Tracing phone calls
From Slate magazine on the Internet today:

Laugh the next time you see a TV cop tell someone to keep a caller on the line to help trace the call because:

"Digital switches have sped up the process of tracing phone calls by the police. Beginning in the mid-1980s, phone companies began using electronic switching systems (ESS), which can automatically identify any caller's number within a fraction of a second. Those numbers can then be correlated with information from an automatic location indicator to find the phone's address. There is no foolproof way to avoid tracing on an ESS network when making a direct-dial call. (And don't think for a second that hitting *67, which masks your number to Caller ID boxes, can foil a police trace; it only works against civilians.)"

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