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.


