ENUM: Is It Time to Get Ready for Orwellian ID?

Abstract

For a while now, Electronic Numbering, a convergent and highly efficient identifying standard on the Internet, has been discussed and debated and now is in trial. Although it is considered more robust technologically and economically, extremely useful and cost efficient, many researchers and organizations have not been euphoric about it. The major concern has been that such a technology can compromise the privacy of an individual, especially in the global electronic market space. Scholars have pointed out ample scenarios where this numbering scheme can be easily abused by hackers as well as governments that are not so open and/or are not democratic. In this paper, all these issues have been documented, summarized, and analyzed to give a better understanding of the issues at hand so users of this numbering system can have a clearer understanding of the technology.

Keywords:

• electronic numbering
• telephone number mapping
• voice over internet protocol
• electronic privacy
• identity convergence