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When Anonymity
of Caller is Lost, We’re That Much Closer to a Surveillance Society
Los Angeles Times, May 3,
1989
Dial ‘P”
for Privacy in New Telephone Technology
The New York Times, August
31, 1989
Callers,
Don’t Let them Take Your Privacy
Newsday, Feb. 27, 1990
Hang Up on
Caller ID
Washington Post, January
20, 1990
Home Voice
Mail Doesn’t Guarantee Privacy
The New York Times, August
24, 1991
Make Sure
the Video Camera Doesn’t Lie
Newsday, October 23, 1988
Smile: You’re
on Candid News
The Christian Science Monitor,
March 13, 1989
When Anonymity of Caller is Lost, We’re That Much Closer to a Surveillance Society
Los Angeles Times, May 3, 1989
Gary T. Marx
The people who brought us call-forwarding and call-waiting have done it again –this time in the form of call-identification. Telephone customers in many parts of the country who are willing to spend an extra $6 a month will soon be able to know the number from which an incoming call was dialed before they pick up their phone. This service requires purchasing a video display device that keeps a record of the time and phone number of incoming calls.
The system offers many advantages. It can deter (or determine the origin of) crank calls and false alarms. It will provide the location of persons who request emergency help. It can mean faster consumer sercies (a sales representative can have your record displayed even as the phone is being answered). Burglars who telephone to be sure that no one is home may be identified by the phne number they unwittingly leave. Call-identification permits screening calls ( you don’t answer it if it’s a tiresome relative).
People calling know your number, isn’t it only fair that you should know theirs?
Not necessarily. There may be times when an imbalance in the relationship is desirable. Anonymity has positive as well as negative consequences. Persons with unlisted phone numbers may involuntarily have to reveal them. The calls to law enforcement and counseling hot lines may decline because of the suspicion that anonymity is no longer guaranteed.
Those calling for information about goods and services may receive an avalanche of unwanted phone and mail solicitations, particularly if their names are distributed by a mass-marketing company.
The new visibility encroaches on white lies, spontaneity and quiet personal detective work. Our sense of autonomy and self are enmeshed in a complex web of privacy, secrecy, diplomacy and fabrication. Anything that curtails social maneuverability and alters these delicate relationships, whatever its other benefits, is likely to be morally ambiguous.
The increased ease of verifying location might be thought to make people more honest, but this is balanced by the fact that a record will be left of the act of verification. Thus, if you invite friends to a party and they say they can’t come because of an obligation at home, you may be less likely to call to check if they were telling the truth since there will be a record that you called. Knowing that, they may be more likely to lie.
Supervision in the home will become more intensive and democratic. Spouses, parents and children will find it easier to check up on each other. The spouse who is visiting a friend can no longer claim that he or she is working late, the teen-ager prohibited from associating with a certain person will find it more difficult to take calls from that person, while pretending to be talking to someone else. Gone is the freedom to hang up if a person we do not want to talk to answers, or if we develop second thoughts about making the call.
The consequences of the service will depend partly on how it is offered. Callers could be told that the line they have reached has call-identification and be given the option of hanging up before their number is revealed. Or callers could be told that they can block call-identification by entering several digits. Or callers could be denied any controls and their number displayed without their knowledge or consent. The latter will be the case for callers in New York and New England served by Nynex. The interests of the receiver are put above those of the caller. In the system proposed by Pacific Telesis for its West Coast customers, callers will be able to block the display of their number.
The West Coast offering is far superior. It preserves the caller’s privacy, but not at a cost of being unable to make the phone call. Those receiving the call would be given some information that the party calling did not want his or her number revealed. Crank callers could still be identified through another new phone company service –call-tracing.
In their marketing research the phone companies discovered that West Coast customers were much more concerned with privacy protection than were East Coast customers. But when matters of principle are at stake, marketing research ought not to prevail. There are important questions of informed consent and privacy here. As phone company customers, we are both callers and receivers and the interests of both ought to be served.
Call-identification is a small eddy in a torrent of new information-gathering technologies that are turning us into a transparent or surveillance society. Liberty to do good or evil partly resides in the cracks of inefficient technology. As these our patched, our vigilance must increase.
Dial ‘P” for Privacy in New Telephone Technology
The New York Times, August 31, 1989
To the Editor:
Your otherwise thoughtful article on a new phone service (“Harassing Calls Show Decline When Phones Identify Callers,” front page, Aug. 5) implies that this decline is a direct causal result of the new service. No such inference is warranted.
Correlation is not the same thing as causality. The caller-identification service was offered simultaneously with several other series such as “call block” and “call trace.” The available data do not permit disentangling their independent effect. In addition, broad statistical inferences based on one locality, at one point in time are risky. We need to know if there was any change in the rate of reports of unwanted calls in similar areas where these services were not offered. We also would need to see if the pattern held up over time.
But even if the data for causal inference had been ideal, the basic issue with this controversial service is not one of efficiency, or even legality (although some experts believe that nonconsensual caller identification may violate state wiretap and Federal privacy legislation). Rather, the issue is fairness and balance.
Originally, when all calls had to be made through an operator, the identity of the caller was known. With the invention of automatic electromagnetic switching, it became possible to make calls anonymously. The caller could then, unfortunately, invade the privacy of the person called at will. However, there were also some advantages, such as greater openness in communication over hot lines and greater privacy and social maneuverability for the caller. The recent development of computerized switching can now help redress the imbalance by offering privacy protection for both parties.
But most phone companies propose to move from one imbalance to another. They wish to take all privacy away from the caller by making it possible for the person called always to know the number and site of the person calling. Mandatory caller identification will reduce the value of an unlisted number. The advantages of being unlisted could be maintained only by having two phones and never calling out on one of them.
The new system will also put certain categories of people at greater risk, like abused women in hidden shelters. In chilling some harassing phone calls, it may also chill other forms of communication, such as calls to tip and help hot lines and to controversial political organizations. Those calling for information about goods and services may find their privacy invaded when they receive unwanted phone and mail solicitations, particularly if their names and numbers are sold to, and by, mass marketing companies.
Too often we hear only of how technology destroys privacy, not of how it can also protect it. Fortunately the technology offers a way to protect the legitimate privacy interests of both callers and receivers of calls.
The switching software has a blocking mechanism. A person making a call who did not want his or her number disclosed could do this by entering a special code. The person called would then see a “P” for private on the display terminal, rather than the number of the caller. The called person is of course free to accept or reject the call. But for reasons that have never been made clear, most phone companies do not wish to offer blocking. Public utility commissions should require tha the new service be offered with a blocking option.
With respect to new communications technology, we are now in the twilight zone that Justice William O. Douglas wrote about in arguing that the protection of our basic values is not self-executing and that “As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air –however slight –lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.” One could as well argue that we are in a sunrise zone and that we must be aware of change in the air to insure we all profit from the sunshine.
Appropriately applied, new communications technology can serve the legitimate privacy and related interests of callers and receivers of calls.
Callers, Don’t Let them Take Your Privacy
Newsday, Feb. 27, 1990
THE TELEPHONE is something that is usually answered, but rarely questioned. But this is changing with the proposal of the regional phone companies to introduce unblockable Caller ID.
Almost everyone answers “yes” to the question, “Would you like to know who is calling you before you pick up the phone? But most people answer “no” to the corollary question, “Would you mind if every time you made a call your phone number were automatically revealed to the person called?”
This offering, for which the phone company would charge a separate fee, changes the nature of phone service by removing the control that callers have over their phone numbers. In other words, the service has consequences to the person calling –unlike other recent developments in phone service, such as speed dialing or automatic redialing.
By technological fiat, the phone company takes personal information away from the caller and sells it to the person called. This is similar to the data scavenging companies that sell credit and related information about individuals without their consent. Contrary to what most people believe, the phone companies are saying they, not you, control your phone number.
Unblockable Caller ID is unlikely to become the standard in the United States. California already has a law requiring that if the service is offered, it should come with a free blocking option –callers not wanting to reveal their numbers can enter three digits and the called party will see a “P” for private call. Similar federal legislation has been introduced in Congress by Sen. Herbert H. Kohl (D.-Wis.)
That is the compromise position. Don’t ban the service. Don’t offer it in an unrestricted way as Bell Atlantic proposes in New Jersey. Give callers limited control over what is revealed –their number and the fact that they don’t want to reveal it.
While such a position is better than an unrestricted offering, it is far from ideal. Callers not wanting to revel their number to the person called run the risk of not getting through. People receiving calls, seeing a “P,” may decide that if you don’t want to identify yourself, they won’t talk to you. That is a reasonable response on the part of the called person seeking to avoid unwanted calls. The caller appears a suspect –even though in most cases what callers wish to keep to themselves is their phone number and perhaps location, not their name.
The problem is that now, as proposed, the only form of identification the technology delivers is the phone number. If it were improved so that callers had the option of delivering their names, most privacy problems would be solved. In general it would also be more useful to the people called to see a name rather than a phone number. They needn’t run the risk of refusing a call from an unrecognized phone number that might in fact be a family member calling from a service station to report the car has broken down, or a surprise visit from an out-of-town friend. This also follows normal phone etiquette, which begins with callers identifying themselves by name, not by telephone number.
One would hope that the phone companies, as publicly regulated monopolies, would feel an obligation to develop technical innovations that, beyond enhancing profits, would further important social values such as privacy and equity.
At a minimum, their actions should not diminish these, as unblockable Caller ID will. Inventors, systems designers and marketers need to consider how a development might be misused or have undesirable social consequences.
Services like Caller ID should be developed in consultation with citizen advisory groups. Consumers should not be put in the defensive position of having to respond to whatever radical changes the local phone service proposes.
We live in a democracy, not a technocracy. As networks become more important and as invasive technologies become more powerful, public utility commissions which traditionally have focused on the economic aspects must look to broader social aspects. Too often, communications technology is seen only as something that erodes, rather than enhances, privacy. But that need not be the case. Giving callers the option of providing their name would serve the interests of both the caller and the person called.
The Washington Post, January 20, 1990
Although Charles Krauthammer [Op-Ed, Jan. 5] contemptuously dismisses those who are wary of the telephone companies new “Caller ID” features as either “Luddites” or fretful civil libertarians, there are good, sensible reasons for not wanting one’s number revealed to the person one is calling. Consider the following situations:
To judge from the not insignificant percentage of the time that answering machines record only hangups, callers often do not want to leave a record that they called. The freedom the old system gave us to hang up unidentified if a call is unanswered or if we developed second thoughts about making it, or if a person we did not want to talk to (or to know that we called) answered, would disappear with unblockable Caller ID.
What is the solution? Caller ID should be allowed, but the caller should be given an option to block his or her number from being revealed; the caller would do so by entering three digits. The receiver of the call would certainly be within his or her rights not to answer when callers don’t identify themselves, but the receiver’s rights should not be obtained by technologically ripping personal information away from the caller.
Home Voice Mail Doesn’t Guarantee Privacy
The New York Times, August 24, 1991
To the Editor:
“Home Voice Mail: Privacy, but at a Price” (Consumer’s World, Aug. 3), on home voice mail as offered by some regional phone companies, fails to probe. In some ways home voice mail may lessen privacy, and under appropriate conditions, answering machines can provide privacy.
First, since access is provided by an entry code (rather than by a biometric measure unique to the individual, such as a voice- or fingerprint), anyone with access to the line and the code can hear your messages. As part of this service, will the phone company provide an audit trail and regularly report to its customers all requests to hear messages?
Second, there is the issue of the phone company itself. It has access to the messages and will periodically check the system to see that it is working. However clear in principle the company may be about its employee’s not listening to private conversations or messages, the temptation is there. In one case, telephone employees on the night shift kept a list of “hot” lines to listen to for their own late-night entertainment.
Third, the legal status of such messages is not clear, but it appears that an isolated answering machine offers greater privacy. If law enforcement agents wish to listen to the messages on your answering machine, they need a warrant to search your house or to tap your phone.
But what standards will apply in the case of messages consensually handed over to a third party such as a phone company? Many consumers will no doubt feel they have greater privacy when their messages are stored at home and are not part of an unseen network. A related point: will it be possible for a hacker, using a list of the most common access passwords and other code-breaking devices, to gain access to messages on the same line or remotely?
You not only exaggerate the benefits of voice mail, but also minimize the benefits of answering machines. It is incorrect to state categorically that an answering machine “will not answer” when the phone is in use and that an answering machine provides “no privacy.” Some answering machines, when used with a second line, permit a message to be left. Many answering machines have means of restricting remote access. Keeping the machine in a locked drawer or room will also protect privacy.
Voice mail does offer telephone privacy relative too other members of the same household. But a review of the public opinion data will show that for most Americans that is not seen as a major threat to telephone privacy.
The privacy that the voice mail system offers may come, ironically, with other “costs” beyond the financial. It is, for instance, easy to imagine situations in which a message on an answering machine that can be heard by anyone is superior to voice mail, which is restricted to those having the access code – let us say, a message from a family member stranded because of an automobile breakdown or a message advising that an event has been canceled.
You might also have noted how voice mail, rather than protecting privacy, could be the instrument for new, inexpensive means of invading the privacy of others (including the subscriber to the service). This could occur through the system’s ability to transmit the same message automatically to up to 25 other households.
There are advantages and disadvantages to any system, depending on one’s needs and values, and privacy is not the only consideration. Claims about the advantages of voice mail over answering machines are understandable in a phone company brochure, but you should assess those claims critically.
Make Sure the Video Camera Doesn’t Lie
Newsday, October 23, 1988
The privately made videotape of police beating demonstrators in Tompkins Square Park illustrates an important point about modern surveillance technology: We should evaluate the morality in the way people use the technology, not the technology itself. Critics concerned with the fragility of our liberties often miss the mark in focusing on technology as the problem, rather than upon the way it is applied. The same tools that destroy liberty can also protect it.
Those worried about the Orwellian potential of information technology come to terms with the fact that without the incriminating tapes secretly recorded by President Richard Nixon, Watergate would have remained a case of breaking and entering and without the back-up computer records in National Security Council files Oliver North thought he had erased, we would know far less about the Iran-contra affair.
By providing alternate sources of information, such technologies can aid democracy and help keep government accountable. The rapidity with which New York City officials condemned police behavior in the Tompkins Square Park incident is undoubtedly related to the fact that they actually saw videotaped scenes of violence on network televsion.
But we should temper our optimism about using video technology to protect librty. Video technology can beguile us into confusing image with reality because the video record more fully approximates real experience. As video technology becomes more important to the criminal justice system, whether used by authorities or private citizens, seeing should not unreflectively lead to believing.
Video can distort in a number of ways. Falsification may involve staged events using look-alikes or merely high-tech editing. In a murder-for-hire case, the FBI substituted an agent for a real hit-man and then, using video imaging technology, severed the head from the picture of the intended victim and produced a photo making it appear that the intended victim was dead.
Editing can involve the deletion of material that counters the image the producer seeks to communicate. Technical analysis can reveal deletions and insertions.
But a more serious problem lies in the editing that takes place in deciding when to record. John DeLorean’s attorney, conceding his client’s appearance on the videotapes used by the prosecution, noted that DeLorean’s family was threatened with harm if he did not go along with the plan that put him in front of the camera.
And naïve suspects can be manipulated to obtain a recorded “confession” to a crime.
A suspect was asked to help authorities by pretending that he was the perpetrator and to answer such questions as “Why did you do it?” Manipulation can also create an unwarranted appearance of innocence by recording “alibis” on tape.
Even with appropriate skepticism, I admit to mixed feelings about the increased availability of video recorders, without a better defined public morality regarding their uses. There is a danger of surveillance creep. Given the presumed advantages of videotaping, why not make a record of everything? Think how crime would decrease were a visual record of all our interactions available.
We need better laws and guidelines. There can be little quarrel about videotaping in public places. But what if it is done with a hidden camera? What about videotaping in quasi-public places such as a shopping mall, an industrial park or a university campus? Few questions will be raised if a department store has visible video cameras in its loading docks, but what about cameras in its changing rooms or employee lounges?
Presumably video recordings made in the home are consensual, but what happens when a couple breaks up? Do our privacy laws need to be changed to take account of the new situations created by videos? Should videotaping, now largely exempt from legislation, be subject to the same legal requirements as audiotaping, or to even stringent standards since it is more invasive? Can a First Amendment right to protection from unwarranted searches be balanced with a Fourth Amendment right to protection from unreasonable searches?
We will have to address such questions if video technology is to help protect rather than destroy liberty and privacy.
The Christian Science Monitor, March 13, 1989
Vivid images: a rocket fuel plant exploding, a police officer clubbing a demonstrator, a train derailing, a lost alligator in a swimming pool.
These are a few of the images television viewers have recently seen that were filmed by amateurs with video recorders. CNN’s “News Hound” program and many local stations now actively seek such videos. Judged broadly, this trend might be welcomed. Professional journalists cannot be everywhere. A fundamental tenet of democracy is that the means of communication should not be dominated by government or large organizations. Totalitarian societies restrict or deny citizen’s access to printing presses, photocopiers, computers, video-recorders, and even typewriters. Information technology in private hands can offer documentation and alternative views and help give reality to the First Amendment.
Yet the news is not all good. Without appropriate policies, there is a danger of creating a group of journalistic vigilantes who will offer fraudulent or contrived news, invade privacy, and debase the quality of television news.
One network ran footage reported to be of the Chernobyl disaster. In fact, the film was of an old factory in France. During the Falklands war, another network ran pictures of the invasion which turned out to be nothing more than an old military training film.
Even when the event is real, the nature of the filming may lead to distortions. For example, by filming a small crowd up close the impression may be created that it is much larger. Professionals, of course, also know the tricks but ethical codes, professional associations, and concern about reputations help keep them accountable.
A related problem involves distortion via technical editing. With today’s computer graphic techniques, seeing should not necessarily lead to believing. It is possible to create images not found in reality and to mix real and imaginary images. Persons can be added to or deleted from pictures and their appearance changed. Real and constructed images can be combined.
Camcorders are at least visible, but tiny hand-held video cameras the size of a deck of cards can also be purchased along with cameras hidden in picture frames, mirrors, briefcases, and even books. Our lives may increasingly become episodes in someone’s version of candid camera. In providing a market for videos, the networks may contribute to this. Citizen-initiated stings are likely to spread. In a legal anomaly, it is a felony for citizens to secretly record the sound of conversations they are not a party to, but no such protections exits for secretly recording video images. This is surprising since a visual record is much more invasive than an audio record.
There is a danger of even greater trivialization and dramatization of TV news. Even when accurate and filmed in an aesthetically pleasing fashion, alligators in swimming pools and vehicle accidents do little to inform the American public. Yet most of the footage offered from the 7 million potential reporters with video recorders is likely to be of this nature. There is danger of the news media focusing even more on what is sensational and immediate, at the expense of the important and enduring.
Video cameras must be considered alongside other potentially invasive information technologies such as miniature voice-activated tape recorders, devices for remotely monitoring telephone and room conversations, computer dossiers, electronic location monitors, and drug testing. We are becoming a surveillance or “fish bowl” society where our actions are increasingly visible to outsiders whether or not we even know about it. This has profound implications for crime control, work, and health monitoring, and of course privacy and liberty.
These new technologies are likely neither to be as harmless as advocates claim nor as dangerous as critics fear. Their impact will be determined not by anything inherent in the technology but by the choices we make.
If citizens as video journalists are to enhance the quality of news, their results must receive careful verification, footage must be identified, pay must be modest in order not to stimulate misrepresentation, hidden cameras should not be used, and to the extent possible, the consent of those photographed should be obtained.
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