The LOD/H Technical Journal: File #10 of 10 Network News & Notes ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CWA Backs Bill To Ban Secret Telephone Monitoring (Communications Week 4/13/87) The Communications Workers of America threw itself into the thick of a growing congressional debate on privacy protections for workers by launching a campaign to enact legislation prohibiting secret monitoring of telephone operators. The union has for years attempted unsuccessfully to stop telephone companies from listening to operators for performance assessments. The union estimated that over 200,000 operators at AT&T & local operating companies are under surveillance. Third-party monitoring of telephone calls is illegal under the 1968 Wiretap Act, but a provision in the law lets employers listen in on worker conversations. For many years, only the telephone companies had the ability to monitor employees. Today, with the development of electronic telephone gear and computers, the practice has spread to health and insurance company personnel, the IRS and airline and hotel reservation representatives. Telephone company officials said they had not yet determined their position on the bill, but they stressed that monitoring was necessary to ensure that operators maintain performance standards. "In the competitave world AT&T faces, the name of the game is how well you treat the customer," said an AT&T spokeswoman. "We make spot checks to ensure the quality of service. CWA president Morton Bahr argued at a news conference that monitoring does not improve service. "The assumption by many employers that supervision must be conducted secretly, or else the worker will quit trying, is both unfair and contradits all available evidence," he said. The stress of being under surveillance by supervisors and computers often causes operators to develop stress-related illnesses, such as nervous conditions, anxiety, depression and ulcers, union officials said. Even the time operators take to use the bathroom is calculated. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Crime Doesn't Pay (Communications Week 4/13/87) Those 18 cellular telephone abusers recently arrested in New York on charges of illegally altering memory chips so they could make calls free of charge would not have been able to bilk carriers had the companies been using cellular phones from AUDIOVOX CORP., Hauppauge, N.Y. Audiovox president John Shalam said his company's phones contain a mechanism built into the software that blocks alteration of the phone's electronic serial number, or ESN. "If someone attempts to change the ESN, the phone will not activate," Shalam said. The cellular suspects apparently changed their ESNs, causing other users to be billed for the offender's calls. FBI agents estimated that local mobile telephone companies are losing approximately $40,000 per month, or about $3 million nationally, because of cellular fraud. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- US Sprint Initiates Operator Services (Communications Week 4/13/87) US Sprint Communications Co. has quietly become the first major long distance company other than AT&T to offer its own nationwide collect calling, third-party billing and other operator services. US Sprint's initiation of operator services early this year was made possible by a multiyear agreement with National Data Corp. The Sprint program puts a small dent in AT&T's marketing claims that they provide value-added services its competitors cannot equal. Before Sprint began offering the nationwide program, only AT&T offered large-scale operator services to its customers. MCI Communications Corp. has been conducting a limited operator services trial exclusively in Topeka Kansas, for about two years but has no immmediate plans to expand the service to other cities. National Data is primarily a transaction processing copmany, specializing in credit card authorizations via voice or data lines. Operators handling Sprint's collect and third-party traffic will also be spending some of their time handling credit card authorizations. Calls from a US Sprint customer to an operator are automatically turned over to National Data's operator centers in Atlanta; Cherry Hill, NJ.; Lombard Ill.; Miami; Sparks, Nevada; and Toronto, following directions from software developed for the long distance company's switches by National Data and Rockwell International Corp. National Data is currently negotiating with about 20 other regional and national long distance companies to provide the same sorts of services to them as the company does for US Sprint. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WARNING: Fiber Cable Is Not Tap Proof (Communications Week (4/13/87) Until recently, companies and government agencies were little concerned about clandestine siphoning of data from fiber optic networks. Because of the technology involved-lightwaves-fiber is considerable more difficult to eavesdrop on than copper wire. Many telecommunications users, however, have mistakenly assumed this to mean that fiber is tap-proof. Recent tests conducted by federal agencies, such as the NSA, CIA, and FBI have debunked the tap proof myth. Security of voice and data transmitted via fiber is an increasingly crucial issue as use of fiber optical local area networks grows within the government. Civilian agencies have committed themselves to upgrading their on-premises networks by installing fiber. The military too, is developing more applications for fiber optics. Encryption, while a common method of protecting military and State Dept. secrets, is expensive. While signal encryption is used mostly for classified defense communications, many other types of government data are not encoded. Security is a matter of definition. Fiber is secure in that it is resistant to simple methods of tapping. To tap it, you have to be much more sophisticated. Virtually anyone who can lift a manhole cover has access to leased lines. Indeed, the government says fiber's security advantages include its immunity to jamming, electromagnetic interference and electromagnetic pulses. Counter-intrusion equipment is designed to monitor and detect any breach in optical transmission, using the principle that at least some loss in a lightwave signal will occur if a fiber line is tapped. Such equipment also enables a rapid pinpointing of where the intrusion is being made on the cable.