policy
difference between two mechanisms that supposedly provide the same
functionality. Why should line blocking be panned when CPE is praised
unless CPE gadgets are not really equally convenient or effective.
Mandating the use of CPE devices where line blocking is needed is
inherently discriminatory because only a well informed, technically
proficient minority of customers are affluent and numerous enough to be
targeted by the CPE marketer's advertisments. Only this small minority
will be aware of the existence of such CPE and be able to purchase,
install, test and operate it correctly. People who speak minority
languages or who never enter "Radio Shack" or similar stores are unlikely
to hear about this option. The LEC's are equipped to deal with people who
speak minority languages as well as communicating with people who have a
non-technical orientation, so only the LEC's can make sure the service is
available in a non-discriminatory fashion.
Forcing Americans to buy imported gadgets when better American hardware is
already in place that can perform the same function hurts the US balance of
trade and the U S economy. In addition, the switch vendors who spent money
developing per line blocking will not recover that investment if the
functionality is not used.
On the Appropriateness of This FCC Decision At This Time
It is too late to withdraw privacy protections that citizens of many states
expect, have accepted and grown comfortable with. However such protections
can be extended. The commission, the administration, and the carriers will
share the brunt of the outrage when citizens have their privacy rights
stripped away only for minor improvements in the revenues telemarketers
make through accelerated order processing and the sale of customer
profiles.
U S West suggests that the FCC is right to redesign the Caller ID system
without broad based citizen input because the commissionUs unique national
perspective causes it to see the overriding national public interest. (U S
West Comments, p.9) This is illogical because a telephone call works the
same way whether or not it crosses state boundaries. Therefore there
cannot possibly be any differences in the costs or benefits of CPN
technology between interstate and intrastate calls. The FCC is not
considering a new situation, it is merely reconsidering an issue that has
been more carefully considered before. The main difference between the
FCC's deliberations and the states is that the FCC has so far not had the
benefit of real information from real customers about their real personal
safety issues.
The FCC should not preempt the state's policies without careful
consideration of the reasons they made their difficult decisions. Most
states started out with a proposal much like the FCCUs current order, but
were pursuaded in the final more careful analysis to provide public safety
and privacy protections that go beyond the FCCUs order. Interstate
consistency is a laudable goal, but secondary to public safety. Interstate
consistency of public safety is the step the FCC should take, mandating
that both per call and per line blocking be available to all interstate
callers free of charge.
