Miss-Delectable
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STLtoday - Life & Style
Ward Detwiler's best friend, Marc, did not remember meeting a deaf girl at a Chicago bar on a Saturday night in January. He had been pretty drunk and, in fact, did not remember much of the evening. So when he received a call later that week from a telephone operator supposedly speaking on the girl's behalf, he played along.
The conversation quickly turned sexually explicit.
"I'm going to smack you with a banana covered in peanut butter and have my dog lick it off," the operator told Marc.
She typed his confused responses for the person on the other end of the line.
As Marc later surmised, the caller was not a deaf person looking for a friendly exchange but rather his buddy Detwiler, 22, who was playing a prank using technology called IP Relay that is meant for the hearing-impaired.
"We mess with Marc a lot anyways," Detwiler admitted. "This really just opened up a whole new avenue."
IP Relay was created to help people communicate with hearing-impaired individuals. Advocates for the deaf say jokes such as Detwiler's are part of a widespread abuse of the service, which costs Americans millions of dollars.
IP Relay services allow deaf or hard-of-hearing individuals to place free calls over the Internet. The user goes to a website, types in a phone number and text. A specially trained operator speaks "for" the user and then transcribes the recipients' words back to the user in a message. The process can also be done from cell phones, which can be programmed to receive calls from a relay site.
The technology made its debut in the late 1990s. Most of the nearly 10 companies that provide the service request that users identify themselves at the beginning of a conversation. Doing so, however, is not required.
Abuse of the service could result in up to two years in prison or fines, according to Verizon's IP-relay.com website. But documenting abuse could mean violating the laws that prevent service providers from keeping records on call content and caller identity.
And with no way to ascertain whether users can actually hear or not, providers are finding it difficult to stop the exploitation of the service.
Verizon says, however, that it is taking "unspecified measures" to address the issue. Sprint Nextel says it is implementing "aggressive, concrete steps," according to Mark Elliott, a spokesman. He declined to elaborate on those measures.
Those unspecified steps have helped make Sprint's IP Relay service the one with the lowest abuse rates, Elliott said, but he would not reveal how many incidents were recorded or how offenses were gauged.
None of the handful of IP Relay carriers contacted would release call-volume numbers because the statistics are considered proprietary information. Phone companies are prohibited both by privacy laws and the Americans With Disabilities Act from keeping records on callers or the content of conversations.
MSNBC reported in December that the 22 million calls expected to be placed through IP Relay this year would cost $92.5 million. The services are paid for by phone bill tariffs that feed into the Interstate Telecommunications Relay Service Fund, overseen by the Federal Communications Commission.
While no hard numbers were available on how many IP Relay calls are legitimately placed by deaf or hard-of-hearing people, the FCC and service providers are meeting with consumer advocacy groups to address their concerns, said Rosaline Hayes Crawford, director of the Law and Advocacy Center for the National Association of the Deaf.
The sort of people they want to stop are people such as the friends of Stewart Bewley, 22, who have tricked him several times. Bewley's first experience with IP Relay involved a female operator telling him to go have sex with an animal. He thought it was "a good prank."
"We find awkward humor really entertaining. It's just part of our social background," said Bewley, a college senior. "Our humor level plateaus at about a 14-year-old's level. I can definitely see that this is pretty standard guy behavior."
Bewley suggested that required registration on the site would probably curb the abuse.
"You have to establish rules before you can blame anybody," he said. "If you don't stop such behavior, then it's bound to continue."
But any changes to the system would "most likely result in less flexibility, freedom and access for deaf and hard-of-hearing people," said Jay Wyant, president-elect of the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.
Still, advocates for the deaf and the pranksters agree that any solution to the problem looks far off.
Detwiler, for instance, cavalierly says he will continue using IP Relay, especially because the tariffs on his own phone bill feed into the government funding for the services.
"If I'm getting charged for it," he said, "I might as well use it."
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Ward Detwiler's best friend, Marc, did not remember meeting a deaf girl at a Chicago bar on a Saturday night in January. He had been pretty drunk and, in fact, did not remember much of the evening. So when he received a call later that week from a telephone operator supposedly speaking on the girl's behalf, he played along.
The conversation quickly turned sexually explicit.
"I'm going to smack you with a banana covered in peanut butter and have my dog lick it off," the operator told Marc.
She typed his confused responses for the person on the other end of the line.
As Marc later surmised, the caller was not a deaf person looking for a friendly exchange but rather his buddy Detwiler, 22, who was playing a prank using technology called IP Relay that is meant for the hearing-impaired.
"We mess with Marc a lot anyways," Detwiler admitted. "This really just opened up a whole new avenue."
IP Relay was created to help people communicate with hearing-impaired individuals. Advocates for the deaf say jokes such as Detwiler's are part of a widespread abuse of the service, which costs Americans millions of dollars.
IP Relay services allow deaf or hard-of-hearing individuals to place free calls over the Internet. The user goes to a website, types in a phone number and text. A specially trained operator speaks "for" the user and then transcribes the recipients' words back to the user in a message. The process can also be done from cell phones, which can be programmed to receive calls from a relay site.
The technology made its debut in the late 1990s. Most of the nearly 10 companies that provide the service request that users identify themselves at the beginning of a conversation. Doing so, however, is not required.
Abuse of the service could result in up to two years in prison or fines, according to Verizon's IP-relay.com website. But documenting abuse could mean violating the laws that prevent service providers from keeping records on call content and caller identity.
And with no way to ascertain whether users can actually hear or not, providers are finding it difficult to stop the exploitation of the service.
Verizon says, however, that it is taking "unspecified measures" to address the issue. Sprint Nextel says it is implementing "aggressive, concrete steps," according to Mark Elliott, a spokesman. He declined to elaborate on those measures.
Those unspecified steps have helped make Sprint's IP Relay service the one with the lowest abuse rates, Elliott said, but he would not reveal how many incidents were recorded or how offenses were gauged.
None of the handful of IP Relay carriers contacted would release call-volume numbers because the statistics are considered proprietary information. Phone companies are prohibited both by privacy laws and the Americans With Disabilities Act from keeping records on callers or the content of conversations.
MSNBC reported in December that the 22 million calls expected to be placed through IP Relay this year would cost $92.5 million. The services are paid for by phone bill tariffs that feed into the Interstate Telecommunications Relay Service Fund, overseen by the Federal Communications Commission.
While no hard numbers were available on how many IP Relay calls are legitimately placed by deaf or hard-of-hearing people, the FCC and service providers are meeting with consumer advocacy groups to address their concerns, said Rosaline Hayes Crawford, director of the Law and Advocacy Center for the National Association of the Deaf.
The sort of people they want to stop are people such as the friends of Stewart Bewley, 22, who have tricked him several times. Bewley's first experience with IP Relay involved a female operator telling him to go have sex with an animal. He thought it was "a good prank."
"We find awkward humor really entertaining. It's just part of our social background," said Bewley, a college senior. "Our humor level plateaus at about a 14-year-old's level. I can definitely see that this is pretty standard guy behavior."
Bewley suggested that required registration on the site would probably curb the abuse.
"You have to establish rules before you can blame anybody," he said. "If you don't stop such behavior, then it's bound to continue."
But any changes to the system would "most likely result in less flexibility, freedom and access for deaf and hard-of-hearing people," said Jay Wyant, president-elect of the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.
Still, advocates for the deaf and the pranksters agree that any solution to the problem looks far off.
Detwiler, for instance, cavalierly says he will continue using IP Relay, especially because the tariffs on his own phone bill feed into the government funding for the services.
"If I'm getting charged for it," he said, "I might as well use it."
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