TELECOM Digest     Sun, 25 Dec 2005 21:41:00 EST    Volume 24 : Issue 580

Inside This Issue:                             Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Spying on Telephone Calls is OK, Says Powell (Associated Press Newswire)
    Re: Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report (harold@hallikainen)
    Unanswered Calls to Cell Phones? (Lisa Hancock)
    Entire New York Times Available On-Line (Lisa Hancock)
    Taxes, was: NYC Transit Strike Midst Cold Weather and Christmas (Burstein)
    Re: NYC Transit Strike Midst Cold Weather and Christmas (John Smith)
    Re: Cell Phone Extenders? (Rik)
    Re: Florida Attorney General: My Email is Not Spam! (John R. Levine)
    Re: Florida Attorney General: My Email is Not Spam! (John McHarry)

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We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we
are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because
we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands
against crime.   Geoffrey Welsh

               ===========================

See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details
and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest.  

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Associated Press News Wire <ap@telecom-digest.org> 
Subject: Spying on Telephone Calls is OK, Says Colin Powell
Date: Sun, 25 Dec 2005 19:02:24 -0600



[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Over this holiday weekend, we have
given some attention to the National Security Agency and its massive
intrusion into people's privacy via the telephone. In the Digest for
Saturday evening, I printed (what had been) the 'secret charter'
of the agency founded during President Truman's administration in
1952. It was so secret, that most people knew nothing about its 
formation at all for several years, and even today, not a lot is known
about the NSA. What we have found out about NSA in recent months was
that President Bush has used them for a lot of 'warrantless wire
tapping of people suspected to be 'terrorists' as part of Bush's 'war
on terrorism'. An article on the Associated Press newswire earlier
Sunday quoted an interview (also earlier today) from former Secretary
of State Colin Powell. Here are some excerpts from today's interview
with Powell.   PAT]
 
            ====================================

Powell: 'Nothing Wrong' With Eavesdropping

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell on Sunday supported government
eavesdropping to prevent terrorism but said a major controversy over
presidential powers could have been avoided by obtaining court
warrants.

Powell said that when he was in the Cabinet, he was not told that
President Bush authorized a warrantless National Security Agency
surveillance operation after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Appearing on ABC's "This Week" Powell said he sees "absolutely nothing
wrong with the president authorizing these kinds of actions" to
protect the nation.

But he added, "My own judgment is that it didn't seem to me, anyway,
that it would have been that hard to go get the warrants. And even in
the case of an emergency, you go and do it."

The New York Times reported on its Internet site Friday that the NSA
has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet
communications flowing into and out of the United States. The program
bypassed the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Powell said Congress will need to judge whether Bush is correct in his
assertion that he could approve eavesdropping without first obtaining
court orders.

"And that's going to be a great debate," Powell said.

Powell, who also is a former chairman of the military Joint Chiefs of
Staff, had no reservations when asked whether eavesdropping should
continue.

"Of course it should continue," he said. "And nobody is suggesting
that the president shouldn't do this."

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. 

NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the
daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new
articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at
http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html

For more headline news from Associated Press, please go to:
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: No one obects, , that is, except for
all the Democratic members of Congress and quite a few of the
Republican members of that body.  PAT]

------------------------------

From: harold@hallikainen.com <harold@hallikainen.com>
Subject: Re: Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report
Date: 25 Dec 2005 08:52:29 -0800
Organization: http://groups.google.com


How about a new email header that identifies whether the message is
terrorist related or not? That'd simplify their work a lot!

Harold


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That's a lot like my tongue in cheek
suggestion that ICANN open a TLD for .spam and .scam. How many
users do you think would tag their email as .terrorist related?
Probably sbout as many would identify their writing as '.spam and in
fact, later in this current issue we are going to have more 
comments about the Florida Atttorney General who has b.s. 'ed his
way around the spammed rules by flatly declaring it does not apply
in his instance.  PAT]

------------------------------

From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com
Subject: Unanswered Calls to Cell Phones?
Date: 25 Dec 2005 12:41:30 -0800
Organization: http://groups.google.com


If you call a cellphone (without voicemail) and it doesn't answer,
after a few rings an intercept recording will come on and tell you the
party is not available and terminate the call.

When you reach that recording, is that call chargeable?  I don't think
it should be since it was unanswered, but my experience is that one
does get charged.

A few years ago I was meeting a friend at a convention, and I was to
call his cell phone from a pay phone upon my arrival.  His cell phone
number was long distance from that point.  I called a few times using
my Calling Card but couldn't reach him and I was billed for the calls.
(I complained and they took it off.)

Now I realize most people today have such low per-call fees (ie 10c)
so this isn't an issue, but there are times from a pay phone, long
distance, or peak period cell phone roaming where the per-call charge
is indeed significant, even as much as a dollar or more per minute.
It doesn't seem to fair to charge for unanswered calls.  I don't know
if traditional supervision (call answered) signals are passed back
from cell phone switches.

[public replies, please]

------------------------------

From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com
Subject: Entire New York Times Available On-Line
Date: 25 Dec 2005 12:43:11 -0800
Organization: http://groups.google.com


I understand the entire New York Times going back to its beginning, is
now available on-line for a modest fee.  Some libraries have this for
their patrons free of charge and one can access it from home.  The
database includes advertisements and is searchable.

My question about this is _how_ did they manage to get it all on?
Presumably they had some automated scanning process to read in the
microfilm pages and convert them to .PDF text, but considerable human
effort must have been needed to reconcile errors, deal with the random
blocking of articles and ads as they appeared on a page, and the
continuation of articles from one page to another.  When you consider
how thick the newspaper is and how long its been published, you see
what a massive task that was.  Also the scanning software, reading
from microfilm which is pretty coarse, must have been quite
sophisticated.

Anyway, I've used the on-line access and it's quite a powerful and
convenient tool.  Sitting at one's own PC is much easier than treking
to a large library and fiddling with microfilm readers.  One must
locate the desired dates in an index book, and check separate books
for each year.  Then, one must find the proper reels of microfilm.
It's a bit tricky to thread the film through the reader spools and
lens.  Last, one must sequentially search for the specific date and
article through the reel.  A bit dizzying watching it spin by.

While on the surface it would seem on-line access would surpass
microfilm in every way, microfilm still has a few advantages:

1) On-line searching is very narrow.  That is, if you're searching for
articles on the Verrazano Bridge and you spell it wrong -- very easy to
do with that word -- you're seach will come up empty.  But in a hard copy
index, as long as you have "Ver" you should find what you want.

Further, while looking in the index book, you might see other entries
of interest which you don't get in an on-line search.

2) You get the article and only the article from on-line.  If viewing
the microfilm, you get to see the whole newspaper of the time frame.
Often there are sidebar articles which might be of related interest.
You see how your article appeared in the paper -- as a page one
headline or buried in the classifieds on page 90.  You also see the
advertisements of the day.  In my research, I've often accidently
stumbled articles of high interest that just happened to be in the
paper in that time span.

3) Sometimes there are alternative resources in the library which you
don't have at home.  Yes, going to a major library can be a nuisance
(the ones I use have parking problems).  But there are other indexes,
such as the Reader's Guide to Periodicals, and other publications
available only on microfilm, such as Newsweek and Business Week, that
may be necessary to round out your research.  The New York Times is a
newspaper of record and a good resource, but it is by no means the
final authority on any subject and a good researcher will check
alternative sources as well.

4) Microfilm access is usually free; unless your library pays for the
service, on-line research has a fee.

[public replies, please]


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There are good rationales for both
microfilm and online records. What I understand about the New York
Times project (and the Chicago Tribune, which began in 1847) is that
many of the very old pages are done in .pdf style or something similar
to .jpg , that is instead of scanning all those old articles, they are
taking a _photograph_ of the page and putting that photographic
image on the computer. That would seem to be an easier way of handling
it. Chicago Tribune started with miicrofilm of every page of every
back issue from 1871 forward; between 1847 and October, 1871 they have
a scattered selection of back issues (those that were not lost in the
Great Fire).  By using the .pdf and-or .jpg format, reasearchers get
the context of the articles and the advertisements on the pages, etc.
One thing I have noticed about New York Times in recent months is how
you can have all you want _at no charge_ through their several RSS 
feeds and news wires. I put a hundred or more articles each day on 
the page http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/nytimes.html, which are
available with no registration or login requirements. Just go to that
URL and spend the day reading their stuff as desired. I have the top
20-25 news items each day from several news categories with their 
blessings.  PAT]

------------------------------

From: Danny Burstein <dannyb@panix.com>
Subject: Taxes, was: NYC Transit Strike Midst Cold Weather and Christmas
Date: Sun, 25 Dec 2005 04:14:11 UTC
Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC


In <telecom24.579.4@telecom-digest.org> sethb@panix.com (Seth
Breidbart) writes:

[ Responding to TELECOM Digest Editor regarding NYC's Mayor
  Bloomberg's non-control of the State chartered transit system ]

> Then why can't he get the commuter tax back?  (There used to be a NYC
> Income Tax for non-residents of the city who worked there, but the
> state turned it off.  Turning it on to lower taxes paid by city
> residents who vote for mayor would help Bloomberg.)

If you really believe that letting NYC tap additional tax revenue
(from, in this case, non city residents) would lead to a corresponding
decrease in other taxes, I'd suggest you're demonstrating a very rosy
view of government finances.

obtelecom: There's an extra special "tax" on telephone services (wired
and wireless) that's applied to the dozen or so counties (that's NYC
and a hefty chunk of the surrounding area) supposedely earmarked for
the mass transit system. Note that I just spent a half hour going
through lots and lots of financial web pages and couldn't find the
actual figure ...

_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
		     dannyb@panix.com 
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]

------------------------------

From: John Smith <user@example.net>
Subject: Re: NYC Transit Strike Midst Cold Weather and Christmas
Date: Sun, 25 Dec 2005 08:08:27 GMT


Howard S. Wharton wrote:

> There are many who would like to change the Taylor Law. There are many
> points to the law that protects the public employee.  We cannot pick
> or choose what laws we want to obey.

Roger Toussaint, President of TWU Local 100, responded to Mayor
Bloomberg, who had made remarks essentially the same as those above.

He said, "There is a higher calling than the law and that's justice
and equality. Had Rosa Parks answered the call of the law instead of
the higher call of justice, many of us who are driving buses today
would still be in the back of the bus."

In other words, there are times we MUST pick and choose what laws we
will obey.


Gary Novosielski

"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of
great moral crises, maintain their neutrality."  --Dante Alighieri

------------------------------

From: Rik <hrasmussen@nc.rr.com>
Subject: Re: Cell Phone Extenders?
Date: 25 Dec 2005 07:55:45 -0800
Organization: http://groups.google.com


I concur. I work for a city, managing the Public Safety radio
system. I see the same thing in our city. They do not want towers, but
everyone complains about coverage.

Talk to Verizon. It may be also that you are on the edge of their
footprint and they have to be sure they do not encroach on the
neighboring carrier's area. That is a big issue here in North Carolina
because Verizon is only licensed for some areas, not the entire state.

Rik

------------------------------

From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine)
Subject: Re: Florida Attorney General: My Email is Not Spam!
Date: 24 Dec 2005 22:11:04 -0500
Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA


> Spam has to be "deceptive"?

It does to be illegal.

Thank CAN-SPAM and the DMA for that.

R's,

John

------------------------------

From: John McHarry <jmcharry@comcast.net>
Subject: Re: Florida Attorney General: My Email is Not Spam!
Date: Sun, 25 Dec 2005 22:42:08 GMT
Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net


They all say that, don't they? 

------------------------------


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End of TELECOM Digest V24 #580
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