From: vanembur@romulus.rutgers.edu (Bill Van Emburg)
Newsgroups: alt.privacy,misc.consumers
Subject: Re: capturing caller id data
Date: 13 Apr 92 15:20:11 GMT
Followup-To: alt.privacy
Distribution: usa
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

In article <1992Apr7.135800.25992@mailer.cc.fsu.edu> otto@fsu1.cc.fsu.edu (John Otto) writes:

> 99% of it [the network that provides caller ID service]
		has been implemented for over ten years.  It's all a part of 
> the ISDN standards (see John MacNamara _Technical Aspects of Data 
> Communications_) which included "calling line identification" and
> "called line identification" as part of the scheme to keep destinations
> of packets sorted out - a quite legitimate use.

First of all one should keep in mind that standards are one thing,
technology to implement those standards is another, all the standards
organizations *agreeing* with each other is another, and actual
placement of all this great technology is another still.  Many
standards that provide for out-of-band digital signalling (which is
*really* the backbone of the new network -- SS7) were toyed with.
Now, there is agreement between national and international groups
about which is the "right" way to go.

Technology has only reached a level that provides "SS7" signalling
fairly recently (within the past few years), and not all vendors of
telecommunications equipment have reached this level.  Finally, the
actual placement of the SS7 signalling network is underway, but is far
from complete.  The first scheduled wide-spread demonstration of
interconnection between local exchange companies and interexchange
carriers will take place at an event known as TRIP '92 this November
(in the D.C. area, I believe).

Also, each local central office (where your telephone wires meet a
telephone switch) must be "new" enough to handle the digital
signalling environment.  Many, many offices throughout the country are
not yet this far along -- this is why Caller ID, Call Trace, and many
other services are provided in "service-capable areas" only.
Depending on where in the country you are, it may be quite a few years
yet before you see the "wonders" of digital switching and the SS7
network.

One other relevant note -- the ISDN standards (as you may have
surmised from my discussion of SS7) really have little to do with
providing caller ID and other so-called "intelligent" services.  These
standards have to do with an advanced type of telephone line (to
over-simplify).  There are provisions for interconnecting ISDN lines
to the SS7 network smoothly, and the architectures of these two
protocols are similar, but they are not the same.


> TPC realized that they
> could re-package it and sell it to tele-marketers and residential
> customers fairly recently - a development quite typical of other
> privacy violation schemes (e.g. "well, we're already collecting this
data,
> so, if we buy this data base and that data base, we can correlate it
all
> and we'll have all of the customers' life purchasing histories"). 
>
 ..speaking of data that's already being collected, did you know that
every time you call an 800, 900 or 700 number, there is a good chance
that your phone number is being sent to the business on the other end
of the phone??  If the company providing the 800 or similar service
(one of the long distance carriers) is connected to the local phone
company using something called "Feature Group D" then they receive
your phone number along with other call setup information.  This has
been done for a lot longer than Caller ID has been around.  The
signalling method is totally different, but there were never really
many complaints about it, partially because consumers didn't realize
that their number was being sent out.  Also, many companies providing
the actual content of the 800 service do not have the right equipment
to receive this information.
-- 

					-BVE
					(er..that's Bill Van Emburg)
					(vanembur@remus.rutgers.edu)
Newsgroups: alt.privacy,comp.org.eff.talk,alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk