Date: 7 Aug 2000 06:15:10 -0400 Message-ID: <20000807101510.7357.qmail@xuxa.iecc.com> From: owner-telecom-digest@telecom-digest.org (Telecom Digest) To: telecom-digest@telecom-digest.org Subject: Telecom Digest V2000 #10 Reply-To: editor@telecom-digest.org Sender: owner-telecom-digest@telecom-digest.org Errors-To: owner-telecom-digest@telecom-digest.org Precedence: bulk X-UIDL: f9281ed1079931cf2b7e6888115f21da Status: RO X-Status: Telecom Digest Monday, August 7 2000 Volume 2000 : Number 010 In this issue: Number portability D O E S N O T W O R K ! ! ! ! Verizon workers on strike EFFector 13.06: Carnivore, New EFFers, Join via PayPal, DVD Updates Registration PAT at Storemont-Vail Carnivore and RIP ICB spam Pittsburgh re: ICB Spam AT&T Wireless ill-prepared for rollout of 866 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 6 Aug 2000 11:26:55 -0400 From: wdg@hal-pc.org (Bubba) Subject: Number portability D O E S N O T W O R K ! ! ! ! Number portability D O E S N O T W O R K ! Last Tuesday, August 1, 2000, Southwestern Bell ported 500 numbers for me (in contiguous 100-number blocks) between two adjacent SWB central offices, HSTNTXNADSO and HSTNTXSUDSO. In both offices the facilities were PRI ISDN. The numbers were moved from NAtional to SUnset. Although the actual porting of the numbers took considerably longer than expected (some 4 hours), the initial observation was that at the end of the 4 hours it was working. - or so I thought. Just one problem: While local callers inside the Houston LATA had no trouble reaching the newly ported numbers, many long distance callers were encountering 'out-of-service' intercept messages. Worse, two high profile 800 numbers which are translated to a couple of the ported numbers also no longer work. Today is Sunday the 6th., 5 days after the number porting occurred. The two inbound 800 numbers STILL do not work and I'm still getting sporadic reports from around the countryside that the block of 500 ported numbers are still unreachable. Callers are receiving an intercept recording stating that the numbers have been disconnected. The LEC tells me the problem lies in propagation time for the various IXCs and CLECs, etc. to pick up the database changes. Mother of God! Can someone help me understand WHY this happened and moreover how long it's going to take for these various and sundry CLECS, IXCs and LECs to pick up the changes? Just an observation here, it would seem to me that this number portability thing does not work. - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 6 Aug 2000 13:19:06 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Verizon workers on strike Talks continue at Verizon 85,000 employees on strike; talks continue in hope of quick settlement August 6, 2000: 1:01 p.m. ET NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Negotiations between Verizon Communications and the unions representing some 85,000 of its workers continued Sunday after the company's telephone operators and line technicians officially walked off the job without a new contract. Two major unions, representing about 33 percent of Verizon's work force, said the company made a last-minute contract offer that responded to many of workers' concerns about more money and benefits, improved job security and restrictions on the amount of forced-overtime employees must work. http://cnnfn.cnn.com/2000/08/05/news/verizon_strike/ - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 6 Aug 2000 13:22:57 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: EFFector 13.06: Carnivore, New EFFers, Join via PayPal, DVD Updates EFFector Vol. 13, No. 6 Aug. 4, 2000 editor@eff.org A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation ISSN 1062-9424 IN THE 154th ISSUE OF EFFECTOR (now with over 24,600 subscribers!): * EFF Position on FBI "Carnivore" Snooping System + EFF's House Judiciary Committee Testimony on Carnivore + Carnivore FAQ * EFF Welcomes New Board and Staff Members: + Prof. Pamela Samuelson, Boardmember + Cindy Cohen, Legal Director + Lee Tien, Senior Staff Attorney + John Marttila, Administrative Assistant * EFF Now Accepts PayPal Transactions for Memberships * DVD Update Bulletins Available on CAFE-News * Administrivia For more information on EFF activities & alerts: http://www.eff.org _________________________________________________________________ http://www.eff.org/effector/HTML/effect13.06.html - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 6 Aug 2000 14:07:25 -0400 From: Jay Hennigan Subject: Registration Please allow posting. - -- Jay Hennigan - Network Administration - jay@west.net NetLojix Communications, Inc. NASDAQ: NETX - http://www.netlojix.com/ WestNet: Connecting you to the planet. 805 884-6323 - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 6 Aug 2000 16:10:52 -0400 From: "Tad Cook" Subject: PAT at Storemont-Vail I was at a family reunion in Eugene, Oregon last weekend. It was for descendents of my great-grandparents on my father's mother's side, who are from the Topeka, Kansas area. I ran into a woman who is a friend of one of my dad's cousins, and it turns out she is night PBX operator at Stormont-Vail Regional Medical Center in Topeka, where our moderator Patrick Townsend first stayed before he moved to Kansas Rehabilitation Hospital. She remembers his name, and remarked that she received quite a number of calls for him. I told her about his previous hospital stays in Illinois, and how he would eventually seek out the PBX room and report back to the digest about how the phone system worked. She said that she has had quite a number of telephone people who were patients come down to the phone room to check things out over the years. I then found out that the hospital is built on the site of my grandmother's old home, which was torn down in the 1960s for the hospital. Tad Cook tad@aa.net Seattle, WA - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 6 Aug 2000 17:13:13 -0400 From: "Steve Hayes" Subject: Carnivore and RIP Hi everyone, Glad to see that the Digest is back, even with the robo-moderation. I hope that Pat is able to get his life sorted out. Of course he can do a better job than the robot but I'm not sure that it is worth all the aggro involved so let's all be glad that the robot exists. I would remind those who have benefitted from the Digest all these years without making any financial contribution that they ought to send something to Pat for all his work. Anyway, in V2000, #6, we had a copy of EPIC ALERT Volume 7.15 forwarded by Monty Solomon. Yes, it was big but it was also very interesting. In particular, the information about the FBI's proposed Carnivore system for intercepting communications at ISPs. There has been quite a bit of controversy here in the UK regarding the proposals in the "Regulation of Investigatory Powers" (RIP) bill. This would require ISPs to install "black boxes" which would be connected to secret government facilities, supposedly to allow interception of communications by the usual "terrorists and drug lords". US and UK spooks have a long history of moving in lockstep and we can see that Carnivore and RIP are again one and the same thing. What makes these "black boxes" particularly alarming is that they sound like they will allow any or all communications to be intercepted with no-one outside the government agencies knowing which ones or able to check that the appropriate warrants have been obtained. Another contentious clause in the RIP bill relates to encrypted communications. It allows the authorities to require someone to hand over either decryption keys or decrypted versions of any communication on request. The burden of proof is reversed - you would have to prove that you did not have the key and how do you do that? Furthermore, there are very severe penalties if you reveal to anyone that you have been made to hand over any of this information! A number of countries have explicitly rejected this type of law, e.g. the Irish Republic. One way I can see to bust this whole racket is to use a version of Virtual Private Networking or similar to connect to an ISP in one of these countries (via a local ISP - no international calls needed). When you connected to your offshore ISP, your computer would generate a session key. This would be sent to the offshore ISP after encryption with their public key and would then be used to encrypt all communications in both directions. At the end of the session, the session key would be automatically destroyed. When the plods come knocking, you can easily demonstrate that the session key exists no more. The only way to get it is with the ISPs private key but they are beyond the jurisdiction. RIP RIP. There are probably dozens of other ways to thwart these systems. As a law-abiding person, I am quite prepared to live with a system where my e-mails can be intercepted (or my phone tapped) subject to the usual safeguards of warrants, etc. However, I am not at all happy if governments can scan all communications looking for any tasty tidbits of information that they or their associates can use to their advantage. Most people will probably feel the same way. If Carnivore and RIP don't have good, rat-proof safeguards built in, I can see a situation developing where all communications will end up beyond the reach of the authorities with or without warrants - and it'll be their own stupid fault! Steve Hayes (please reply to stevehayes@compuserve.com) South Wales, U.K. - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 6 Aug 2000 17:46:41 -0400 From: Jay Hennigan Subject: ICB spam Can we do something to lose this spam? These repetitive "newsletters" are essentially advertisements for a paid subscription web site. Spam is the same thing over and over again, and the message "Visit this URL, pay money, and see what's there" is what is being said over and over again. Spam is not about content. The message of "Visit this URL and pay to view something" is every bit as much spam whether the website being spamvertized is telecom related or a porn site. If it's really news, and it's really on-topic and telecom related, then let the ICB people simply post each item separately with an appropriate subject line for that item. If they don't want to share information freely and simply want to lure people to a paid website, they are spammers and should be banned. Repetitive postings with teasers and lists of pay-for URLs aren't on topic, don't have appropriate subject lines, and don't belong on a moderated (or robo-moderated) newsgroup. - -- Jay Hennigan - Network Administration - jay@west.net NetLojix Communications, Inc. NASDAQ: NETX - http://www.netlojix.com/ WestNet: Connecting you to the planet. 805 884-6323 - -- Jay Hennigan - Network Administration - jay@west.net NetLojix Communications, Inc. NASDAQ: NETX - http://www.netlojix.com/ WestNet: Connecting you to the planet. 805 884-6323 - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 6 Aug 2000 18:04:26 -0400 From: "Ralph Sprang" Subject: Pittsburgh Would anyone who is familiar with telecom related companies in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania please email me. Thanks. Ralph decolores9@yahoo.com CCNmail for your free web-based e-mail. http://www.ccnmail.com - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 6 Aug 2000 18:39:17 -0400 From: "Peter Hope-Tindall" Subject: re: ICB Spam I agree in substance with you. However, some of the ICB content is certainly useful in this case. As I said in my previous posts, I think a single (or even a couple) of tasteful links are appropriate for a sponsor (just like the ITU and/or Microsoft used to get credit). Third party ads are another matter. I complained a little last week (although, without realizing that this was formally announced in April). The response I was given by the individual at ICB and the acting robo- admin was that this person goes back a long way with Pat and pays a sponsorship fee for the privilege of doing this. I don't agree with it, but I guess this digest (and comp.dcom.telecom news group) is not a democracy. In many respects we have nobody to blame but ourselves if Pat has to turn to third party sponsorship to finance his moderation. If there is a group inclination here, possibly we could find out how much Judith contributes to the digest and replace those funds with subscriptions. (the put-up-or-shut-up approach). Comments anyone? Peter Hope-Tindall peter@hope-tindall.com "Jay Hennigan" wrote in message news:Pine.SO4.4.05.10008061443211.24770-100000@slowpoke.sb.west.net... > Can we do something to lose this spam? > > Spam is not about content. The message of "Visit this URL and pay to > view something" is every bit as much spam whether the website being > spamvertized is telecom related or a porn site. If it's really news, > and it's really on-topic and telecom related, then let the ICB people > simply post each item separately with an appropriate subject line for > that item. If they don't want to share information freely and simply > want to lure people to a paid website, they are spammers and should be > banned. - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 6 Aug 2000 22:37:29 -0400 From: "Jeffrey J. Carpenter" Subject: AT&T Wireless ill-prepared for rollout of 866 Apparently having over a year to prepare for the rollout of 866 was not sufficient for AT&T Wireless. I received my 866 number early last week (yes, Judith, I was able to get my vanity number in 866) from AT&T Long Distance. I currently have this 866 number forwarded to my Sprint PCS wireless phone. It has worked from everywhere I have tried: land lines, pay phones, Sprint PCS wireless, except AT&T Wireless (multiple phones). Late last week from Pittsburgh and St. Louis, I was getting a ringing forever, but it was not my Sprint PCS phone that was ringing. In Cleveland today, I received a "your call cannot be completed as dialled" message. Tonight in Pittsburgh, I am getting a fast busy. After spending 3 hours on the phone with AT&T Wireless on Friday, I was finally able to convince a customer service representative to *request* a trouble ticket be filed with the assistance of an representative from AT&T Long Distance repair conferenced into the call. The repair rep was able to convince the reluctant AT&T Wireless person that this was *Wireless's* problem. The person refused to give me a trouble ticket number, so who knows what actually was filed, if anything. Some of the more amusing/sad things I was told: * "oh, you are calling Sprint PCS voicemail, you cannot do that from AT&T Wireless" (my Sprint phone was turned off) * "who is it you are trying to call?" (what business is it of theirs?) * "you are calling a prepaid wireless phone, you cannot do that(!!!!)" * "866 had been delayed and is not yet available" * "866 does not work yet, try it again in another month and it should work" * and, of course, "what is 866?" You would think for a company as large as AT&T that they would actually have some of their technical staff on some of these numbering committees and they might be clued in on the rollout of something like "866". But, I guess not... jeff - -- Jeffrey J. Carpenter P.O. Box 471 Glenshaw, PA 15116-0471 Phone: +1 218 837-6000 Fax: +1 310 914-1716 Email: jjc@pobox.com Web: http://pobox.com/~jjc/ - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ End of Telecom Digest V2000 #10 *******************************