Caller ID and Call Rejection

Your Sept. 23 editorial, “Confusion Calling,” is confusing itself.

There has been a near-hysterical bias in California against caller ID, to the extent that many Californians blindly signed up for complete blocking without understanding the issues. The FCC has mandated that your number go out on every call, blocked or not. The blocked number isn’t displayed to the people being called, but they know that you’ve put your electronic “thumb” over their residential telephonic “peep-hole.”

The rights of the private residential person being called are ignored. Unfortunately, anonymous call rejection is a necessary tool to get my caller ID service to work effectively. Also, anyone who subscribes to caller ID and who routinely blocks his or her outgoing calls is foolish at least, or an unthinking hypocrite at worst.

The FCC has decreed that caller ID is in the national interest. Get with it, Californians, and block only calls to those who might pose a risk to you. Those calls should be rare. And, be glad that you can send your number to your caller ID friends, as a matter of late-1990s good telephone etiquette.

WALLY ROBERTS

San Clemente

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I remember reading the Dr. Seuss book to my children about Sylvester McMonkey McBean, who first took money from sneetches for putting stars on the navels of those sneetches who did not have stars, then took money for taking them off the sneetches who had the stars first, then took money to take them off the sneetches on whom he had put them, then . . . you get the picture.

Now the telephone companies take money from subscribers to give them caller ID, then take money from subscribers to block their caller IDs, and then will take money to block calls from callers who have blocked their IDs.

If justice is being served, the telephone companies better be giving substantial royalties to Dr. Seuss.

TERRENCE R. DUNN

Bakersfield