From: malQRMassimilation@gmail.com   
      
   On Fri, Apr 16, 2021 at 03:07:43AM -0000, bob prohaska wrote:   
   > In the past year or so the flux of robocalls seems to have   
   > increased.  Lately I'm getting five to ten per day.   
   >   
   > Is there a way to track them? CallerID I gather is spoofable, so   
   > that's not very interesting. Do phone carriers keep any records of   
   > inbound calls? Can ratepayers examine them?   
      
   Oh, my my my ... where do I start?   
      
   The reason spoofed Called ID works is the same reason that we get spam   
   emails, the same reason that Blue Boxes worked, the same reason that   
   Citizens Band radios used to work and are now almost all useless.   
      
   We don't count costs much in America. Whenever it's possible to   
   "improve" a system or a service, we go ahead and do it, without asking   
   ourselves if it's a good idea or if the benefits justify the risks.   
      
   I don't know why. In the case of robocalls and spoofed Caller ID,   
   perhaps it's the result of the telephone network having been, for   
   almost all its history, a closed system that had no outside   
   competition for ideas, no internal or external process to guard   
   against unexpected results, and no meaningful standards of security.   
      
   Maybe it's because technocrats such as we have a kind of tunnel vision   
   that prevents us from seeing anything but the shortest path from a   
   "problem" to a "solution." Our collective consciousness does not allow   
   for suspicion or caution - just the need to solve any problem we're   
   asked to address.   
      
   I doubt it ever occurred to the engineers at Bell Laboratories that   
   allowing customer-provided-equipment (CPE) to supply Caller ID info   
   was an invitation to fraud. I doubt that their world-view allowed them   
   to even consider the posibility that someone would break their rules   
   for commercial gain.   
      
   I don't know the answer, but I think we need to consider the question   
   before we set about trying to "solve" a "problem" without thinking   
   if we should look behind the curtains of American business and ask   
   ourselves if the "cure" is, once again, worse than the disease.   
      
   Bill   
      
   --   
   Bill Horne   
   (Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)