TELECOM Digest Sun, 6 Mar 94 22:57:30 CST Volume 14 : Issue 116 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Time Magazine on Clipper (Dave Banisar) Time Reports 80% Oppose Clipper Chip (Philip Elmer-DeWitt) Competition and Technology (Jerry Leichter) ISDN Deployment Data (Bob Larribeau) Re: Harrassing One-Ring Calls (Lance Ginner) Re: 810 Area Code Trouble? (John Palmer) Re: New Area Code Change Question (Carl Moore) Re: Starring Tom Cruise as Kevin Poulsen? (Carl Moore) Traffic Overloads in Manual Service Era (TELECOM Digest Editor) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and GEnie. Subscriptions are available at no charge to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu * The Digest is compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson Associates of Skokie, Illinois USA. We provide telecom consultation services and long distance resale services including calling cards and 800 numbers. To reach us: Post Office Box 1570, Chicago, IL 60690 or by phone at 708-329-0571 and fax at 708-329-0572. Email: ptownson@townson.com. ** Article submission address only: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu ** Our archives are located at lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. TELECOM Digest is gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup comp.dcom.telecom. It has no connection with the unmoderated Usenet newsgroup comp.dcom.telecom.tech whose mailing list "Telecom-Tech Digest" shares archives resources at lcs.mit.edu for the convenience of users. Please *DO NOT* cross post articles between the groups. 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 6 Mar 1994 14:13:18 -0500 From: Dave Banisar Subject: Time Magazine on Clipper {Time Magazine}, March 14, 1994 TECHNOLOGY WHO SHOULD KEEP THE KEYS? The U.S. government wants the power to tap into every phone, fax and computer transmission BY PHILIP ELMER-DEWITT ... (general background) ... (general info on techo advances) Thus the stage was set for one of the most bizarre technology-policy battles ever waged: the Clipper Chip war. Lined up on one side are the three-letter cloak-and-dagger agencies -- the NSA, the CIA and the FBI -- and key policymakers in the Clinton Administration (who are taking a surprisingly hard line on the encryption issue). Opposing them is an equally unlikely coalition of computer firms, civil libertar- ians, conservative columnists and a strange breed of cryptoanarchists who call themselves the cypherpunks. At the center is the Clipper Chip, a semiconductor device that the NSA developed and wants installed in every telephone, computer modem and fax machine. The chip combines a powerful encryption algorithm with a "back door" -- the cryptographic equivalent of the master key that opens schoolchildren's padlocks when they forget their combinations. A "secure" phone equipped with the chip could, with proper authorization, be cracked by the government. Law-enforcement agencies say they need this capability to keep tabs on drug runners, terrorists and spies. Critics denounce the Clipper -- and a bill before Congress that would require phone companies to make it easy to tap the new digital phones -- as Big Brotherly tools that will strip citizens of whatever privacy they still have in the computer age. In a Time/CNN poll of 1,000 Americans conducted last week by Yankelovich Partners, two-thirds said it was more important to protect the privacy of phone calls than to preserve the ability of police to conduct wiretaps. When informed about the Clipper Chip, 80% said they opposed it. The battle lines were first drawn last April, when the Administration unveiled the Clipper plan and invited public comment. For nine months opponents railed against the scheme's many flaws: criminals wouldn't use phones equipped with the government's chip; foreign customers wouldn't buy communications gear for which the U.S. held the keys; the system for giving investigators access to the back-door master codes was open to abuse; there was no guarantee that some clever hacker wouldn't steal the keys. But in the end the Administration ignored the advice. In early February, after computer- industry leaders had made it clear that they wanted to adopt their own encryption standard, the Administration announced that it was putting the NSA plan into effect. Government agencies will phase in use of Clipper technology for all unclassified communications. Commercial use of the chip will be voluntary -- for now. It was tantamount to a declaration of war, not just to a small group of crypto-activists but to all citizens who value their privacy, as well as to telecommunications firms that sell their products abroad. Foreign customers won't want equipment that U.S. spies can tap into, particularly since powerful, uncompromised encryption is available overseas. "Industry is unanimous on this," says Jim Burger, a lobbyist for Apple Computer, one of two dozen companies and trade groups opposing the Clipper. A petition circulated on the Internet electronic network by Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility gathered 45,000 signatures, and some activists are planning to boycott companies that use the chips and thus, in effect, hand over their encryption keys to the government. "You can have my encryption algorithm," said John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, "when you pry my cold dead fingers from my private key." ... (history of Public Key encryption). ... (history of PGP) Rather than outlaw PGP and other such programs, a policy that would probably be unconstitutional, the Administration is taking a marketing approach. By using its purchasing power to lower the cost of Clipper technology, and by vigilantly enforcing restrictions against overseas sales of competing encryption systems, the government is trying to make it difficult for any alternative schemes to become widespread. If Clipper manages to establish itself as a market standard -- if, for example, it is built into almost every telephone, modem and fax machine sold -- people who buy a nonstandard system might find themselves with an untappable phone but no one to call. That's still a big if. Zimmermann is already working on a version of PGP for voice communications that could compete directly with Clipper, and if it finds a market, similar products are sure to follow. "The crypto genie is out of the bottle," says Steven Levy, who is writing a book about encryption. If that's true, even the NSA may not have the power to put it back. Reported by David S. Jackson/San Francisco and Suneel Ratan/Washington ------------------------------ From: ped@panix.com (Philip Elmer-DeWitt) Subject: TIME Reports 80% Oppose Clipper Chip Date: Sun, 06 Mar 1994 20:59:34 -0500 Organization: TIME Magazine To accompany an article on the Clipper Chip in this week's TIME, the magazine commissioned a poll on public attitudes toward wiretap issues. The relevant graph: "In a Time/CNN poll of 1,000 Americans conducted last week by Yankelovich Partners, two-thirds said it was more important to protect the privacy of phone calls than to preserve the ability of police to conduct wiretaps. When informed about the Clipper Chip, 80% said they opposed it." Philip Elmer-DeWitt ped@well.com TIME Magazine ped@panix.com philiped@aol.com Read TIME on America Online, where we get paid to take abuse. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Mr. Elmer-DeWitt, I thank you very much for okaying the use of your piece in {Time Magazine} in this issue of the Digest, and for your own contribution here. Please write to us on on a regular basis. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 6 Mar 94 13:21:02 EDT From: Jerry Leichter Subject: Competition and Technology A recent TELECOM Digest ran a transcript of Reed Hundt's statement to the Senate on telecommunications. It repeated a point that's always bothered me. Hundt says that when he was growing up, "the telephone was a black, rotary dial instrument". Starting with the Hush-a-phone case in the '50's, and culminating with the MFJ splitting up the Bell System in 1984, the FCC and the courts deregulated the telephone industry and "unleashed the forces of competition". Hundt lists the benefits of competition today as the ability to buy phones in all shapes, sizes and colors; phones with built-in answering machines, with memory, with speed dialing; cordless telephones; PBX's; fax machines. Now, what bothers me about this whole list is that *everything of significance on it is available due to technological advances, not deregulation*. Even in 1984, it would have been impossible to build most of the telephone variations listed. Oh, you could get different colors -- but think about what went into a touchtone keypad in those days. No IC tone generators, sorry. Memory? Using what memory chips? Oh, you could *buy* either, but at a very high cost. Cordless phones? How much would a cordless phone using 1984 electronics and battery technology have weighed, much less cost? Fax machines? Hah. PBX's? How many companies would have had the room to hold a switch of that era? How many would have been willing to hire the staff to keep it going? One of the things that gets overlooked is that, without competition, the telephone system developed from operator controlled to direct dialing, added long distance, got direct long-distance dialing; saw touchtone appear; and saw many other background developments. I have great respect for competition, but I have yet to see a sound argument that the advance in services available *since* deregulation is signficantly different from the advance *before* deregulation - AFTER CONTROLLING FOR THE EXTRAORDINARY ADVANCE IN APPLICABLE TECHNOLOGY. Competition has almost certainly brought the *price* down, at least for those services for which companies find it worth while to compete (coin calls have *theoretically* been open to competition for years...). But as for actual products available -- I'm not so sure. Jerry [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Some people maintain that without dereg- ulation and competition, the old Bell System -- as advanced in technology as it was -- had no real incentive to go much further or with any speed. I don't know if that is true or not. Some people believe that if we were still dealing with the old Bell System, half or more of what has become available in the past decade would not be available at any reasonable price or in any quantity. Like yourself, I think it would have been. but quite a few people believe Bell was growing stagnant and lazy; that they came out with what they have in the past few years only when there were threats by serious competitors. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 06 Mar 94 08:58:46 -0800 From: Bob Larribeau Organization: Consultant Subject: ISDN Deployment Data I have presented the Telecom Archives with the Bellcore ISDN Deployment data as a ZIP file. It expands into a READ.ME explaining the headings and abbreviations. It has the data from each telco as a TXT file. These files are ASCII with TAB delimiters. You can read them with a word processor or a spread sheet. Thanks for putting this information in the archives. By the way, I have changed email addresses. Bob Larribeau I will be discountinuing my "p00136@psilink.com" Consultant mail box at the end of March. San Francisco Please use "blarrib@netcom.com" to contact me. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thanks very much for this contribution to the archives. This morning I mailed out a revised copy of the directory to the archives, and your file is in the /technical sub- directory there. Readers are cautioned to remember that when this file is transferred using ftp, you'll need to set your session to 'I' for binary, and when you have this *LARGE* file at your site then you'll need to unzip it and prepare it for use. PAT] ------------------------------ From: lance@arasmith.com (Lance Ginner) Subject: Re: Harrassing One-Ring Calls Reply-To: lance@arasmith.com Organization: North Bay Network Date: Sun, 6 Mar 1994 16:01:15 GMT I'm in California. It seems that we got all the disadvantages of Caller ID (everyone can read us but we can't read them) and none of the advantages. Am I missing something? I for one am not thrilled about the way it seemed to turn out. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Neither are a lot of other people. What I do think you are missing however is that we *cannot* 'read' you either. Your Caller-ID is not coming here to Illinois for example. I don't know about all places, but we are not getting it. Is anyone getting Caller-ID data from Caifornia telephones? PAT] ------------------------------ From: jp@tygra.Michigan.COM (John Palmer) Subject: Re: 810 Area Code Trouble? Organization: John Palmer's Private Box Date: Sun, 6 Mar 1994 17:08:23 GMT In article Carl Moore writes: > Item sent to me: > Phones have been in the news this week. Some businesses in Michigan > are having trouble with the area code change over. Some equipment > does not recognize 810 as a viable area code. I have personally run > into this. I am sure it will all be corrected by the August official > implementation date. A couple points: people from areas out in GTE-Land (central California) are still getting an intercept after they dial +1-810 saying that "their call could not be completed as dialed" ... Also, Ameritech still hasn't gotten their act together. Some switches are still sending 313 as the area code in the Caller-ID data; others have it correct. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 6 Mar 94 17:27:42 EST From: Carl Moore Subject: Re: New Area Code Change Question As I recall reading, problems arose when a "strange" prefix (what was then 213-N0X/N1X) was in a phone number which had to be given to an operator for any reason. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 6 Mar 94 17:24:13 EST From: Carl Moore Subject: Re: Starring Tom Cruise as Kevin Poulsen? But what does ICM stand for? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I dunno, Carl. Maybe the original author can write and let us know. I wish Hollywood would quit glorifying people like that. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 6 Mar 94 22:26:41 CST From: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Subject: Traffic Overloads in Manual Service Era Most people are aware of the way in which telephone service today gets bogged down during times of emergency situations such as natural disasters or important political news, assasinations, etc. The typical response today will be delayed dial tone -- a delay ranging anywhere from several seconds to upwards of two or three minutes under very severe conditions. We've also all experienced 'blocking'; a condition where the local telco in an area affected by an emergency simply turns away some percentage of the calls handed to it by a long distance carrier; the carrier in turn responds to its customer that 'all circuits are busy now; try your call again later please'. Or, there may be a very rapid 'busy signal' to indicate that all circuits are busy rather than the specific line of the called party. Overloaded conditions like that are nothing new; there have been many instances over the past 115 years since the telephone was first put into regular use with the ability to have calls switched between subscribers when the demand for service was so great that the telco literally 'ran out of equipment' to handle the call. Persons knowledgeable of how telephone switching systems operate know that telephone companies are generally only able to handle calls from about ten to fifteen percent of their subscribers at any given time ... and anytime when more than eight to ten percent of the subscribers want service all at the same time, traffic is considered quite heavy. If more than two or three percent of the total subscriber base attempt to make a call all at the very same instant -- or within a second or two of each other -- there will be a delayed dial tone for many. In some smaller central offices, perhaps only nine or ten subscribers can go off hook with dial tone at the same time. Subscribers following will hear dial tone as soon as someone in the first bunch has finished dialing. 'Busy Hour' is defined as that time of the day when historically the largest number of subscribers want service all at the same time; then is the time that you'll see ten to fifteen percent of the total subscriber base on the line all at once. Usually if this happens, it will be mid-morning or mid-afternoon on a weekday; a time when businesses make heavy use of their phones. During other 'non-busy' times, perhaps five percent of the subscribers will be using the phone. There are many times when only one or two percent of the subscribers are using the phone, and sometimes less than one percent of the total sub- scriber base will be using the phone. We all know that to provide a scenario where total or 'virtual' non- blocking is available would be prohibitively expensive; and anyway, an analysis of the telecom traffic patterns in the past simply does not warrant that kind of service. I've been asked what did 'they' do in the days of manual service -- all calls handled by the 'number please?' operator -- when an emergency occured? Surely California had earthquakes and presidents got assasinated and other grievous things occurred causing the citizens to all go 'off- hook' at once seeking information, comfort, guidance or whatever ... Generally, Bell went to 'emergency service only', meaning instead of responding 'operator' or 'number please?' the operators would answer with the phrase 'emergency service only right now; if this is not an emergency please hang up and place your call later ...'; the operators would go up and down the line of lighted jacks on their switchboards repeating that message over and over; saying it, pulling their cord out and moving to the next one. They'd only pause if the subscriber spoke up immediatly such as to ask for the Fire Department or something like that. If the subscriber then continued to stay off hook (as evidenced by the illuminated lamp associated with his jack) or tapped rapidly on his hook (meaning the lamp would flash in the same way), then the operator or some other operator would go on the line to deal with it. If the emergency/disaster was national or worldwide in scope (the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 comes to mind as does the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1945) then the entire Bell System would be on emergency service only for a matter of an hour or two, maybe eight or ten hours until the stirred up citizens quieted down and went back to whatever they had been doing before the incident which caused the uproar. An operator with Illinois Bell during those years told me that she was on duty the Sunday of the Pearl Harbor incident, and that '... about noon that day, our boards lit up like a Christmas Tree; we wondered about it and within about ten minutes our supervisors were telling everyone what happened and we were on emergency service only from then until about ten o'clock that Sunday night ...' If the incident was local in nature or confined to the jurisdiction of one central office exchange, then those operators dealt with it in the same way, but word was quickly passed to the rest of the area that non-emergency calls were to be withheld from the affected exchange until the operators had gotten their boards under control again, however long that might take. A woman who was the chief operator and phone room manager at Pearl Harbor on the day that FDR said would 'live in infamy forever' whose story has appeared here in TELECOM Digest recalled later that '... the operators in Oakland were very protective of us that day and for several days following; they'd wait for us to call them when we could handle more traffic given all the downed wires and wrecked buildings and all ...' At the time, Oakland, California was the AT&T international center handling calls to the far east, the Pacific Islands, etc. On a summer day in 1935 when an explosion caused a major fire in the Chicago Union Stockyards causing a huge amount of thick, very black, very acrid smoke over a large area of the southside of Chicago, the operators at the YARds exchange (now 312-927) worked for several hours explaining to a frantic neighborhood around the stockyards what was going on, and relaying information to the residents from authorities at the scene, etc. One such instance that I remember specifically was an explosion at the Whiting Refinery in 1953. I was only a little kid, but I remember hearing kind of a loud 'thump' with the house shaking a little for just a second or two. I guess we were about a mile west of the labor- atory which had the explosion, but a big fire could be seen even that far away. It was fierce enough that it quickly spread into some storage tanks and a large device they called a 'cat cracker' -- whatever that means -- and hot enough that it twisted some railroad tracks out of shape there and completely melted the main street in Whiting where it runs through the center of the refinery (on both sides of the street) at that point. People living within a block or two of the location had their houses completely caved in. Between the Amoco Refinery Fire Depart- ment and the Whiting Fire Department it took them four days to put out the fire. I was just a kid; it was all very exciting to see and I wanted to make sure all my friends knew about it but when I tried to call someone I knew, maybe ten minutes or so after the blast, I remember the Whiting phone operator taking what seemed like forever to respond and then all she said was they were only handling emergency calls due to the explosion and the large number of people trying to find out the details. I turned on the radio (local area station) where they were already talking about it and remember the announcer saying something to the effect that 'if you know how to operate a telephone switchboard then your help is urgently needed at the Whiting telephone exchange to cope with a flood of calls due to the explosion', and asking people to refrain from using the phone if at all possible until further notice. Just some thoughts this Sunday evening I thought you might enjoy reading. PAT ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V14 #116 ****************************** ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Downloaded From P-80 International Information Systems 304-744-2253