To: Gareth Powell, The Sydney Morning Herald
Faxed on 19-1-93
Subject: CLI


Dear Gareth,

I refer to your witty frontpage think piece "Outnumbered". As so often when I was still concerned with Australian communications (communications in Australia, that is), I alerted a perhaps slightly more interested public to the upcoming issue of "automatic number identification" (ANI), sometimes also called "calling line information" (CLI) back in November 1988 under the title "Freedom of Information I" (see attached - other titbits on ANI were gratuitously netted by my hypertext trawler in my CommLink database, and I have included printouts for your edification and/or illumination). I also reported back in 1990 on the availability of cheap hardware/software packages to allow call screening where caller ID services were available from a carrier.

I have since withdrawn from the bumpily reworked playing field of communications policy after bulldozer Beazley succeeded in shaping it to suit the megacom model, and Austel was scraped up into a mound of supervisory bureaucracy.

Thus I did not see fit to contribute to any of Austel's inquiries. This does not prevent me from seeking to clarify some points in your article (thereby perhaps reinforcing the assessment given by Helen Meredith to her editor when I had suggested to him the need for a proper communications column, namely that I was "too technical" - a valid observation perhaps from a journalist who has been known to run a press release verbatim, and under her byline, as the section opening lead...).

Just to be nitpicking: the telephone does not send its number up the line, but the exchange 'knows' of course the number of the line on which a call is being made, and can provide the relevant information to anything from a Stratus real-time UNIX system for database purposes down to an LCD display in a suitably intelligent telephone.

Similarly, the poor Honest operator doesn't need to tap the incoming CLI into his computer: since the early days of ISDN demonstrations there have been applications that capture and integrate CLI into end-user applications, so that for instance the caller's entire database record comes up on the operator's screen the moment the phone merely rings. I myself have a beautifully crafted quintet of interlinked desktop accessories that integrates CLI in this way, poised to grab such info the moment Austel clears the lines for its transmission.

You may recall that I'm outspoken enough on matters Telecom not to mince words where necessary (I would like to say that I'm outspoken to such a degree that I call a spade a nigger, but this would get me pelted as a 'racist' by people who don't appreciate such subtleties...) Therefore you can be sure that it is not for any hidden agenda when I say that Austel is being plain silly to plumb for the 'opt in' system as this would better serve the public.

Perhaps Austel just doesn't have the nerve to say 'no' outright, but if Wood's view became policy, it would simply mean that nobody would proffer CLI, parching an entire section of the playing field. It should be patently clear that the public would be best served if automatic CLI disclosure were obligatory, apart from judicially justified exemptions (the reverse of phone tapping permits, in a way). The outcome would also be socially desirable, enforcing a bit of honesty and plain dealing and making life a little bit harder for those whose purity of motive is open to question - and screening.

I don't want to write you an off-the-cuff forecast of the various likely developments from such a scenario, but you can take it as read that people would find circuitous ways and means for their calls if they really didn't want you to know what number they're calling from.

CLI is not the privacy issue it is being made out to be - in essence it is just the communication header announcing you before you yourself do ( the same thing happens, albeit under the 'opt in' model, when you send a fax: most machines are programmed to yield up at least the calling line number, while many even voluntarily disclose the sending entity. For good measure, most correspondents send you a cover sheet completely disclosing their identity as well.)

The privacy issue lies squarely in the area of database compilation - and since the government is heavily into this game itself and makes it more insidious by facilities that allow data to look for other data a la Netmap, we should perhaps start our scrutiny - and search for remedies - right there.

Yours truly,

XXX

Poet & Inventor