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When my telephone rings, my privacy is invaded. I also lose the right to think about what I chose to think about; I must drop one train of thought and pick up another, often at the behest of a total stranger.
So I was excited when I heard that Caller
Identification
is coming to Colorado. Unless he gets a
wrong number, the caller knows whom he is reaching, but
when I pick up the phone, I have no idea who's on the other
end.
That's hardly fair. If somebody is at my door, I can see who's there before I deal with the caller. If I get a letter, I can read it before I decide how, and whether, to respond. But the telephone demands a response when I've got no idea what I'm dealing with.
Caller Identification will make an unfair situation into a fair one. Everybody has the same amount of privacy -- none.
Who could possibly against that?
Advocates for battered women, that's who. There are women who have left abusive situations. They move to safe houses, where their abusers can't find them. But they still need to talk to their former spouses.
As it is, they can call to talk about insurance or car payments, and violent hubby doesn't know where they're calling from.
But if violent hubby had Caller Identification, and if
battered wife didn't use the *67
prefix before her
call to defeat Caller Identification, then he'd have the
phone number she called from. After that, he presumably has
a connection in the phone company who can tell him the
physical location of that unlisted phone number, and he can
thereby find the wife who fled his violence, and terrorize
her again.
That sounds pretty far-fetched. If violent hubby has that kind of persistence and connections, wouldn't he be able to find his abused wife without any help from Caller Identification?
However, there are two sensible reasons to be against Caller Identification. It will take money from our pockets and put it in the phone company's, which is always a good reason to oppose something. Further, within a few months of its introduction, Caller Identification won't do what we want it to do.
Nobody in his right mind will answer the phone when the
Caller Identification box says Kneecap Lenny's
Collection Service.
Who wants to hear that it is very
important to preserve your credit rating by instantly
paying the eight-month-old bill from Dr. Rich N. Griedey,
who ran a lot of expensive tests and never told you how
they came out?
Kneecap Lenny knows that. So he'll push the buttons to defeat Caller Identification. You won't know who calls then, so how are you any better off than you are now? What good is that extra $3.50 a month on your phone bill, except to the US West bottom line?
Kneecap Lenny will then go one better. He'll find a
bright computer hacker who has figured out the system. When
Lenny calls to dun you, your box will identify the caller
as the State Lottery Winner Notification Bureau,
so
that you'll leap to answer before the first ring is
over.
Besides, I've devised a cheaper and easier way to cope with the phone. I have one line and two teen-aged daughters. The phone is almost always busy, and if it does ring, it's never for me.
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