The Bogus Phone Company.

10 a day. That's what shows up on the caller ID. 10 "UNAVAILABLE" numbers a fricken' day. So I put in a call to the phone company and they tell me the number can't be traced, sorry... However, a call to the police suggests something entirely different. They say the number CAN be traced...

Well, after thinking about it long and hard, I decide that the phone company is giving me lip service and here's why. Whoever placed that call, whether through a machine or a human being (because when I answer the call, I get hung up on), gets billed for it. So someone in the system knows who it is.

If the person who placed that call had used it to make a hit go down, you know they would find him and prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law and the phone company would do "everything in their power to trace the call" or some well written statement to the public.

So let me get this straight, my privacy means JACK?! Here's my bigger issue. The 10 hang-ups a day don't bother me nearly as much as the privacy issue. I mean, someone can just make the number un-available and because Verizon is un-cooperative, I can't find out who they are.

Ok, high and mighty FCC, how about you make a new guideline that says ALL NUMBERS MUST POST ON ALL CALLER ID SYSTEMS! Instead of going after Floridian shock-jocks with the fervor of a horny 15 year old boy, why don't you do something about all the criminals in the telemarketing industry?

Or maybe it hasn't struck you that this "PRIVATE NAME / PRIVATE NUMBER" / "UNAVAILABLE" option we have out there could be used to abduct a poor little girl, rape her in a back ally and leave her for dead in a shallow grave somewhere in Yellowstone National Park. Then, NEVER FIND THE GUY because SELLING SOMETHING was more important than someone's life.