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Privacy Rights in the Digital Age

Telephones

by Jill Bronfman

Devices that can transmit and receive voice communications through the telecommunications network, originally the Bell network in the United States and eventually the Internet. Telephones now encompass mobile devices and a variety of communications equipment.

Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876 and received two patents for his work. The following year, he established the Bell Telephone Company, and the year after that he began offering telephone service in what would become a national system for landline voice communications. In the late 1880s and 1890s, Bell Telephone Company subsidiary American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) constructed long-distance telephone wires and began completing long-distance calls. Also before the turn of the twentieth century, several smaller companies began offering telephone service. After over a decade of disputes with AT&T, these companies were allowed to interconnect with AT&T's network and therefore complete calls outside their territories. Transatlantic calls began in 1927, initially via radio signals and later through a submerged cable. Underwater cables allowed calls across the Pacific Ocean and eventually worldwide, with the notable exception of Antarctica.

Telephones initially consisted of a limited number of devices, usually consisting of a part that was held to one ear to hear a voice, and a microphone in which to speak. Human operators located at the switch would complete calls by connecting the calling party and the receiving party. Switches were later mechanized, then computerized, allowing calls to complete automatically without human intervention. Also, to place calls independently, users would need to be able to dial the called number on the device. Phones with number dials were developed by the 1910s. They were followed by phones with touchtone number keypads in the 1960s. Gradually, traditional copper wire networks were replaced with fiber optic cable. Fiber optic cable allows faster service due to its greater bandwidth, but it requires electric power to operate, rendering it less reliable during a power outage. Traditional copper wire networks are also more difficult to hack and use for eavesdropping on conversations, but fiber optic cable continues to replace copper to support the growth of data-dependent networks. For approximately 100 years after telephone service was commercially available in the United States, the telephone devices were owned by the telephone company and provided as part of a monthly telephone service, usually with a separate rental fee for the device. This connection between device and service continues today in the relationship between mobile device discounts and service contracts in the mobile telephony market.

The Communications Act of 1934, 48 Stat. 1064 (1934), 47 U.S.C. § 151 et seq., regulated telecommunications and established a new U.S. federal agency, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The Communications Act includes the following provision that protects privacy: “Every telecommunications carrier has a duty to protect the confidentiality of proprietary information of, and relating to, other telecommunication carriers, equipment manufacturers, and customers, including telecommunication carriers reselling telecommunications services provided by a telecommunications carrier,” with limited exceptions for fraud investigations, law enforcement, and emergencies, 47 U.S. Code § 222. This authority to protect Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI) has led the FCC to take the lead in protecting privacy in the telecommunications area, while the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) covers privacy issues in other industries. CPNI is valuable customer information, and activity associated with “pretexting,” or calling a telephone company to attempt to get another person's CPNI under the pretext of being that person, is considered fraud and punishable as a criminal offense. Telephone carriers must take special precautions to make sure the calling party is the customer of record for that CPNI or face sanctions from the FCC. Unless the calling party provides a prearranged password to the telecommunications carrier, the carrier may only provide the requested information by mail to the official address of the customer of record for the relevant account. Customers must opt in to receive marketing information from their carrier beyond information that pertains to services to which they already subscribe, that is, within local services or within long-distance services.

The 911 service (later E911 service, which added location information) is a telephone service that allows telephone users to dial the digits 9, 1, and 1, and be connected to an emergency call center called a public safety answering point (PSAP)—and then to the police or ambulance if necessary. The number was established in the late 1960s as a nationwide standard. Regulators have deemed this an essential service to the extent that carriers are often required to leave a “warm line” to allow access to 911 service even if the customer at that location has fallen behind on his or her payments for telephone service.

In 1984, in the Modified Final Judgment (MFJ), the U.S. Justice Department broke apart AT&T; created seven Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs); and allowed AT&T to continue as a separate long-distance telephone company, to engage in manufacturing equipment like telephones, and to conduct research and development (R&D). The RBOCs provided plain old telephone service (POTS) and related ancillary services such as call forwarding, call waiting, and Caller ID. A large number of companies begin to offer long-distance telephone service following the breakup of AT&T's monopoly. The Telecommunications Act of 1996, 110 Stat. 56 (1996), amended the Communications Act of 1934 and allowed new companies (and old ones like AT&T) into the local exchange telephone market. Companies began to bundle long distance; local service; and eventually wireless mobile communications service, Internet, and cable television service for competitive price discounts.

Telephones have been the center of controversy over privacy rights in the United States since their introduction into the public sphere. Initially, opponents likened the ring of the telephone to the unwanted knock on the door of the user's home or even to an unannounced entry into the home. Even an individual in a telephone booth was granted the right to have a private conversation on the telephone without government agents listening in via wiretap in Katz v. U.S. 389 U.S. 347 (1967). Katz was a handicapper for sports who gathered information in phone booths located on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, California, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) wanted to stop him. The government asked the telephone company to place the booth out of order. It then put a tape recorder in the air between two remaining booths, and stationed an agent outside Katz's apartment to record his pay phone conversations. Katz was indicted in the Federal District Court in Los Angeles, but the U.S. Supreme Court overruled the lower courts and found that Katz had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his phone conversation in the telephone booth. The Supreme Court applied the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution that protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures, and said that the government could obtain the information from Katz's call, but only with a warrant.

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) of 1991, 105 Stat. 2395 (1991), 47 U.S.C. § 227, and FCC regulations under the TCPA provide some protections for telephone user privacy. The result of these regulations was to reduce the number of unsolicited telephone calls and facsimiles sent via telephone wire. The law provided exceptions for customers with whom the calling party had a preexisting business relationship or for noncommercial calls such as calls for political campaigns or nonprofit social causes. Customers may still consent to receive telemarketing calls, in writing, but later regulation eliminated the preexisting business relationship exception. Prerecorded messages must have an opt-out option for the party receiving the call to opt out of receiving such calls, and the call must be disconnected at that time. Callers choosing the opt-out option would be added to the Do Not Call list. The National Do Not Call Registry is a registry of telephone numbers of consumers who do not wish to be called at a particular number. The FCC also allowed prerecorded calls to residential telephone lines made by healthcare companies who are regulated by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), 110 Stat. 1936 (1996). Automatic dialers, or robocalls, to wireless numbers were not permitted, with a carve-out if the caller did not know that the call was a wireless number.

The use of telephonic equipment in mobile devices, in motor vehicles, and in other communications devices expands the impact of these regulations. Voice communications have gone beyond the telephone into live video chat using Skype, FaceTime, and other products offering real-time voice and video two-way interactions, which have begun to replace traditional telephone calls. On the other hand, voice communications have reduced usage on the Internet network because Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls are used less, and data transmissions and Machine to Machine (M2M) communications use greater bandwidth and have greater impact than human interaction with the Internet network.

Further Reading

1 

Diffie, Whitfield, and Susan Eva Landau. Privacy on the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998.

2 

Etzioni, Amitai. “Privacy,” in Privacy in a Cyber Age: Policy and Practice. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

3 

Green, Walter L., Randy Seidehamel, and Martha Grace Rich. “Cellular Telephones and Interference with Privacy.” Mayo Clinic Proceedings 82, no. 7 (2007): 889.

4 

Hayes, David L. “Cellular Telephones and Interference with Privacy–Reply–III.” Mayo Clinic Proceedings 82, no. 7 (2007): 890.

5 

“Telephone Privacy.” Security Management, March 1, 2000.

6 

Toth, Victor J. “Telephone Privacy—How to Invade It.” Business Communications Review 24, no. 4 (April 1994): 70.

See also: Caller ID; Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI); Federal Communications Commission (FCC); Federal Trade Commission (FTC); Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; Katz v. United States,; Mobile devices; Supreme Court of the United States; Telemarketing; Wiretapping;

Citation Types

MLA 9th
Bronfman, Jill. "Telephones." Privacy Rights in the Digital Age, edited by Christopher T. Anglim & JD, Salem Press, 2016. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=PRDA_0210.
APA 7th
Bronfman, J. (2016). Telephones. In C. Anglim & JD (Ed.), Privacy Rights in the Digital Age. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Bronfman, Jill. "Telephones." Edited by Christopher T. Anglim & JD. Privacy Rights in the Digital Age. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2016. Accessed May 30, 2026. online.salempress.com.