From: leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Newsgroups: pnw.general
Subject: Re: CALLER ID
Date: 7 Sep 92 14:53:10 GMT
Article-I.D.: qiclab.1992Sep7.145310.24969
Reply-To: 70465.203@compuserve.com
Organization: SCN Research/Qic Laboratories of Tigard, Oregon.

gee7759@bcstec.ca.boeing.com (Glenn Elliott) writes:

>leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) writes:

>>He's a court offficer working out of his home. So he has the blocking on.

>Why?  If he's on official business, then he should not turn on blocking.
>If he *always* works out of his home, then he should have a separate
>business line that he uses for work.  A rather flimsy hypothetical
>situation, but it will suffice.

But what he's (justifiably) worried about is someone taking that business
line number and getting his *home* address from any of a number of
possible sources.

The rest of your comments are best handled by quoting what he told me
in email:

>However, blocking has a series of inherent problems too. (I base this on
>my perspective as a Child Guardian). At the moment, there are devices
>which have already caused grief for our contacts (more than us). They
>are those things which require a caller to type in a code before it will
>ring the called number. 
 
>I recently had a case where an individual had one of those things on
>his phone. I tried repeatedly to get hold of him, and finally had to use
>the only other option we're allowed. Since we're required to have direct
>contact, we may either use a phone (if we're reasonably certain that we
>are speaking to the right person), or, we send a State Trooper to go get
>them and bring them to the court offices. That's what I had to do here.
>Mailing a notice isn't allowed --I guess too many said "I didn't get a
>notice..." or "My mom/dad/spouse signed for it and never gave it to me."
>When we get involved, a child is in Shelter Care, and we have 72 hour to
>get the primary information and notify the parent/guardians of the state
>action.
 
>Now, to apply that to Caller-ID, I've seen a number of posts already on
>how people say "If I don't recognize the number, I don't answer." Ok,
>but *in my case*, if the call isn't answered, the person not answering
>is going to be taken from what they're doing, and brought under material
>witness warrant to the office. How loud do you think they're going to
>scream? 
 
>I just went through this --as I said. The person got belligerent and refused
>to cooperate. There's nothing we can do about this. As it turned out, this
>man was the only one who could refute the charges against the parents, and
>left us in the weird position of not being able to defend the parents so
>their baby could be returned. I won't go into the whole thing, but it got
>pretty ugly, and the only one who really suffered was the baby, and all
>because this person had a call blocker. It was a month before he calmed
>down enough to talk to us, and then we were able to get Child Protective to
>return the baby to its parents. In simple terms, that stunk. I lay it at
>the feet of existing laws, and that stupid call blocker.

-- 
Leonard Erickson		      leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com
CIS: [70465,203]			 70465.203@compuserve.com
FIDO:   1:105/51	 Leonard.Erickson@f51.n105.z1.fidonet.org
(The CIS & Fido addresses are preferred)
Newsgroups: pnw.general