You can call me, Betty Don't call me Al

Amid the disorder of the recall election and the Cubs' playoff extra-inning defeat, we seem to have missed a very important piece of news.\nA federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the Federal Trade Commission is permitted to enforce the long-awaited "do-not-call" list while the constitutionality of the national registry designed to restrict telemarketing calls to consumers awaits its Supreme Court hearing.\nThe public at large demanded the list. Our president lent to the legislation his signature after an astonishingly speedy 30-hour time-frame it took for Congress to pass the bill. With that gesture, he spoke some immortal words: "The do-not-call registry is still being challenged in court. Yet the conclusion of the American people and the legislative branch and the executive branch is beyond question" (Sept. 22).\nSure, but due to a little thing we have called the Constitution, none of that really matters.\nNow, we are divided on the issue of whether telemarketers are violating the constitutionally protected right to privacy, or whether we are violating their right to access public record and quite simply, speak freely. Depending on which school you belong to, listing your number in the phone book either opens you up to any and all contact from those who decide to look you up, or just those contacts you deem less than annoying. Like the Supreme Court, we have yet to decide whether "annoyance" is enough grounds by which to call for prior restraint to calls being made into your private domicile.\nHowever, perhaps such a decision doesn't need to be made. Most of what lies at the heart of the "vile nature" of the telemarketing industry is not merely the phone call that interrupts our Sunday dinner. It is the fact that they know what we buy, when we buy it and what we're likely to buy in the future. The practice of "selling buyer information" that these marketing companies engage in seems morally reprehensible to us and leaves us feeling vulnerable, and frankly, watched. \nSo, instead of raising the constitutionally tricky issue of forbidding certain forces from using a telephone to contact another person, which theoretically could lead down a slippery slope of permitting the government certain rights violations, perhaps we should strike at the root of our concern. \nProhibit the info swapping these firms partake in. Enforce more strictly the current laws that state if one explicitly requests to be removed from a call list, that such a request is honored. More drastically, privatize the do-not-call registry so that government isn't stepping on any toes.\nBlocking devices and other technological advances can sense the dialing devices these companies use. Work on making such gadgets affordable so every home that has a phone can block to its heart's content.