phone lookups (was: BBC News Online: 'Snoop' plans put on hold)

[Matthew Byng-Maddick]

On Fri, Jun 21, 2002 at 01:40:40PM +0100, Alison Wheeler wrote:
> but one of the issues here is that _of_ probability of error, the other
> being that - in the case of tracking someone down (partially the reason why
> the disk was obtained initially) - it provides a place to start. If I know
> that you live in a certain area or with someone specific it may not give me
> an 'absolute' answer (indeed, another friend who has a unique firstname in
> the UK is 'found' twice but since she moved again 4 months ago the
> information is of no direct help) but it would be a place to start -or- a
> place to make an error from.
> GIGO!

Thinking of this, I'm reminded of the story of one of the Cambridge (I think
Maths) Fellows at possibly Selwyn, but it may not have been, college had some
rather large house which he'd got for a surprisingly small amount of money
for the location, size and facilities. A few months in he found out why, when
the police came to raid the house. It had been owned by a fairly high up (in
the chain) drug dealer. Now, imagine that the guy they are trying to chase
decides to sell his phone to someone random, or that he manages to get the
number reused. Or, in the case of, say, a hotmail address, that the address
gets reused (say: fred999@hotmail.com). In this case, are the police, let
alone all the other departments actually going to be able to make sure that
the innocent person who's picked up on this ``hot'' email address or phone
number doesn't get completely hassled.

Argh,

MBM

-- 
Matthew Byng-Maddick         <mbm@colondot.net>           http://colondot.net/