Subject: [Newsbytes Editorial] Caller Line ID

From: Carl M Kadie <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 May 1993 19:26:26 GMT

Copyright 1992 by Newsbytes. Reposted with permission from the
ClariNet Electronic Newspaper newsgroup clari.nb.telecom.  For more
info on ClariNet, write to [email-masked] or phone 1-800-USE-NETS.

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, U.S.A., 1993 APR 30 (NB) -- By Robert
Jacobson. It may be too late to resuscitate the corpse, but 
the chorus of mourners crying crocodile tears for Caller ID has
recently risen in volume. Are the telephone companies at it 
again? 

Probably not. But it's remarkable nonetheless how many supposedly 
well-informed commentators are still repeating the nonsense that 
characterized the campaign for Caller ID, ignorant still of the 
many reasons why the service doomed itself. Caller ID was the 
modern technological tragedy.

Recently, Newsbytes ran an editorial lamenting the many
regulations and restrictions imposed on Caller ID by state authorities
which, taken together, nailed the coffin on the beast. The author,
recited the arguments once more vocally advanced by the telephone
companies -- arguments such as Caller ID would in some way protect 
the personal privacy of telephone customers.

I don't agree. For more than three years, as a senior policy
analyst with the California Legislature, I studied Caller ID and its
implications for personal privacy. My conclusion: Caller ID would not
protect personal privacy. Far from it -- the service was designed as
a tool for direct marketers and its implementation, had it succeeded,
would have seriously eroded personal privacy for every telephone
customer.

There's nothing mysterious about these conclusions. From its
inception, Caller ID was heralded by the telephone companies as a
marketer's dream, the ideal way to collect information about customers
and others who might call businesses equipped with the appropriate
technology. Every time a limitation was imposed on Caller ID, making
it possible (for example) for customers to suppress the automatic
transfer of their identifying data, the telcos protested that this
would destroy the "value" of the service. By value they meant the
desirability of the service for the purpose of collecting personal
information.

Why would the telephone companies take this line? I asked this
question of many telephone executives; few could provide a persuasive
rationale for privacy protection. On the contrary, the intention of
the telephone companies, quite baldly stated on several occasions, was
to move the telephone industry into the center of commerce. The
personal telephone number, possibly the single most important artifact
of information possessed by most Americans, is the closest thing we
have to a national identity code (next to the Social Security number,
whose use is increasingly limited as an identifier and certainly
prohibited to commercial application).

If Caller ID, whose value depends on the use of telephone numbers
as identifiers, was a success, the telephone companies would become
the nexus of commercial transactions. Their own vast collections of
data regarding customer calling patterns would additionally become
more valuable. In all, telephone companies would become the
transactors of more personal information than any other entities.
What a boon not only for the telco revenues but also for their power
within the economy.

The personal privacy angle came into being after the telcos
realized that not everyone was sympathetic to this strategy. So a
bogeyman was invented: the harrassing or crank caller, who "invaded"
the sanctity of the home via the telephone. Caller ID would prevent
this invidious individual from getting "in." Far from it: with Caller
ID, the easy passage of personal information including telephone calls
would _increase_ the number of _telemarketing_ calls the individual
would receive, a far more troubling activity if the complaints our
office got from telephone customers was any indication. And there
were plenty of other ways to track down and punish harrassing callers,
like Call Trace, which didn't require the surrender of one's 
telephone number. But the phone companies resisted these 
available, less onerous measures.

In fact, Caller ID can be easily circumvented by simply using an
unsuspecting friend's phone or a public phone to execute the
communication. When the unknown number shows up on the Caller ID
screen, how is the recipient to know it's the person who has been
bothering them for so long? Call Trace is a better technology for
this purpose.

Police forces in California were not favorably disposed toward
Caller ID, either. They worried that angry telephone customers who
had received a noisome phone call would track down whomever's
telephone number showed up on the device and blow that person away,
whether or not the individual was culpable of the crime. The
telephone company might even be held liable for culpability, something
few telephone executives -- cozied by years of living under protective
anti-liability tariffs -- might have given more thought.

Finally, had the telco execs (who do not take advice kindly)
thought about it, making every phone call a potential giving away of
one's most personal information, via the telephone number, would have
the effect of suppressing use of the telephone, just when the
industry was pushing the phone as the most essential device for
partaking of the Information Age. Talk about cutting off your nose to
spite your face!

What killed Caller ID, ultimately, wasn't the restrictions imposed
by state regulators but business's lack of interest. Caller ID relied
upon a high "take" by telemarketers, direct marketers, and other
commercial institutions who wanted access to telephone numbers. They
already get enough information from 800 and 900 numbers, since those
calls are self-screened by customers who want to conduct some sort of
business transaction. Caller ID promised a deluge of information that
only the very biggest organizations could sift through and employ.
And the bad press surrounding Caller ID discouraged those institutions
from getting in too deep.

A great sigh of relief has been breathed by abuse shelters, police
organizations, health providers, and others whose employees and
clients might be put at direct risk through the disclosure of the
telephonic identities (and via these identities, addresses and daily
routines). But the demise of Caller ID has a larger, ironic outcome:
the telephone companies are unencumbered by this loser of a service as
they begin to offer new types of information services, for which
enthusiastic public use will be a business requirement.

So don't cry for the telephone companies. They're better off for
having faced principled criticism that contained the damage Caller ID
might have done. The lobbyists and executives who ingenuously fought
for the service, so far as I know, are all doing well and have
received promotions to make mischief somewhere else. A fairly
dangerous confrontation, between technology and privacy, has been
averted. If anything is to be lamented, it's all the time and energy
that went into a foolish enterprise, an endeavor without a future
whose inspiration was right out of Orwell's 1984, presented with an
undeservedly friendly face. We know now to be more aware of
technologists bearing gifts.

Editor's Note: Robert Jacobson, Ph.D., is former principal 
consultant/staff director of the Assembly Utilities and 
Commerce Committee, California Legislature, 1982-1989.

(Robert Jacobson/19930430)
-- 
Carl Kadie -- I do not represent any organization; this is just me.
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