5 ms·

Stop allowing spoofed numbers. Period. I'm sorry BigCorp, but this is a public nuisance and trumps your "need" for a single phone number.

rectang 7y ago
This is the US, where money is speech and one dollar is one vote. Individual consumers don't have enough money to matter compared to BigCorp.
- tyre 7y ago
  Clinton outspent Trump nearly 2:1 in the last election ($768m, $398m respectively) and still lost. Yes she won the popular vote by about 3m votes but that’s hardly a dollar to vote ratio. People vote their emotions, and emotions are surprisingly difficult to buy.
  - __s 7y ago
    rectang isn't talking about the presidential election
    - h5erahear5 7y ago
      The claim "one dollar is one vote" is directly refuted by tyre's data. It is absolutely relevant to the assertion made. But keep on downvoting HNers, ignorance is bliss is why we come to this website after all
      - pessimizer 7y ago
        One dollar being one vote is a cliché that refers to the wealthy having the most say in governance, not that US elections are literally the process of counting the individual candidates donations and declaring the candidate that got the most the winner. Also, stop playing the victim.
      - bduerst 7y ago
        Tyre didn't provide data, and neither did you. The 2016 election was complex, especially due to the foreign influence, campaign hacking, fraudulent spending, and free coverage from media. The fact that both the president's campaign manager and his personal lawyer (also RNC finance chair) are currently in prison points to there not being clear visibility into his campaign spending to this day. This doesn't refute the fact that wealth correlates with influence in U.S. politics, in fact, you could even say that a billionaire winning an election supports it. Also, why did you create an account for just this comment?
        cwkoss 7y ago
        Even more complex as the Clinton campaign colluded with the media to deliberately elevate Trump as part of their "pied piper strategy" to promote candidates they perceived as easy-to-beat. https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/fileid/1120/251 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/fileid/1120/251 Pretty depressing to consider that a portion of donations to the HRC campaign in 2015 were spent promoting Trump.
        bduerst 7y ago
        Hillary Clinton is currently not the president, and those surrounding her campaign are not currently in prison for fraud. Please stop deflecting to conspiracies that are not relevant.
        cwkoss 7y ago
        Did you read the linked document? It is an internal document from HRC's campaign. If you're analyzing why Trump won, knowing that her campaign intentionally elevated his campaign is certainly relevant. I hope our country can take off the hyperpartisan tribalist blinders and address the reality of why Trump won so we don't end up with another 4 years of him.
  - zanny 7y ago
    > People vote their emotions When its plastered all over TV. We just had elections days ago - obviously turnout is even worse than year than last where the national average was 50%. But nobody was voting emotionally there because largely you weren't voting for people or even positions you knew or recognized. You voted for the names you were familiar with - put in your head by advertising. Because there isn't a large central institution around your county commissioner election where media will give all candidates ample airtime to actually know who they are. I remember last year my district had a major election for the federal house - I live in PA and due to redistricting by the state supereme court we were having an election without an incumbent. Only 3,000-25,000 people in a district of 250,000 adults watched their public TV debate. The winner was just the guy that outspent his opponent by an order of magnitude via local companies subsidizing his campaign with 10 million bucks.
Aloha 7y ago
As someone with a heavy background, it would break a fair bit of the PSTN - while moves are in place to change the technical limitations of the PSTN that prevent this kind of verification, they're not complete yet, and will take several more years to implement fully.
- jklein11 7y ago
  Any chance you can explain what the PSTN is and why it is important? I tried reading the wikipedia article[1] but I still feel like I don't have enough telecom domain knowledge to understand it. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_switched_telephone_network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_switched_telephone_netw...
  - dboreham 7y ago
    If you're still making and receiving phone calls (dialed with numbers, using the dialer on your smart phone, etc), then that's the PSTN you're using.
    - Retric 7y ago
      A tiny but growing population is giving up on receiving calls from PSTN systems.
    - Aloha 7y ago
      Quite arguably this extends to text messaging too, all rely on the same fundamental systems
- nordsieck 7y ago
  >> Stop allowing spoofed numbers. Period. > As someone with a heavy background, it would break a fair bit of the PSTN As it stands, I think quite a few consumers are ready to just walk away from PSTN unless something pretty drastic is done quite soon.
  - Aloha 7y ago
howdydoo 7y ago
Even that wouldn't be necessary. Here's an idea – when receiving a call, the receiving network could separately connect to the claimed number and verify its authenticity. No match? Reject the caller. The owner of a number (and thus its cryptographic identity) could then delegate other agents to use its keys, its phone number, and most importantly, its reputation. Cryptography has come a long way since the days of rotary phones. The entire handshake could happen in under a second. The majority of calls these days are VoIP anyway. In fact, maybe we only implement this for VoIP and finally force the world to upgrade. I remember the days before HTTPS was widespread. I watched as Google and other players systematically adjusted incentives, slowly but surely over many years, to reach where we are today: 90% of all web traffic is encrypted.[1] There's no reason the same couldn't happen with phone calls, other than perverse incentives. Someone get me in a room with Ajit Pai and the CTOs of the major US carriers, I could have a system in place in five years, tops. Unfortunately there's no incentive for them to fix this, because (1) upgrading infrastructure costs money, and (2) carriers large and small are making BANK off these robocalls. ITSPs do typically charge to route calls (similar to internet peering), and robocallers are happy to pay because they're making so much money. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21421195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21421195
- Aloha 7y ago
  The FCC s already working on signing Caller ID, which sounds like what you're proposing, or similar to. https://www.fcc.gov/call-authentication https://www.fcc.gov/call-authentication
  - howdydoo 7y ago
    Thanks for the link! It looks like it's on track to be implemented this year. I must admit I am _very_ pleasantly surprised to see a project of this scale on track to be completed in under two years (knock on wood). For everyone's sake, I hope it works as advertised!
    - Aloha 7y ago
      For an industry known for its ponderous glacial pace, thats basically a record - nothing ever moves that fast.

rectang 7y ago

This is the US, where money is speech and one dollar is one vote. Individual consumers don't have enough money to matter compared to BigCorp.

tyre 7y ago
Clinton outspent Trump nearly 2:1 in the last election ($768m, $398m respectively) and still lost. Yes she won the popular vote by about 3m votes but that’s hardly a dollar to vote ratio. People vote their emotions, and emotions are surprisingly difficult to buy.
- __s 7y ago
  rectang isn't talking about the presidential election
  - h5erahear5 7y ago
    The claim "one dollar is one vote" is directly refuted by tyre's data. It is absolutely relevant to the assertion made. But keep on downvoting HNers, ignorance is bliss is why we come to this website after all
    - pessimizer 7y ago
      One dollar being one vote is a cliché that refers to the wealthy having the most say in governance, not that US elections are literally the process of counting the individual candidates donations and declaring the candidate that got the most the winner. Also, stop playing the victim.
    - bduerst 7y ago
      Tyre didn't provide data, and neither did you. The 2016 election was complex, especially due to the foreign influence, campaign hacking, fraudulent spending, and free coverage from media. The fact that both the president's campaign manager and his personal lawyer (also RNC finance chair) are currently in prison points to there not being clear visibility into his campaign spending to this day. This doesn't refute the fact that wealth correlates with influence in U.S. politics, in fact, you could even say that a billionaire winning an election supports it. Also, why did you create an account for just this comment?
      - cwkoss 7y ago
        Even more complex as the Clinton campaign colluded with the media to deliberately elevate Trump as part of their "pied piper strategy" to promote candidates they perceived as easy-to-beat. https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/fileid/1120/251 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/fileid/1120/251 Pretty depressing to consider that a portion of donations to the HRC campaign in 2015 were spent promoting Trump.
        bduerst 7y ago
        Hillary Clinton is currently not the president, and those surrounding her campaign are not currently in prison for fraud. Please stop deflecting to conspiracies that are not relevant.
        cwkoss 7y ago
        Did you read the linked document? It is an internal document from HRC's campaign. If you're analyzing why Trump won, knowing that her campaign intentionally elevated his campaign is certainly relevant. I hope our country can take off the hyperpartisan tribalist blinders and address the reality of why Trump won so we don't end up with another 4 years of him.
- zanny 7y ago
  > People vote their emotions When its plastered all over TV. We just had elections days ago - obviously turnout is even worse than year than last where the national average was 50%. But nobody was voting emotionally there because largely you weren't voting for people or even positions you knew or recognized. You voted for the names you were familiar with - put in your head by advertising. Because there isn't a large central institution around your county commissioner election where media will give all candidates ample airtime to actually know who they are. I remember last year my district had a major election for the federal house - I live in PA and due to redistricting by the state supereme court we were having an election without an incumbent. Only 3,000-25,000 people in a district of 250,000 adults watched their public TV debate. The winner was just the guy that outspent his opponent by an order of magnitude via local companies subsidizing his campaign with 10 million bucks.

Aloha 7y ago

As someone with a heavy background, it would break a fair bit of the PSTN - while moves are in place to change the technical limitations of the PSTN that prevent this kind of verification, they're not complete yet, and will take several more years to implement fully.

jklein11 7y ago
Any chance you can explain what the PSTN is and why it is important? I tried reading the wikipedia article[1] but I still feel like I don't have enough telecom domain knowledge to understand it. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_switched_telephone_network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_switched_telephone_netw...
- dboreham 7y ago
  If you're still making and receiving phone calls (dialed with numbers, using the dialer on your smart phone, etc), then that's the PSTN you're using.
  - Retric 7y ago
    A tiny but growing population is giving up on receiving calls from PSTN systems.
  - Aloha 7y ago
    Quite arguably this extends to text messaging too, all rely on the same fundamental systems
nordsieck 7y ago
>> Stop allowing spoofed numbers. Period. > As someone with a heavy background, it would break a fair bit of the PSTN As it stands, I think quite a few consumers are ready to just walk away from PSTN unless something pretty drastic is done quite soon.
- Aloha 7y ago

howdydoo 7y ago

Even that wouldn't be necessary. Here's an idea – when receiving a call, the receiving network could separately connect to the claimed number and verify its authenticity. No match? Reject the caller. The owner of a number (and thus its cryptographic identity) could then delegate other agents to use its keys, its phone number, and most importantly, its reputation. Cryptography has come a long way since the days of rotary phones. The entire handshake could happen in under a second. The majority of calls these days are VoIP anyway. In fact, maybe we only implement this for VoIP and finally force the world to upgrade. I remember the days before HTTPS was widespread. I watched as Google and other players systematically adjusted incentives, slowly but surely over many years, to reach where we are today: 90% of all web traffic is encrypted.[1] There's no reason the same couldn't happen with phone calls, other than perverse incentives. Someone get me in a room with Ajit Pai and the CTOs of the major US carriers, I could have a system in place in five years, tops. Unfortunately there's no incentive for them to fix this, because (1) upgrading infrastructure costs money, and (2) carriers large and small are making BANK off these robocalls. ITSPs do typically charge to route calls (similar to internet peering), and robocallers are happy to pay because they're making so much money. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21421195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21421195

Aloha 7y ago
The FCC s already working on signing Caller ID, which sounds like what you're proposing, or similar to. https://www.fcc.gov/call-authentication https://www.fcc.gov/call-authentication
- howdydoo 7y ago
  Thanks for the link! It looks like it's on track to be implemented this year. I must admit I am _very_ pleasantly surprised to see a project of this scale on track to be completed in under two years (knock on wood). For everyone's sake, I hope it works as advertised!
  - Aloha 7y ago
    For an industry known for its ponderous glacial pace, thats basically a record - nothing ever moves that fast.