Critics Hope to Disconnect New Technology That Displays Caller’s Phone Number

An “electronic peephole” that displays the telephone number of incoming calls is worrying defenders of privacy rights and stirring concern on Capitol Hill.

But others say the new gadget will short-circuit nuisance calls and will be a boon to law enforcement.

The new service is known as Automatic Number Identification, or Caller ID, and is being offered for about $6.50 a month plus another $60 to $80 for a small viewing device that flashes an incoming number before the phone is answered.

Businesses love it. But privacy advocates say it’s Big Brother and will lead to “phone prefix discrimination” and other social ills as people selectively decide what calls to answer or to ignore.

“This changes the nature of phone service. It suddenly is interactive,” says Gary Marx, a professor of sociology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“The phone companies are trying to create the argument that your phone number is something you have no rights over,” Marx says.

Opponents of Caller ID also say it is a device of telephone merchandising companies to mine for gold: the names, telephone numbers and buying habits of people who make phone orders or inquiries.

Mark Plotkin, a Washington political fund-raiser and liberal commentator, says using phones to gather information on people has “frightening Orwellian implications for the future.”

“First it’s the phone number and then it’s all sorts of information on the screen . . . what color he is, what political party he belongs to, his religious background,” Plotkin says.

Caller ID is drawing the attention of Congress. It will be one of several privacy issues to be discussed in House and Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearings this spring, congressional sources say.

Heated debate has surrounded proposals to introduce Caller ID in several jurisdictions nationwide. California already has passed a law banning the service unless customers are given the ability to block it on their phones.

Caller ID will begin this month in Pennsylvania, despite strenuous opposition. But state phone regulators said Bell of Pennsylvania must allow police and domestic violence intervention agencies to block the service at will.

New York state regulators refused to allow Rochester Telephone Co. to offer the service unless customers had a total blocking option.

Caller ID has been available on a limited basis in New Jersey since October, 1988. It was introduced in Maryland and Virginia in the last two months, and phone users in Charleston, W.Va., are ordering it now, according to Bell Atlantic spokesman Ken Pitt.

South Central Bell, a division of BellSouth, began offering the service in the Memphis area in December, and expects to begin offering it in the Carolinas and Florida within the next six months, said Jim Whitehead, an official with BellSouth Services.

Nynex will offer it in Bennington, Vt., before next summer, Nynex official Joe Gagen said.

American Telephone & Telegraph Co. also offers the service to its 800-number customers to enable businesses to quickly call up computerized records when customers call.

New Jersey Bell spokesman James W. Carrigan said that following the introduction of Caller ID, requests from customers for traps or call trace records declined 49% in Hudson County during a six-month period.

Statewide, the number of requests decreased 18% “and we expect that to increase with the availability of Caller ID,” Carrigan said.

Caller ID also is being used by police to trace bomb threats and false alarms.

Retail businesses and banks say Caller ID allows them to have customers’ records available before a company representative picks up the call--even though it makes some customers uneasy to be greeted by name before they identify themselves.

For the average phone user, phone company officials say Caller ID simply lets them see who is trying to enter their residences by telephone.