Looniness seems to be the hallmark of most consumer protection groups, but the state of Pennsylvania’s Consumer Advocate group really seems to take the biscuit: it is opposing the introduction by Bell Atlantic Corp of a service called Caller ID that puts up the number of the calling party on the receiving phone as the […]
Looniness seems to be the hallmark of most consumer protection groups, but the state of Pennsylvania’s Consumer Advocate group really seems to take the biscuit: it is opposing the introduction by Bell Atlantic Corp of a service called Caller ID that puts up the number of the calling party on the receiving phone as the number rings, so that women plagued by nuisance calls or desperate people trying to evade their creditors can simply leave the phone ringing if they either don’t recognise the number, or they see its from somebody they’d rather not engage in conversation – on the grounds that by displaying the number without the knowledge of the caller, the system viilates the privacy of people who don’t want to give out their unlisted numbers; in our book, as soon as you pick up a phone and dail a number, you are invading somebody else’s territory, and thereby surrendering some of your rights to privacy and that minimising the threat to frightened people is a damn’ sight more important than pandering to a few secrecy obsessives, the answer to whom is if you want to preserve your anonimity, don’t make that call there are still other ways of communicating, even in telephone addicted America.
