Since the street theater thing went mini-viral a couple of weeks ago I’ve learned a few things. As I suspected, the company behind them does not seem to have any way to deal with the problem. They have known about it for months, and I can confirm that it was they who blocked some of the phone numbers I had been using. I thought it was Vonage just doing routine blocking of traffic-pumping phone numbers but it was specifically CityBridge either doing the blocking or asking Vonage to do it. It does not seem like they can just do it instantly, either. One of the numbers was blocked in the middle of the night over the Memorial Day weekend. This suggests they have to put the blockage into some kind of system that does its thing when the fewest people would be impacted.
Basically they have done nothing to address the problem or its potentialities, but of course it is not widepsread, at least not yet. They are probably thinking I will just go away. Their solution, so far, has been to block the numbers that I call. I am surprised they admitted this in public, since that’s a pretty half-assed way of dealing with it. Ridonculous, even.
But it gets me asking, Besides disabling phone calls altogether what can they do to prevent me or anyone from making a phone call and blasting it over the loudspeaker? That is, apparently, how the kiosk is designed, so that both sides of conversations can be heard by anyone in the area.
I had some thoughts but all of them lead nowhere. They could require the use of headsets, but that would probably violate the ADA.
They could require some kind of pin number or authorization code to get to the phone app, or maybe some kind of physical calling card they mail to you. This way calls could be traced back to whoever made the call. But where would that lead? A petty arrangement where citizens get their calling privileges revoked if CityBridge determines they have caused a nuisance? Yeah, right.
Limiting call duration, or prompting callers to hit the screen every x number of minutes sounds promising at first, but the way in which I do this renders that solution moot. Call duration does not matter, since calls do not last long once the noise starts. That’s because people are not stupid, and instincts tell them to look for the red button kill switch.
Other things learned, or rather suspicions confirmed, are that people out there will continue to believe this was a network hack, and that CityBridge is lying about it being a phone call to disguise this. One person asked why he should trust these devices’ WiFi to be secure when someone could hack them in this way. I don’t know if their response convinced that individual but I have to believe a lot of people out there will continue to believe this was more ominous than it really was.
Also, I talked to one of those activist folks on the phone, and found that my assumption that they know it is I doing the jingle stuff was wrong. I showed them video and such of the stuff I was doing about a year ago, but I guess they forgot about it. I mean it has been a year already, maybe even longer. I don’t have any problem with that group but I do not expect to align myself any more with them, not that I ever really did. The main person in charge of that scene claims they are on the brink of a breakthrough of some sort. But of course she won’t tell me what it is unless I report to the meetings, and I just don’t fucking feel like doing that. One meeting I went to was interesting but the others were not, and I don’t need to be part of their group when I’ve got my own kind of protest going on. I also don’t want them claiming me as a member, or making it look like I am one of their minions. I also have to draw a line at some point when I am dealing with someone and I have no idea who she is. She has a very unusual and, for me, hard to remember name. But it’s more than just that. She communicates through Signal because she thinks she’s being spied on by the city or Intersection or some other, she will not send an e-mail, and, to repeat, she will not tell me what the hell is going on with her group unless I show up at the meetings. Am I supposed to be so intrigued by this tease that I will break out of my routine and report to the far west side at the ungodly-to-me hour of 10am?
She claimed to have found that Intersection violated its some kind of rule, and I think it has something to do with how they lay down the fiber for these kiosks. I have nothing to contribute to that discussion, since all I know is that finding locations to place these kiosks has been a lot harder than they anticipated.
Today is the first day in weeks I did not go out on the kiosks. I need a day off from that to sit here and write about it some, and to update the payphone site. My other friend in on all this says he may have recruited someone else, a guy I met once a few years ago.