FCC Gives New York Locality Timely Access to Caller Numbers To Address Threats

The FCC will allow a calling party's number to be passed on to local authorities in a New York state community to address threatening calls in a timely manner. The Enlarged City School District of Middletown sought a limited FCC waiver from a rule prohibiting terminating carriers from passing on a calling party's number (CPN) when that party has made a privacy request. The Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau said such a waiver subject to certain safeguards will allow "security and law enforcement personnel to rapidly respond to telephone calls made to Middletown that threaten the safety of school children and employees, without undermining" commission policy objectives. "Middletown will be better able to protect the safety of its 7,500 schoolchildren and 700 employees by reducing the time required to identify and apprehend the perpetrators of threatening phone calls," said an order in docket 91-281 in Thursday's Daily Digest. "Middletown reports that within the last year it has received a dozen 'active shooter and bomb threats' from callers using restricted CPN, triggering lockdown procedures at its schools. Middletown confirms that many of the threatening callers use the CPN restrictions in order to delay authorities from identifying them or their location." Among the safeguards are a prohibition against passing CPNs on to called parties, restrictions on personnel with access to the numbers and a requirement to delete CPN information after a reasonable period of time.