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)

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Date: Sun,  6 Mar 1994 14:13:18 -0500
From: Dave Banisar <[email protected]>
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: [email protected] (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                           [email protected]
TIME Magazine         [email protected]           [email protected]
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 <[email protected]>
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 <[email protected]>
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 "[email protected]"
Consultant      mail box at the end of March.
San Francisco   Please use "[email protected]" 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: [email protected] (Lance Ginner)
Subject: Re: Harrassing One-Ring Calls
Reply-To: [email protected]
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: [email protected] (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 <[email protected]> Carl Moore <[email protected]>
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 <[email protected]>
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 <[email protected]>
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: [email protected] (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
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