28 Years of the Digest ... founded August 21, 1981

Classified Ads
TD Extra News

Add this Digest to your personal   or  

 
 

The Telecom Digest for May 14, 2010
Volume 29 : Issue 131 : "text" Format

Messages in this Issue:
 Phone Number Tracking Terrorists                                          (Gray, Charles)
 Re: Phone Number Tracking Terrorists                                      (David Clayton)
 Re: Facebook's Gone Rogue; It's Time for an Open Alternative                  (Sam Spade)
 Caller ID Spoofing Puts Innocent Man In Jail                              (Monty Solomon)
 Re: Caller ID Spoofing Puts Innocent Man In Jail                              (Sam Spade)
 Re: Caller ID Spoofing Puts Innocent Man In Jail                                 (Steven)
 Re: Phone number helped track terror suspect                             (Adam H. Kerman)
 Re: Phone number helped track terror suspect                             (Adam H. Kerman)
 Re: Phone number helped track terror suspect                             (danny burstein)
 Re: Silicon Valley public transit losing all public AT&T pay phones     (Justin Goldberg)


====== 28 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer, and other stuff of interest.
Date: Wed, 12 May 2010 08:34:37 -0500 From: "Gray, Charles" <charles.gray@okstate.edu> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Phone Number Tracking Terrorists Message-ID: <18AC66D00A844644BF202001BCE0FE26039C32B20C@STWEXE3.ad.okstate.edu> Some time back (dates have faded in memory) the "media" reported it as great news that the US and its allies could track the location of Osama bin Laden's cell phone, whereupon he stopped using one. IIRC he gave his to one of his "associates" who subsequently got nailed by a drone-launched weapon. Was the "media" culpable in this case? Speaking as a veteran of 20 years in the US Army Signal Corps I definitely think this information should have been supressed. I was involved in the capture of some enemy radio equipment in Vietnam and learned some information that was helpful to US Army intelligence, but we sure didn't go around telling everybody what we were learning from it. I still believe that in war, there are just some things that "the public" doesn't need to know. There is still wisdom in the WW II security poster that said "Loose lips sink ships". Charles G. Gray Senior Lecturer - Telecommunications Oklahoma State University
Date: Fri, 14 May 2010 09:02:02 +1000 From: David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Phone Number Tracking Terrorists Message-ID: <pan.2010.05.13.23.01.59.562082@myrealbox.com> On Wed, 12 May 2010 08:34:37 -0500, Gray, Charles wrote: ....... > I still believe that in war, there are just some things that "the public" > doesn't need to know. There is still wisdom in the WW II security poster > that said "Loose lips sink ships". > The problem is (and always has been) that who decides what you don't need to know? There are always issues of what some people believe is benign information versus those who think that even a tiny chance of something being used for a purpose against their interests deserves suppression. As an example of leaving things to governments or other authorities, my government here is implementing a web site filter for the whole country, and they decide what sites are on the banned list on (allegedly) benign criteria - stopping kiddie porn etc. It has been recently exposed that web sites that have things like instructions for making gunpowder (something that has been well publicised for hundreds of years) have been banned because "it could be used for an illegal activity". People have pointed out that it is not illegal to make or obtain something like gunpowder, just that you have to be licensed to use it in this country, but that didn't seem to matter to the faceless people deciding that it wasn't in the public interest to have this information available. The people running this filter are permitted to ban any site, and only if the site is hosted in Australia is any sort of notification given to the site owner - all others just disappear from access without anyone knowing why! In theory the "Loose lips sink ships" idea seems reasonable, and if done in a responsible manner may well be worth the trade-off, but when is it ever left at that responsible level before is is corrupted in one way or another? -- Regards, David. David Clayton Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Knowledge is a measure of how many answers you have, intelligence is a measure of how many questions you have. ***** Modertor's Note ***** Do you think that a government should have the authority to ban call-in sex lines? Consider your answer carefully: the government's sword gets longer every time you say "yes", and it has two edges ... Bill Horne Moderator
Date: Wed, 12 May 2010 06:58:48 -0700 From: Sam Spade <sam@coldmail.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Facebook's Gone Rogue; It's Time for an Open Alternative Message-ID: <qfSdnb0RlMWFKXfWnZ2dnUVZ_tqdnZ2d@giganews.com> David Clayton wrote: > You will able to decide if you want to communicate with this person based > on things down to the colour of the toilet paper they buy - because that > must be available in some linked database somewhere! That's why my wife pays with cash at the grocery store. ;-) ***** Moderator's Note ***** That may not be an option in the future: a supermarket in my area has found the information they gain from "Loyalty cards" so valuable that I can get a discount of 20 cents per gallon at some gas stations by letting them scan my supermarket card.
Date: Wed, 12 May 2010 21:37:28 -0400 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Caller ID Spoofing Puts Innocent Man In Jail Message-ID: <p062408d2c81108145421@[10.0.1.4]> May 11, 2010 6:57 am US/Eastern Caller ID Spoofing Puts Innocent Man In Jail Joe Shortsleeve QUINCY (WBZ) Imagine police bursting into your home, handcuffing you, and then locking you up for days for something you did not do. The I-Team says that is exactly what happened to a Quincy man, and WBZ's Chief Correspondent Joe Shortsleeve says this man was set up by someone using a popular technology. The man does not want people to know his name, but he recounted that cold winter night a year ago when he was making cupcakes in his kitchen. ... http://wbztv.com/local/man.arrested.innocent.2.1686484.html
Date: Thu, 13 May 2010 06:47:26 -0700 From: Sam Spade <sam@coldmail.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Caller ID Spoofing Puts Innocent Man In Jail Message-ID: <8d2dnZnCTalzn3HWnZ2dnUVZ_uWdnZ2d@giganews.com> Monty Solomon wrote: > May 11, 2010 6:57 am US/Eastern > > Caller ID Spoofing Puts Innocent Man In Jail > > Joe Shortsleeve > > QUINCY (WBZ) > > Imagine police bursting into your home, handcuffing you, and then > locking you up for days for something you did not do. > > The I-Team says that is exactly what happened to a Quincy man, and > WBZ's Chief Correspondent Joe Shortsleeve says this man was set up by > someone using a popular technology. > > The man does not want people to know his name, but he recounted that > cold winter night a year ago when he was making cupcakes in his > kitchen. > > ... > > http://wbztv.com/local/man.arrested.innocent.2.1686484.html > This was a serious error by the FCC in their Caller ID proceedings in 1995. Had they put an absolute cap on the source of the CPIN message to be only the originating end office, this guy would not have been a victim of those low-lifes. If I were the victim I would be speaking with an attorney about the police's haste, and lack of understanding of how lousy Caller ID info can be. Seems like they should have first put a trap on the women's line, then looked at ANI before they went gestapo.
Date: Thu, 13 May 2010 13:51:08 -0700 From: Steven <diespammers@killspammers.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Caller ID Spoofing Puts Innocent Man In Jail Message-ID: <hshont$d77$1@news.eternal-september.org> Sam Spade wrote: > Monty Solomon wrote: > >> May 11, 2010 6:57 am US/Eastern >> >> Caller ID Spoofing Puts Innocent Man In Jail >> >> Joe Shortsleeve >> >> QUINCY (WBZ) >> >> Imagine police bursting into your home, handcuffing you, and then >> locking you up for days for something you did not do. >> >> The I-Team says that is exactly what happened to a Quincy man, and >> WBZ's Chief Correspondent Joe Shortsleeve says this man was set up by >> someone using a popular technology. >> >> The man does not want people to know his name, but he recounted that >> cold winter night a year ago when he was making cupcakes in his kitchen. >> >> ... >> >> http://wbztv.com/local/man.arrested.innocent.2.1686484.html >> > > This was a serious error by the FCC in their Caller ID proceedings in > 1995. Had they put an absolute cap on the source of the CPIN message to > be only the originating end office, this guy would not have been a > victim of those low-lifes. > > If I were the victim I would be speaking with an attorney about the > police's haste, and lack of understanding of how lousy Caller ID info > can be. Seems like they should have first put a trap on the women's > line, then looked at ANI before they went gestapo. > The same could be said in the way that The Internet was set up, had some changes had been made as the net aged we would not have the spam problems we have now, or at least we would really know who the spammer was. -- The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2010 I Kill Spammers, Inc., A Rot in Hell. Co.
Date: Wed, 12 May 2010 03:04:24 +0000 (UTC) From: "Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Phone number helped track terror suspect Message-ID: <hsd5ro$ek3$4@news.albasani.net> Sam Spade <sam@coldmail.com> wrote: >Adam H. Kerman wrote: >>I'll never believe anything in the media, fiction or nonfiction, is capable >>of turning a good person into a bad person. >I respect your belief system, but take strong exception to it. With a well documented, peer-reviewed psychological study?
Date: Wed, 12 May 2010 03:07:37 +0000 (UTC) From: "Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Phone number helped track terror suspect Message-ID: <hsd61p$ek3$5@news.albasani.net> John David Galt <jdg@diogenes.sacramento.ca.us> wrote: >On the other hand: It is widely rumored that the US government, fearing >similar "inspiration", persuaded Hollywood to sit on the movie version of >Tom Clancy's "The Sum of All Fears" until after 9/11 happened anyway. If >this is true, I applaud both the government's request and Hollywood's >cooperation with it (though I'd still refuse to go along with blaming the >movie if Hollywood had disobeyed and the real attack had then occurred). The plot of the movie "Executive Decision" is eerily similar to the events of 9/11, although not identical. I've never heard it blamed for the terrorist attack. After 9/11, it was shown fairly often on television.
Date: Thu, 13 May 2010 12:37:32 +0000 (UTC) From: danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Phone number helped track terror suspect Message-ID: <hsgrqb$kpe$1@reader1.panix.com> In <hsd61p$ek3$5@news.albasani.net> "Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> writes: >John David Galt <jdg@diogenes.sacramento.ca.us> wrote: >>On the other hand: It is widely rumored that the US government, fearing >>similar "inspiration", persuaded Hollywood to sit on the movie version of >>Tom Clancy's "The Sum of All Fears" until after 9/11 happened anyway. If >>this is true, I applaud both the government's request and Hollywood's >>cooperation with it (though I'd still refuse to go along with blaming the >>movie if Hollywood had disobeyed and the real attack had then occurred). >The plot of the movie "Executive Decision" is eerily similar to the events >of 9/11, although not identical. I've never heard it blamed for the >terrorist attack. After 9/11, it was shown fairly often on television. And the very first episode of "The Lone Gunmen" [a], a spinoff from "The X Files" following the exploits of the three somewhat strange... technogeeks, had the plot device of a jetliner about to crash into the WTC. Oh, and this aired in March, 2001. No one ever claimed that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed ever watched it... [a] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0243069/plotsummary [b] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lone_Gunmen -- _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]
Date: Wed, 12 May 2010 20:05:12 -0700 (PDT) From: Justin Goldberg <justgold79@gmail.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Silicon Valley public transit losing all public AT&T pay phones Message-ID: <77dbf763-2cce-42bc-a6b8-ea1eff0241cd@g21g2000yqk.googlegroups.com> I just don't understand why no one ever thought of creating a voip payphone. ***** Moderator's Note ***** It's been a long time since I has contact with the "PubCom" end of the business, but I'd bet it's because the costs of maintaining the instrument, collecting coin boxes, and paying pedestal rents overshadow any gains to be had from changing the connection to VoIP. Come to think of it, VoIP might be more expensive than POTS or PubCom service: it requires an Internet connection. Bill Horne Moderator
TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecom- munications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to Usenet, where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Bill Horne. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. The Telecom Digest is moderated by Bill Horne. Contact information: Bill Horne Telecom Digest 43 Deerfield Road Sharon MA 02067-2301 781-784-7287 bill at horne dot net Subscribe: telecom-request@telecom-digest.org?body=subscribe telecom Unsubscribe: telecom-request@telecom-digest.org?body=unsubscribe telecom This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Copyright (C) 2009 TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization.
End of The Telecom Digest (10 messages)

Return to Archives ** Older Issues