---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message-ID: <20190411061520.GA18245@telecom.csail.mit.edu> Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2019 06:15:20 +0000 From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> Subject: New York - Finally A Level Playing Field For two years, the City of New York and the Communications Workers of America Local 1180 have worked to settle claims to compensate members who were paid unfairly based on their gender and race. A stipulation of settlement has finally been signed between parties to settle the litigation. (Headline is at https://www.cwa1180.org/) https://www.cwa1180.org/docs/default-source/local/news-pdfs/2019/2019-eeoc-case/eeoc-timeline.pdf?sfvrsn=a6f87f11_2 -- Bill Horne (Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly) ------------------------------ Message-ID: <20190412184221.GA28410@telecom.csail.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2019 18:42:21 +0000 From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> Subject: Do You Know What You'v Given Up? By James Bennet Mr. Bennet is the New York Times' editorial page editor. We've all been making some big choices, consciously or not, as advancing technology has transformed the real and virtual worlds. That phone in your pocket, the surveillance camera on the corner: You've traded away a bit of anonymity, of autonomy, for the usefulness of one, the protection of the other. Many of these trade-offs were clearly worthwhile. But now the stakes are rising and the choices are growing more fraught. Is it O.K., for example, for an insurance company to ask you to wear a tracker to monitor whether you're getting enough exercise, and set your rates accordingly? Would it concern you if police detectives felt free to collect your DNA from a discarded coffee cup, and to share your genetic code? What if your employer demanded access to all your digital activity, so that it could run that data through an algorithm to judge whether you're trustworthy? https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/opinion/privacy-project-launch.html -- Bill Horne (Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly) ***** Moderator's Note ***** Sad to say, I have personal experience with these issues. As a programmer at NYNEX, I routinely retrieved "LUD" (Local Usage Detail) records for use by various law enforecement agencies. You may trust me when I tell you that Big Brother *IS* watching. Bill Horne Moderator ------------------------------ Message-ID: <e00cf942-2bcc-4896-b7ec-766c4d64ee34@googlegroups.com> Date: 12 Apr 2019 12:48:38 -0700 From: HAncock4 <withheld@invalid.telecom-digest.org> Subject: Re: Gatesville, TX police say 911 system is working On Tuesday, April 9, 2019 at 5:04:34 PM UTC-4, Bill Horne wrote: > GATESVILLE, TX - Gatesville police say the 911 system in the city is > now working as of Friday morning. The 911 system in the city was > inoperable for hours on Thursday. https://www.kxxv.com/news/local-news/gatesville-police-say-911-system-is-inoperable Historical Note: Actress Sissy Spacek grew up in Quitman, TX, which was served by a manual exchange in her childhood. The town's friendly local operator served as her inspiration in her film, Raggedy Man. Here are some articles describing Quitman's conversion to dial service: https://books.google.com/books?id=5ColAAAAIBAJ&lpg=PA1&dq=quitman%20dial%20telephone&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q=quitman%20dial%20telephone&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=d0QlAAAAIBAJ&lpg=PA7&dq=quitman%20dial%20telephone&pg=PA7#v=onepage&q=quitman%20dial%20telephone&f=false ***** Moderator's Note ***** One of my earliest memories is of the moment when I answer the phone in my parents' home in Dedham, Massachusetts, and a woman told me "This phone is now dial." I didn't know what she meant, but I and my siblings spent the rest of the day dialing calls to all our friends. Bill Horne Moderator ------------------------------ Message-ID: <8AFECF43-1F2C-49C4-A532-2E212545CE23@roscom.com> Date: 12 Apr 2019 18:54:44 -0400 From: "Monty Solomon" <monty@roscom.com> Subject: Why the US still won't require SS7 fixes that could secure your phone The regulatory back door big telecom uses to weaken security regulation. By Andrea Peterson The outages hit in the summer of 1991. Over several days, phone lines in major metropolises went dead without warning, disrupting emergency services and even air traffic control, often for hours. Phones went down one day in Los Angeles, then on another day in Washington, DC and Baltimore, and then in Pittsburgh. Even after service was restored to an area, there was no guarantee the lines would not fail again - and sometimes they did. The outages left millions of Americans disconnected. The culprit? A computer glitch. A coding mistake in software used to route calls for a piece of telecom infrastructure known as Signaling System No. 7 (SS7) caused network-crippling overloads. It was an early sign of the fragility of the digital architecture that binds together the nation's phone systems. https://arstechnica.com/features/2019/04/fully-compromised-comms-how-industry-influence-at-the-fcc-risks-our-digital-security/ ***** Moderator's Note ***** I worked in the Engineering group that was responsible for SS7 in New England. During the runup to Local Number Portability, when we were considering new vendors for SS7 devices, I expressed doubts about the software some of those vendors used: one vendor refused to allow examination of their software, while anohter depended on Off-the-shelf commercial software to handle their supervisory and management functions. I passed my concerns along to upper management, and they did whatever they did. Bill Horne Moderator ------------------------------ ********************************************* End of telecom Digest Sun, 14 Apr 2019