When Anonymity of Caller Is Lost, We’re That Closer to a Surveillance Society
The people who brought us call-forwarding and call-waiting have done it again--this time in the form of call-identification. Telephone customers in many parts of the country who are willing to spend an extra $6 a month will soon be able to know the number from which an incoming call was dialed before they pick up their phone. This service requires purchasing a video display device that keeps a record of the time and phone number of incoming calls.
The system offers many advantages. It can deter (or determine the origin of) crank calls and false alarms. It will provide the location of persons who request emergency help. It can mean faster consumer services (a sales representative can have your record displayed even as the phone is being answered). Burglars who telephone to be sure that no one is home may be identified by the phone number they unwittingly leave. Call-identification permits screening calls (you don’t answer if it’s a tiresome relative).
People calling know your number; isn’t it only fair that you should know theirs?
Not necessarily. There may be times when an imbalance in the relationship is desirable. Anonymity has positive as well as negative consequences. Persons with unlisted phone numbers may involuntarily have to reveal them. The calls to law- enforcement and counseling hot lines may decline because of the suspicion that anonymity is no longer guaranteed.
Those calling for information about goods and services may receive an avalanche of unwanted phone and mail solicitations, particularly if their names are distributed by a mass-marketing company.
The new visibility encroaches on white lies, spontaneity and quiet personal detective work. Our sense of autonomy and self are enmeshed in a complex web of privacy, secrecy, diplomacy and fabrication. Anything that curtails social maneuverability and alters these delicate relationships, whatever its other benefits, is likely to be morally ambiguous.
The increased ease of verifying location might be thought to make people more honest, but this is balanced by the fact that a record will be left of the act of verification. Thus, if you invite friends to a party and they say they can’t come because of an obligation at home, you may be less likely to call to check if they were telling the truth since there will be a record that you called. Knowing that, they may be more likely to lie.
Supervision in the home will become more intensive and democratic. Spouses, parents and children will find it easier to check up on each other. The spouse who is visiting a friend can no longer call home and say that he or she is working late; the teen-ager prohibited from associating with a certain person will find it more difficult to take calls from that person, while pretending to be talking to someone else. Gone is the freedom to hang up if a person we do not want to talk to answers, or if we develop second thoughts about making the call.
The consequences of the service will depend partly on how it is offered. Callers could be told that the line they have reached has call-identification and be given the option of hanging up before their number is revealed. Or callers could be told that they can block call-identification by entering several digits. Or callers could be denied any controls and their number displayed without their knowledge or consent. The latter will be the case for callers in New York and New England served by Nynex. The interests of the receiver are put above those of the caller. In the system proposed by Pacific Telesis for its West Coast customers, callers will be able to block the display of their number.
The West Coast offering is far superior. It preserves the caller’s privacy, but not at a cost of being unable to make the phone call. Those receiving the call would be given some information that the party calling did not want his or her number revealed. Crank callers could still be identified through another new phone company service--call-tracing.
In their marketing research the phone companies discovered that West Coast customers were much more concerned with privacy protection than were East Coast customers. But when matters of principle are at stake, marketing research ought not to prevail. There are important questions of informed consent and privacy here. As phone company customers, we are both callers and receivers and the interests of both ought to be served.
Call-identification is a small eddy in a torrent of new information-gathering technologies that are turning us into a transparent or surveillance society. Liberty to do good or evil partly resides in the cracks of inefficient technology. As these are patched, our vigilance must increase.
