Dear mother of Gawd, I am tired of arguing with rocks

[intaglio]

226. It changes everything no matter how you may wish otherwise

There is no exclusive contract between you and the phone company except the maintenance of the line to your home. That copper pair* (unless you have fibre optic connection) from the cabinet to your phone it the only unchanging part of the network - all other routing is changeable and as such the call has to have public information allowing connections to be made an maintained.

If the meta was not public information then your phone company would have to advise you of each and every service provider with whom they needed to share that information and further obtain your permission to do so. Because interconnection is so complex now that would be virtually impossible.

The matter is even more complex for mobile phone services with multiple companies owning the cell aerials, others covering the microwave relays, still more with the copper or fibre cross country links. Some companies allow others to share the aerials they use and some of the microwave and fibre links will be Government owned and the whole is subject to change as you move from one cell to another or just to accommodate fluctuating traffic. Then there is the likelihood that your phone call may be moved through a foreign country - even if a domestic US call.

For all these reasons some part of your phone call or e-mail message has to contain public information.

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* all wired telephone connections are termed a "copper pair" even though there are more than two wires involved.