TELEPHONE

Telephone technology allows a person to talk to nearly anyone in any place who has similar equipment. There are substantial ethical questions related to the uses and abuses of the telephone. Among other things, the telephone is a communication system that provides political leaders, pollsters, and social science researchers with some understanding of public attitudes and behaviors. It gives voice to the needs and wishes of citizens as they attempt to make their views known to governments and corporations. Additionally, the telephone is a conduit for the delivery of professional services. As a result of these aspects of what has been an everyday but rapidly changing technology, considerable attention has been devoted to the telephone from ethical, legal, and policy viewpoints.

Historical Development

The term telephone is based on the combination of the Greek words, tele ("distant" or "afar") and phon ("sound" or "voice"); it was first used in France in the 1830s to name a crude acoustic device. By the mid-1800s something akin to a pair of tin cans connected by a taut string was known in the United States as the "lover's telephone." In 1876 Alexander Graham Bell (1847–1922) won a patent for a device that has come to be known as the telephone.

The traditional telephone operates by converting the mechanical energy of sounds carried in the air (the speaker's voice) into electrical impulses for transmission to a receiver. The receiver reverses the process, changing the electrical impulses back into vibrations. Those vibrations are heard as sounds. The original telephones transmitted electrical impulses by wires. Radio and other portions of the electromagnetic spectrum subsequently supplemented or supplanted wires as digital forms replaced analog.

The uses of the telephone have expanded to include multiple forms of data transmission, including fax, photo, and video image formats. Ancillary services have been created and have been widely adopted, including answering machines, caller-ID boxes, and telephone-based security systems. The Internet owes much of its success to the ability of users to go online by means of telephone lines.

In the early period of the telephone myriad uses were explored, including the "broadcasting" of news, opera, weather reports, and religious services. Some contemplated services never materialized: Bell speculated that the telephone might be used to communicate with the deceased. Other services did not materialize because they were outdated before they could deployed: France's national telephone company conducted extensive research in the 1960s to see if the telephone touch-tone pad could be adapted to serve as a home calculator. Yet other services were initially innovative and popular, but then, as technology continued to advance, they were left in the backwater. The fax machine and the French Minitel system are examples of this phenomenon.

Ethical Issues

PRIVACY, SECURITY, AND SURVEILLANCE. Among the early ethical questions was the way the telephone was used to invade privacy in the household and give outsiders access to household members. In particular the telephone allowed outsiders to make social connections with the members of a household, thus violating rigid gender and class roles. Ethical questions relating to various roles in the household, along with the power relationships among those roles, have been exacerbated by the telephone. For example, teenagers and parents come into conflict over appropriate norms for telephone use.

The telephone often leads to disruption of household routines and may allow for social subversion through practical jokes and harassing or obscene phone calls. Women especially have been victimized by such calls, though a surprisingly large number of men have been as well. Although commentators see great net benefits arising from the telephone, they also recognize the moral dilemmas that result from the "distant presence" (a phrase popularized by Kenneth J. Gergen) the telephone allows. The American humorist Mark Twain (1835–1910) was an early acerbic critic of the way the telephone could disrupt trains of thought and ordinary social interaction. In addition, characteristic of early telephone technology was the large proportion of homes that shared local service party lines; this meant that neighbors could listen in to conversations and learn family secrets.

Larger questions of privacy surrounded systematic wiretapping conducted by both licit and illicit organizations. Only a few years after the telephone was invented numerous devices were built to allow not only tapping but also recording of telephone conversations. (Many of these microphone devices also can be used to listen in on in-room conversations.) A wide variety of practices legal and illegal, moral and immoral, could be identified and documented.

Police forces and other governmental agencies sometimes carried out large-scale wiretapping not only in pursuit of wrongdoers but also to monitor those perceived as opposing government policy. In what has become a well-established cycle of innovation, new ways to communicate were followed by new ways to penetrate those forms, followed by steps to enhance privacy. Often a variety of codes would be devised to hinder attempts to collect data and conduct surveillance. The question of the areas in which people had a "reasonable expectation" of privacy was brought to a head when the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Katz v. United States (389 US 347 [1967], docket number 35) that public phone booths were not eligible for systematic tapping by the police.

Although monitoring of workers has been a perennial workplace issue, the telephone gave that issue added impetus because it greatly expanded the ability of managers to tap into the conversations of employees. Telephone companies often have conducted extensive monitoring, sometimes to the point of abuse, when they have used their own technology to monitor employees' behavior and comments. Switchboard operators once were notorious for eavesdropping, though sometimes that allowed them to interrupt the execution of crimes. (Eavesdropping, as opposed to service monitoring or surveillance by officials, is generally prohibited everywhere.) Many companies, including especially telephone companies, have published rulebooks and etiquette guides directed to their employees and managers regarding eavesdropping. While these efforts presumably reduced the problem, they have not been sufficient to extinguish the practice.

TELEMARKETING AND RESEARCH. Telemarketing is the offering of goods or services through sales presentations on the telephone. Because it can be a low-cost, high-profit enterprise, its rapid proliferation has become a source of general annoyance to the targeted public. The Direct Marketing Association and the American Marketing Association instruct their members not to use approaches that might be considered illegal. Moreover, there are numerous laws that regulate telemarketing at the national and local levels. Major moral dilemmas are related to this situation.

On the one hand, there are the claimed rights of businesses to "freedom of commercial speech," which includes the freedom to communicate with potential customers and participation in "fair and efficient markets." (These rights are protected strongly in the United States.) These rights often are carried out with increasingly powerful telephone support technology and database-mining software. On the other hand, individuals have a right to be left alone and not to have information about them collected in secret and without their permission. (These rights are protected strongly in the European Union nations and not as well protected in the United States.) Despite such efforts on both the technological front (such as caller-ID and call blocking) and the legal front (such as the compilation of "do not call lists" and the regulation of times when sales calls may be made), this problem persists.

Social science research and public opinion surveys often are reliant on polling by telephone. Numerous agencies and associations, such as the American Sociological Association (ASA) and American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) have created codes of conduct for their members, and in some cases governments have stepped in to create regulations in this area. Criminal penalties can be imposed for collecting data improperly by telephone. Many institutional review boards (IRBs) at universities require that researchers demonstrate that they will protect the data and not cause psychological distress, and this applies to telephone surveys as well as to medical experimentation. In more extreme cases, such as at the University of Newcastle in Australia, researchers are required to notify the target population in advance with a written information sheet that warns that telephone contact will be made and includes complete contact information.

UNIVERSAL SERVICE, SOCIAL EQUITY, AND DEMOCRACY. An important ethical component of national and regional policies for telephone technology is equitable distribution. As Claude Fischer (1992) has noted, in its early years the telephone could be considered only a luxury. However, what was an expensive enhancement to lifestyle has in contemporary society become a near necessity for most people.

For much of the twentieth century national telecommunication policies were aimed at subsidizing low-income and rural populations by indirectly taxing (through higher rates) urban and nonpoor telephone subscribers. This was done under the rubrics of social equity and economic development. In fact, in the United States the promise of universal service at an affordable cost was accepted by the government in exchange for the granting of near-monopoly status to the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T). However, the initial moral clarity of those policies has been obscured as advanced telecommunication technologies have proliferated, especially in the case of the mobile phone.

It is noteworthy that around the world hundreds of millions of subscribers have flocked to new mobile phone services. Those services allow subscribers to leapfrog the long waits and frequently high prices associated with wireline residential services. Moreover, cross-subsidization by ordinary telephone subscribers of low-cost services for schools and hospitals, as is the practice in the United States, means that many people with modest incomes are being penalized for the benefit of institutions in wealthy communities. (Mobile phone subscribers in the United States are exempt from these taxes.)

There can be little doubt that the telephone is an important adjunct to democracy on the level of political expression and as a bulwark against excessive governmental power. At the same time, terrorists and those seeking radical regime change can use the telephone to further their aims. In light of this situation many governments monitor telephone conversations and in some cases limit or prohibit mobile phone services. As instances, North Korea forbids civilian mobile phones on security grounds and Colombia's mobile phone networks were selectively turned off by the government in an effort to detect the location of cell phone-toting drug lord Pablo Escobar.

Public Use of Mobile Telephones

Each major advance in telephone technology has been accompanied by some social disruption. In most cases the disruptions have been transient. With the advent of the mobile telephone, however, high levels of conflict continue. These conflicts often may be understood in terms of what is known in psychology as the actor-observer paradox. The person who wishes to use the mobile phone (the actor) does so because he or she has good cause and with the expectation that others will understand and accept that necessity. However, the people around the user (the observers) view the situation differently. They feel that the mobile phone user is being selfish and self-indulgent and is failing to respect the conventions of polite society. The public use of mobile phones is likely to remain a source of normative conflict because the sources of irritation are not merely conventional but seem to go to the core of human cognitive processes. The result could be that as mobile phone users pursue the private pleasures of conversation there will be a reduction in civility and personal engagement in public places. Perhaps no better illustration of this process is the havoc wrought by drivers who are preoccupied by their mobile telephone conversations.

Provision of Professional Services

The ease and flexibility of telephone use have led many professional organizations to develop codes of conduct that allow their members to use the telephone, under appropriate conditions, to serve clients. This is the case with the many national and worldwide associations of lawyers, for instance. However, the potential for abuse also has led many organizations, such as the Legal Profession Advisory Council, to remind their members that whereas the telephone can be used to discuss and provide confidential information, both the professional and the client have to agree to this in advance. It further recommends that a scrambling device or other encryption technology be used. All advertisements for lawyers should bear the attorney's phone number prominently.

The question of recording telephone conversations is fraught with ethical and moral questions. In one instance (LEO 1738, 48/10 Va Lawyer Reg 23, April 13, 2000) the Virginia state bar association reexamined the subject of taping telephone conversations. That association concluded that all forms of wiretapping, along with one-party-consent recording of telephone conversations by lawyers, are prohibited. Although many people disagreed with that conclusion, it did arrive at the formulation that because wiretapping involves "deceit," the practice must be forbidden. This raises problems when, for instance, testers try to prove housing discrimination by pretending to be people other than who they are. The rules even make it unethical for an attorney who receives an obscene or threatening phone call to record it.

The American Medical Society counsels physicians that telephone advising and referral services should be used only to complement face-to-face interaction and that both the physicians and the clients should be well aware of the limitations of the medium. They urge that no physician make a clinical diagnosis or prescribe medications by telephone and at the same time be certain to elicit all-important information over the phone. They also should avoid generating large telephone bills that their patients or others have to pay.

Counseling by Telephone

Telecounseling has been defined as using the telephone for synchronous but distant interaction between counselors and clients for one-to-one conferencing. Obviously, such interactions are fraught with ethical issues. In response, the National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC) says that its members should base the use of telecounseling on the needs and convenience of the client. The NBCC further stresses that telecounseling should only be a supplement to face-to-face counseling.

Confidentiality is an important consideration because it may be difficult to know precisely with whom one is speaking when one receives a telephone call. Thus, the American Psychological Association's guidelines warn counselors about privacy and confidentiality issues. The International Chiropractors Association of California has in its code of ethics the statement that its members "shall not discuss any patient information over the telephone with anyone without the patient's consent, preferably in writing." The International Association of Coaches instructs coaches to take precautions to ensure the confidentiality of telephone communications with clients.

In areas in which telephone counseling would be inappropriate professional codes of conduct underscore the importance of avoiding abuse. Thus, the Michigan Speech and Hearing Association urges that the telephone not be used for "diagnosis, treatment or re-evaluation of individual language, speech or hearing disorders." Medical and legal associations have guidelines that also are meant to avoid problems and underscore to their members that using the telephone may be construed as entering into a relationship with a client, with all the demands such a relationship entails.

More Complications Ahead

Because the telephone can obscure many of the ways in which people recognize each other or understand an evolving situation and can transcend distance, it opens new opportunities for ethically questionable or unethical behavior. In addition, as a result of the simplicity and power of the telephone, it has become a vital component of modern life. A variety of codes of conduct, laws, and corporate and governmental regulations have been developed to address these problems. However, these attempts have had incomplete success. Even as recent events are grappled with through norms and regulations, new telephone-based technologies that allow even more forms of use and abuse are complicating efforts to control telephone behaviors through technological countermeasures and moral and legal sanctions.

JAMES E. KATZ

SEE ALSO Communication Ethics;Communication Systems;Monitoring and Surveillance;Networks;Privacy;Security.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fischer, Claude. (1992). America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940. Berkeley: University of California Press. A profound analysis of technology's influence on social relationships and community. Fischer explores the integration of the telephone into society, thereby uncovering and illuminating important interplays between the communication processes and social structures.

Katz, James. (1999). Connections: Social and Cultural Studies of the Telephone in American Life. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. A detailed, empirical study of the ways telephone are used in ordinary (and extraordinary) circumstances. Explores norms and behaviors revolving around the telephone via methods including national surveys, interviews, and ethnographic observation.

Pool, Ithiel de Sola, ed. (1977). The Social Impact of the Telephone. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. This path-breaking collection of historical and cultural studies on the telephone has become a classic and still has much to offer. It grew out of AT&T-sponsored lectures at MIT to celebrate the Centennial of the telephone's invention.

Ronnell, Avital (1989). The Telephone Book: Technology-Schizophrenia-Electric Speech. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. An eccentric but probing look at the deeper processes involved in the social and phenomenonological construction of the telephone. The volume is a wry postmodern achievement in both form and content.