Caller-ID for grex?

Feb 4 16:27 UTC 1996

When an anonymous or pseudonymous user does something on grex which attracts
the attention of authorities, staff is able to trace the Internet site and
the account name that initiated the connection to grex.  Staff can point the
authorities to that other site and avoid having blame put on grex itself. 
I know this has happened at least once before when a threat was transmitted
via e-mail.  So for the people who connect to grex via the Internet, there's
some identifying information logged about them.

But for users who connect to the dialins, staff can only tell which phone line
carried the connection and at what time.  They have to depend on Ameritech
to identify the caller.  Does anyone know for sure if Ameritech loggs such
information?  How long do they keep the logs?  Under the new CDA, we may be
asking for trouble if we can't give authorities any information about the
person who posts indecent material where children can read it.

The solution would be to buy caller-id service on the dialin lines and log
all calls.  I know this would involve some hardware and service expense and
staff time, but it might be worth protecting ourselves.

response 2 of 22:

Feb 4 16:38 UTC 1996

it has been my understanding that phone companies do have these logs, and will
surrender them only if presented with a warrant.  So, I would think in the
case of indescent materials getting to kids, that if someone were
investigating, that they would be able to get a warrant, and use our dial-in
number and time to search the phone company records to see who was connected.

response 4 of 22:

Feb 4 18:46 UTC 1996

I believe unlisted phone numbers come up as anonymous, as do calls
from certain areas... for the longest time, caller i.d. didn't work
for numbers originating in lansing, i'm told... i dunno if they
ever fixed it/wired it.

response 6 of 22:

Feb 4 20:06 UTC 1996

Yeah, Mary had it.  You dial something like #67 (the phone company sent me
a leaflet about this) and it blocks caller ID.

response 8 of 22:

Feb 4 21:36 UTC 1996

I think it's *67, but I'm not sure.  I don't use caller ID, since I think it's
not worth paying for, but I have no more objection to it than I have to the
"who" listing on systems that I telnet to saying where I'm telnetting in from,
or to my e-mail having a From: line on it.  Grex already logs a lot about who
every user who telnets in is, and where they're coming from, so if caller ID
were free and reliable, I don't see that as being any different.  That's moot,
though, since it's neither free or reliable.

response 10 of 22:

Feb 5 01:45 UTC 1996

(And I might add we'd be able to come up with some pretty accurate
start/stop/phone line statisitics, too)

response 12 of 22:

Feb 5 05:32 UTC 1996

Basically, if you get into doing illegal stuff, don't expect your anonymity
to hold up no matter what you do.

response 14 of 22:

Feb 5 11:11 UTC 1996

s programmed/programed

response 16 of 22:

Feb 7 16:19 UTC 1996

Another point about caller id:  most devices store a small number of
numbers... the friends i have who have caller id (who get ticked when
i call, since i don't show up) have a device which stores three numbers.
how long would that be?  by the time someone got over to the dungeon
to record the relevant number, three (or however many) others would
already have called and scrolled the abuser out of memory...
although it sounds like this is all hypothetical anyhow.

response 18 of 22:

Feb 7 17:15 UTC 1996

   Thats not really an issue, how many numbers can be stored.  I've
seen ANI equipment that can record hundreds of numbers, and better
yet some have a serial port that can squirt out data at the second
ring of each call.  We could keep all the data if we were going to
do this.

   Would we notify people?  Sure--I think we'd have to, wouldn't we?
It would require the expenditure of money and that takes board action.
So unless we had a closed board session people would know about it.

   But I don't think we need to do this.  If something really serious
happens, and the authorities get involvd, they'll do things that we
can't.  Remember, most of our annoying pest users have come in over
the net, and lot local.  Nearly all of our real problems (like October
1994 when Grex was down for several days) have been because of users
who came in via the net.

response 20 of 22:

Feb 7 19:57 UTC 1996

  Metoo!  (General agreement).  I could see it being useful on
rare occasions when we had an annoying local user who didn't
know we used caller-id or didn't know how to block it, but
that's a rare occurrence for the cost and effort.  Grex could
theoretically accept only identifiable calls, but that would
keep out some long distance users (usually just people who
can't telnet in at the moment and need to check something),
and people with privacy concerns.

response 22 of 22:

Feb 8 06:59 UTC 1996

I think we have achieved "rough consensus" on this one.