Request For Address Change Failure To Provide Any Requested Data May Prevent Or Sign: Fill & Download for Free

I wrote a bit about this (http://jroller.com/cpurdy/entry/distributed_systems_as_organisms) years ago:There are two vastly different approaches to distributed software, which I can sum up as traditional and organic. In a traditional distributed system, each server, each process is an isolated unit, like a single-celled organism. It exists as an independent unit that must fend for itself within its environment, and must always assume the worst, because it is the last -- likely the only -- line of defense for the responsibilities that it carries. For example, it must assume that failure to communicate with another part of the distributed system results in indeterminable conditions, such as in-doubt transactions. As a result, it must consolidate those indeterminate conditions into its own condition, likely preventing it from continuing processing. One would expect this in any two-phase commit system responsible for deterministic outcomes, when the system experiences an unknown outcome in any transaction branch.Traditional systems utilize "recovery" to achieve deterministic results even when servers fail. The measurement of the likelihood of failure is referred to as MTBF, or Mean (average) Time Between Failure. More importantly, though, is the MTTR, or the Mean Time To Recovery. In a traditional system, the outcome of an in-doubt transaction branch is unavailable until the server on which the branch existed is fully recovered.Clustering is a proven approach to resolving such dilemmas by significantly reducing -- almost to the point of eliminating -- recovery time. The clustering approach was made popular first in mainframe architectures, and eventually it bubbled down to mid-range UNIX systems. Server redundancy with dedicated "clustering interconnects" allowed a second stand-by server to stay in lock-step with the primary server, allowing the second server to immediately stand in for the responsibilities of the primary server in the event that the primary server failed.Today, what we refer to as "clustering" is significantly different, although it is intended to achieve the same result. For example, in modern architectures such as Java EE application servers, clustering refers to very high level interconnects, such as TCP/IP sockets, that allow servers to stay in virtual lock-step, and for one server to detect the failure of another server. Conceptually, clustering allows failure to be handled without recovery, by having redundant copies of the state (such as a transaction log) that would otherwise have to be recovered.The two-server hardware clusters and the more modern software clustering implementations are the origin of what I refer to as "organic systems", which represent multi-cellular organisms that are designed to survive the loss of individual cells. In other words, a distributed system is no longer a collection of independent organisms, but is itself an organism composed of any number of servers that can continue processing -- without any loss of data or transactions -- even when server failure occurs.This does require a fundamental adjustment in the assumptions behind distributed systems. In particular, in a traditional distributed system, the loss of communication to a particular server would cause all other servers that were communicating with that server to wait for the recovery of that server's responsibilities, whether by server migration, service failover, or actual repair (e.g. reboot) of that server.On the other hand, in the case of an organic system, the organism is always prepared for the death of any cell, and is never dependent on the survival of any particular cell. In such a system, if a particular server dies, all of its responsibilities can be handled by the other similar servers, and all of the in-flight transactions can be re-routed from the dead server to those other servers. To accomplish this, each state change and each in-flight transaction must be accomplished on at least two servers, just as it is in the well-known clustered hardware implementations. The difference, though, is that an organic system is not limited to only two servers, and it can organize itself as an increasingly resilient mesh of servers, where the failure of any server has a smaller and smaller effect on each other server as the number of servers increases.No longer is "recovery" the primary mechanism for re-establishing the availability of the system when a server fails. Instead, the technical challenges are the rapid detection of server failure and the need to isolate the failed server from the overall distributed system. I will attempt to explain these two challenges in detail, and why they are so fundamental to the correct and continuous operation of an organic system.First, when a server fails, it is rather unlikely to have predicted its own demise, and as a failed server, it is also unlikely to be able to communicate its own failed condition. The responsibility for the detection of server failure therefore falls to the organism itself, which is composed of all of the surviving servers. The algorithms for determining server failure are referred to as "death detection algorithms", and typically use a combination of error indications and statistics to ascertain server failure beyond a reasonable doubt. When a server has been determined to have failed, the other servers then assume the responsibilities that the failed server had, and processing of those responsibilities continues without loss of data or in-flight transactions.A serious problem, known as the "split brain syndrome," occurs when the failed server may not be aware of its own demise, and it may attempt to continue processing after the other servers have determined it to have failed. This is the role of isolation, which means that the organism is fully aware of the failure of the server, and isolates that failed server from the rest of the organism. This accomplishes two things: First, it prevents the failed server from corrupting the state of the system, because the system is the organism and the organism is the system. Second, it provides the failed server with an unambiguous sign that it (the failed server) has indeed been isolated from the organism. Since the organism is dynamic, growing and shrinking as necessary, the failed server can re-join the organism, but it can only re-join once it understands that it failed, and once it agrees to join with no pre-existing assumptions, just as if it were a new server.When external resources, such as a database, are also affected by the processing of the organism, the isolation must also prevent a failed server from affecting those resources. To accomplish this, a failed server must respect its isolated state, and it does so through the use of a quorum. A quorum is the defined minimum size for an organism, which could be defined as an absolute number of servers, as the minimum number of servers necessary to provide a particular quality of service or capacity, or as a percentage of the recent size of the organism (before the server was isolated from it). When a server is isolated from the organism, it can form its own single-celled organism (composed only of itself), or it can even form a small multi-celled organism in some split-brain scenarios. In either case, its failure to achieve quorum will cause it to restrict its affects on external resources, thus ensuring that failed servers do not cause damage to the state of either the surviving organism or the external resources that the surviving organism depends on and affects.(A more complex quorum and continuation logic is used for failover of entire datacenters, in which a split brain could allow either datacenter to provide its own quorum, yet only one datacenter must continue to process.)In summary, the failure of a server is no longer an exceptional condition, and it affects neither the availability of the overall system nor the state of the data and transactions being managed by the overall system. Thus, an application may still have to deal with the potential for failure, but not the failure of a particular server. Instead, an application must deal with the failure to achieve quorum; in other words, an application must deal with the fact that it is on the server that failed, and in exchange, it no longer has to worry about the failure of some other server.There are several additional considerations that should be addressed. First of all, a distributed system cannot maintain its availability in the event of a complete network failure; this can be addressed by eliminating single points of failure in the network infrastructure itself. Second of all, a distributed system cannot maintain its availability if all of the servers fail at once, which can happen if the servers lose power; this too can be addressed through the use of battery backups, generators and redundant power systems. However, applications should be built with an understanding of both of these risks, and this leads to the last goal of an organic system: Recoverability.In the case of a server failure in a traditional system, each server was its own single-celled organism, and each server had to be able to recover itself, for example by using a transaction log. In the case of an organic system, the organism must also be able to recover itself. It typically accomplishes recovery by relying on long-term recoverable storage, such as is provided by relational database systems (RDBMS) to act as its system of record. Recoverability is accomplished by reloading the state of the system from its recoverable storage, and using the completion of the recovery as a pre-requisite of making the organism available to process new requests.

Original question:What is the goal of Trump's voter fraud task force?The presidential election integrity commission was established by executive order in May to investigate Trump’s claims of rampant voter fraud. As this item starts to occupy more and more headlines - I find it all very confusing, what is the goal and are they going about it the right way?The main goals, based on the past and present behavior and actions of Trump, seem to be:Voter intimidation.Voter suppression & voter restriction.Disenfranchising Voters.To ice his bruised ego (he lost the popular vote).Examples that back up the above goals I listed:Intimidation:Trump asked his base to be “election observers”: [1]Go down to certain areas and watch and study and make sure other people don’t come in and vote five times……The only way they can beat it in my opinion, and I mean this 100 percent, is if in certain sections of the state they cheat, okay? So I hope you people can sort of not just vote on the 8th — go around and look and watch other polling places and make sure that it’s 100 percent fine.Trump’s campaign website also added a “sign up” page for “election observers”:Appeal to motive in the below tweet:Numerous states are refusing to give information to the very distinguished VOTER FRAUD PANEL. What are they trying to hide?— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 1, 2017Voter Suppression & Restriction: [2]Voter purges:The letter doesn’t ask whether states are complying with the parts of the law that expand opportunities to register. Instead it focuses on the sections related to maintaining the lists. That’s a prelude to voter purging.Usually the Justice Department would ask only a single state for data if it had evidence the state wasn’t complying with Motor-Voter. But a blanket request to every state covered under that law is virtually unprecedented...These parallel efforts show us exactly how the Trump administration will undertake its enormous voter suppression campaign: through voter purges. The voter rolls are the key. Registration is one of the main gateways to political participation. It is the difference between a small base of voters pursuing a narrow agenda and an electorate that looks like America.Will affect minority voters disproportionately:Here’s how the government will use voters’ data. It will create a national database to try to find things like double-voters. But the commission won’t be able to tell two people with the same name and birthday apart. Such errors will hit communities of color the hardest. Census data shows that minorities are overrepresented in 85 of the 100 most common last names.Purging voters is part of a larger malicious pattern that states have employed across the country. Georgia and Ohio are being sued for carrying out early versions of what we can expect from the Trump administration.Disenfranchising Voters: [3]The Voter Commission’s data request resulted in some people withdrawing their voter registration:Three thousand, three hundred and ninety-four Coloradans have withdrawn their voter registrations as of July 13, following the Trump administration’s request for voter data as part of the Commission on Election Integrity. An additional 182 citizens in the state have filed as confidential voters.Several other states have reported a similar uptick in citizens moving to keep their information out of the federal government’s hands.Bruised Ego:Trump cannot accept that he lost the popular vote:In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2016Quick look at “voter fraud” claims: [4]The 1960 presidential election:…reports of deceased and other unregistered voters in largely African American districts in Illinois or cases of malfeasance throughout Texas were believed to have rigged John F. Kennedy’s victory over Richard Nixon.Former Attorney General John Ashcroft:Formed the “Ballot Access and Voting Integrity Initiative” under George W. Bush’s presidencyDespite his coordination of the U.S. attorney offices with local election officials, only 24 people were convicted of improper or illegal voting and 14 non-citizens were found to be illegally voting in federal elections between 2002 and 2005.Claims of Voter Fraud in New Jersey:There were reports in 2004 that 4,755 deceased voters cast ballots in New Jersey. After careful comparison between voter rolls and death records, there were no official accounts of voter fraud.Claims of voter fraud in New York:In New York in both 2002 and 2004, 2,600 deceased voters allegedly voted, only to be removed from the register after an investigation revealed clerical errors and not malfeasance.Paranoia over “voter fraud” leads to voter suppression.North Carolina:Supreme Court rejected an appeal to reinstate North Carolina’s stringent voter identification laws that were found to discriminate against African Americans “with almost surgical precision.”Within days following this ruling, the court also found that two of North Carolina’s congressional redistricting maps resulted from unconstitutional racial gerrymandering. The decision—even supported by the more conservative Justice Clarence Thomas—found that African Americans were unfairly packed in two concentrated black districts, thereby minimizing their political influence in major elections.Wisconsin:Wisconsin’s efforts mirrored those in North Carolina where advocates purported that nearly 300,000 people lacked the proper ID to participate in the 2016 presidential election, even after parts of the state’s law were deemed unconstitutional upon appeal.Florida:In Florida, 1.5 million people were disenfranchised by a law that disqualifies ex-felons from voting, resulting in one in every four African American residents unable to vote in 2016.The 10 members in Trump’s “Commission on Election Integrity”:The above chart is based on information from a Washington Post article. [5]Mike Pence said that the “Commission on Election Integrity” will: [6]…Initiate a full evaluation of voting rolls in the country and the overall integrity of our voting system in the wake of this past election.Closer look into Kris Kobach:On November 9th, 2016, Kobach emailed a Trump transition team member about amending the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA): [7] [8]Kobach wants to amend the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). Passed in 1993, the NVRA aims to increase voter registration: Its provisions include requiring that motor vehicle and public assistance agencies provide voter registration opportunities, and allows for registration by mail.“Interstate Crosscheck System”: [9]The “Interstate Crosscheck System” is faulty at stopping voter fraud and is conducted by Kansas election authorities:States participating in the program, known as the Interstate Crosscheck System, send their voter registration files to Kansas…Each participating state receives back a list of their voter registrations that match the first name, last name and date of birth of a voter in another state. Crosscheck provides some guidelines for purging voter registrations from the rolls.The “Interstate Crosscheck Program” is inherently flawed:In theory, the program is supposed to detect possible cases of people voting in multiple locations. But academics and states that use the program have found that its results are overrun with false positives, creating a high risk of disenfranchising legal voters…For every one illegitimate vote, “Interstate Crosscheck Program” would eliminate 200 legitimate votes:A statistical analysis of the program published earlier this year by researchers at Stanford, Harvard, University of Pennsylvania and Microsoft, for instance, found that Crosscheck “would eliminate about 200 registrations used to cast legitimate votes for every one registration used to cast a double vote.”Why the “Interstate Crosscheck Program” gets it so wrong:Factors for “matches” - birthdays and names:Crosscheck bases its “matches” primarily on just two factors: people's first and last names and their birth date. But in a country of 139 million voters, you're guaranteed to have tens of thousands of individuals who share both names and birthdays.For instance, in a 2007 paper, elections experts Michael McDonald and Justin Levitt examined voter files from New Jersey's 2014 elections. In those elections, the most common names — William Smith, Maria Rodriguez, etc. — showed up hundreds of times, reflecting their prevalence in the general population.Shared birthdays are even more common — statistically speaking if you have a group of just 23 people, there's a greater than 50 percent chance that at least two of them will share the same birthday.At 180 people, according to McDonald and Levitt, there's a 50 percent chance that two of them will share the same birth date — month, day and year.So if you have 282 William Smiths, as in New Jersey's voter rolls in 2004, you'd expect four of them to share the exact same birthday. Those four William Smiths would be flagged as potentially fraudulent voters by Kobach's Crosscheck system.Disorganized Voter files:…Voter files are notoriously messy and often incomplete. Among the 3.6 million New Jersey voters McDonnell and Levitt analyzed, for instance, nearly 1 million were missing a birth date completely. Ten thousand were listed with a birth date of Jan. 1, 1753, and another 20,000 listed as Jan. 1, 1800 — likely placeholder values that were never updated.Multiply those figures up to the national level, and you can see how a system that naively matches names and birth dates is going to return a lot of noise — and very, very little in the way of people actually trying to game the voting system.There's no question that incomplete voter data is a problem. But comparing incomplete data sets against each other isn't likely to solve that problem.Data on someone registering and voting in two states:Boiling it all down, out of the 240,000 paired registrations that Crosscheck sent to Iowa, there were only six cases where it appeared that the same person registered and voted in two different states.In other words, well over 99 percent of the 'matches' sent to Iowa were unlikely to have anything to do with even attempted voter fraud.Incidentally, that's in line with Kobach's prosecution record on Crosscheck cases: a grand total of nine successful convictions so far, “mostly older Republican males,” according to local media reports.Crosscheck’s “User Guide”:…Crosscheck's user guide recommends purging older voter registrations when the name and partial Social Security number match the name and SSN of a more recent registration.…Harvard, Stanford, University of Pennsylvania and Microsoft team estimate that following this guideline would result in 200 deletions of legitimate voter registrations for each real-world case of double voting it prevented.Kobach loves the “Interstate Crosscheck Program” and wants to take it to a national level - that’s concerning:Kobach's championing of Crosscheck is one reason many voting rights advocates are concerned that President Trump's voter fraud commission may be a vehicle for recommending mass voter purges……In his opening remarks before the election commission he said the Crosscheck program “illustrates how a successful multi-state effort can be in enhancing the integrity of our elections and in keeping our voter rolls accurate. I'm confident that this commission will be equally successful on the national level.”…If the system is primarily a vehicle for false positives, why bother using it at all?…the naming of Kobach to President Trump's voter fraud commission ensures that Crosscheck will continue to have a role in the spotlight this year. And if the Republican Party has its way, Crosscheck will expand — the 2016 GOP party platform called for “every state to join the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program to keep voter rolls accurate and to prevent people from voting in more than one state in the same election.”Kris Kobach sent a letter to all 50 states (June 28th, 2016), requesting information on voters: [10]This letter asked for: [11]The information requested includes the names, addresses, birthdates, political party (if recorded), last four digits of the voter's Social Security Number and which elections the voter has participated in since 2006, for every registered voter in the country.It would seem that Kobach desires to use “Interstate Crosscheck System” on all the information sent in regarding the information he requested.The ACLU said this about the request from Kobach:As a part of Donald Trump’s Election Integrity Commission, Kris Kobach sent letters across the country, asking state representatives for details on every registered voter in the country. This is an unprecedented government request for information on American voters, including names, addresses, birthdates, political affiliation, last four digits of Social Security numbers, and voting history.Here is a chart from the ACLU regarding where each state stands on these requests:After Kobach’s letter, there are currently seven federal lawsuits that have been filed in July (2017) against Trump’s “Commission on Election Integrity”: [12]The NAACP Legal Defense Fund filed a lawsuit on July 18th, 2017. The lawsuit alleged that the “Commission on Election Integrity”: [13]“was formed with the intent to discriminate against voters of color in violation of the Constitution…to reaffirm President Trump’s false allegations of millions of ‘illegal’ votesto provide a basis for actions that will target African-American and Latino voters…rather than objectively analyze an issue of national significance.”It went on further, saying:“Statements by President Trump, his spokespersons and surrogates…as well as the work of the Commission as described by its co-chairs, are grounded on the false premise that Black and Latino voters are more likely to perpetrate voter fraud…”The suit points to the below evidence:Trump’s repeated lies that “millions of illegals” voted in the electionPence repeating Trump’s claim/defending it [14]Kobach repeating Trump’s claim: [15]“I think the president-elect is absolutely correct when he says the number of illegal votes cast exceeds the popular vote margin between him and Hillary Clinton at this point.”Hans von Spakovsky’s ties to the “Public Interest Legal Foundation”The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a lawsuit against the Commission on July 3, 2017, alleging that: [16]“the Commission’s demand for detailed voter histories also violates millions of Americans’ constitutional right to privacy.”The “Commission on Election Integrity” asked states to stop sending voter information until this lawsuit was resolved [17]The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit on July 10th, 2017, alleging that the Commission was not following proper transparency laws: [18]The lawsuit charges the commission with failing to comply with the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which is designed to ensure public accountability of all advisory committees.The ACLU said that the Commission was not making any of the topics discussed available to the publicThree days later, the White House had a page added to its website which contained some documents regarding the meetings [19]The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law filed a lawsuit similar to the ACLU’s on July 10th, 2017, citing the Commission’s failure to comply with transparency laws [20]The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law also filed a Hatch Act Complaint against Kobach, saying that he improperly used his role on the Commission to promote his upcoming run for Governor in Kansas [21]The Florida ACLU filed a lawsuit on July 10th, 2017 (separate from the other ACLU lawsuit) against the Commission, alleging that the collection efforts were: [22]“…an unjustified invasion of privacy not authorized under the Constitution and laws of the United States or the individual states.”Public Citizen filed a lawsuit on July 10, 2017, similar to the lawsuit from ACLU Florida, alleging that the Commission: [23]“collection and dissemination of [voter] information violates the Privacy Act, which prohibits the collection, use, maintenance or distribution of any ‘record describing how any individual exercises rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.’ ”Public Citizen is requesting a temporary restraining order on the Commission’s request regarding voter informationCommon Cause also filed a lawsuit regarding Privacy Act violations on July 14, 2017, against the Commission: [24]“Common Cause asks the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to order the commission, [the Department of Homeland Security], and [the Social Security Administration] to stop seeking and using the voter history and party affiliation of voters, and return any such data it has already obtained from any state.”How Kobach’s request could be unconstitutional: [25]Kobach’s goal seems to be collecting personal information on people to put in a national voter file [26]The files would collect information not limited to:NameAddressPolitical party affiliationVoting HistorySome states include even more information: [27]Date of birthTelephone numbersEmail addressesInformation about minors (some states “pre-register” minors so that they can automatically vote when they turn 18)“Publicly Available” is not a cut and dry definition: [28]In some states, voter files are widely accessible, but not to everyoneSome states restrict “why” one can have access to voter filesFor example, Texas prohibits access to voter information used for commercial profitsVoter information is sometimes limited to: [29]Political partiesCandidatesNonprofitsAny state that have these types of restrictions are automatically breaking their own laws by sending information to back to KobachNo one knows what the Commission’s security protocols will be (or if they even have any)Asking for this information via email is suspectMakes it appear that the Commission has no security protocolsAnd/or doesn’t care about securityNo one knows exactly what the Commission will do with the infoWhat laws could this data request be breaking? Here are some of them: [30]The Privacy Act:We’ve long had privacy and security concerns about government recordkeeping in this country. Back in 1974, Congress passed the Privacy Act, regulating how federal government entities keep records. There are a number of substantive requirements for a body like the Kobach commission. Those actually include specific limits on data that Kobach has asked for, like voting history and party affiliation.The Paperwork Reduction Law:The Paperwork Reduction Act, a law with a longstanding pedigree (if an uninspiring name), governs agencies that want to issue potentially burdensome information requests. The statute covers requests that are mandatory or voluntary, aimed at individuals or organizations. The guiding idea behind the PRA is simple: before the federal government enlists individuals, companies, organizations, or state governments into potentially burdensome fact-finding, it should have a good justification and a well thought out plan.Procedural requirements found within the PRA:PRA requires federal agencies to satisfy procedural requirements designed to ensure a deliberative approach informed by the people who will feel the effects of federal action. Much of it is basic stuff. Before sending out an information request to more than ten people, a federal agency must articulate a justification for doing so. It must weigh any potential benefits to the government against the burdens that its requests will impose on recipients. It must have a plan for conducting the request and managing the information it receives. Perhaps most importantly, it must engage the public through two rounds of detailed public notification, coupled with opportunities for the public to weigh in. Only then may the agency seek final approval from the White House’s budget office, which oversees compliance with the PRA, to go forward.The election commission didn’t do any of those things. It simply ignored the statute’s requirements. In other words, its request to every Secretary of State in the country violated federal law.…In other words, the Commission’s failure to adhere to the PRA isn’t a matter of mere technical non-compliance; it flouted a legal framework whose provisions would have offered a safeguard against a misguided, and potentially quite harmful, national fishing expedition for voter data.…For state officials on the fence about whether to provide the data, the PRA should weigh significantly in their decisions. The Kobach letter was, after all, an unlawful request. State officials should pause long and hard before turning over such sensitive data – data that is foundational to the democratic process…And on top of all of that, the letter from Kobach also creates a major target for hackers: [31]Digital security experts say the commission’s request would centralize and lay bare a valuable cache of information that cyber criminals could use for identity theft scams — or that foreign spies could leverage for disinformation schemes.Quick facts on voter fraud:Justin Levitt, Loyola Law School professor, found: [32]2000 - 2014 = 35 cases of voter impersonation out of ~800 million ballots that were cast in primary, municipal, special, and other elections.News21 journalism looked into voter impersonation as well as people voting twice, vote buying, absentee fraud, etc from 2000 - 2012. [33]For voter impersonation: 10For other alleged fraud cases: 2,068~50% of those votes ended with acquittals or charges being droppedThe State Board of Elections in North Carolina found: [34]1 case of voter fraud out of 4.8 million votes in the 2016 General ElectionThere were 500 ineligible votesAlmost all of those 500 were people voting who genuinely thought they couldIn 2007, the NYT found that there were: [35]86 convictions of voter fraud from 2002–2007Quick background on voter ID laws (hint, its voter suppression): [36]Voter ID laws disproportionately affect minorities:These laws have a disproportionate effect on minorities, which is exactly what you would expect given that members of racial and ethnic minorities are less apt to have valid photo ID.States that do have strict voter ID laws tend to vote more conservative:Because minority voters tend to be Democrats, strict voter ID laws tilt the primary electorate dramatically.All else equal, when strict ID laws are instituted, the turnout gap between Republicans and Democrats in primary contests more than doubles from 4.3 points to 9.8 points.Likewise, the turnout gap between conservative and liberal voters more than doubles from 7.7 to 20.4 points.States that pass strict Voter ID laws tend to have GOP legislatures:By instituting strict voter ID laws, states can alter the electorate and shift outcomes toward those on the right:Where these laws are enacted, the influence of Democrats and liberals wanes and the power of Republicans grows.Strict ID laws are passed almost exclusively by Republican legislatures.Quick look at what States have Voter ID laws: [37]Some states seem energized by Trump’s voter fraud conspiracies, many pushing for more Voter ID laws in 2017:At least 99 bills to restrict access to the polls have been introduced (or have been carried over from previous sessions) in 31 states this year; that's already more than double the number last year, according to data compiled by the Brennan Center.Voter ID — requiring voters to prove who they are with identifying documents — is the most common requirement, but changes to the voter registration process, such as asking people to prove their U.S. citizenship, are a close second.Why obtaining a government issued ID tends to be more challenging for minority demographics, collectively as well as some of the reasons that these laws are discriminatory: [38]Cost:Obtaining ID Costs Money.Even if ID is offered for free, voters must incur numerous costs (such as paying for birth certificates) to apply for a government-issued ID.Underlying documents required to obtain ID cost money, a significant expense for lower-income Americans. The combined cost of document fees, travel expenses and waiting time are estimated to range from $75 to $175.Travel:The travel required is often a major burden on people with disabilities, the elderly, or those in rural areas without access to a car or public transportation.In Texas, some people in rural areas must travel approximately 170 miles to reach the nearest ID office.Voter ID laws are discriminatory:Minority voters disproportionately lack ID.Nationally, up to 25% of African-American citizens of voting age lack government-issued photo ID, compared to only 8% of whites.Some Voter ID laws exclude forms of ID in a discriminatory way:Texas:allows concealed weapons permits for voting, but does not accept student ID cards.North Carolina:Until its voter ID law was struck down, North Carolina prohibited public assistance IDs and state employee ID cards, which are disproportionately held by Black voters.Wisconsin:Until recently, Wisconsin permitted active duty military ID cards, but prohibited Veterans Affairs ID cards for voting.Enforcement of Voter ID laws shows a trend of discriminatory behavior:A Caltech/MIT study found that minority voters are more frequently questioned about ID than are white voters.Voter ID laws reduces the turnout of minority voters:Several studies, including a 2014 GAO study, have found that photo ID laws have a particularly depressive effect on turnout among racial minorities and other vulnerable groups, worsening the participation gap between voters of color and whites.The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a right wing group that is funded by corporations like Exxon Mobile and the Koch brothers, is the culprit behind most of the voter ID laws: [39]Lawmakers proposed 62 photo ID bills in 37 states in the 2011 and 2012 sessions, with multiple bills introduced in some states.Ten states have passed strict photo ID laws since 2008, though several may not be in effect in November because of legal challenges.…More than half of the 62 bills were sponsored by members or conference attendees of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a Washington, D.C.-based, tax-exempt organization.At ALEC’s annual conferences, legislators, nonprofits and corporations work together without direct public input to develop bills that promote smaller government…The group’s Public Safety and Elections Task Force at the 2009 Atlanta meeting approved the “Voter ID Act,” a photo ID bill modeled on Indiana and Georgia laws.…Arkansas state Rep. Dan Greenberg, Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce and Indiana state Rep. Bill Ruppel (three Republicans now out of office) led drafting and discussion of the Voter ID Act.Critics of photo voter ID laws…say voters without a driver’s license or the means (a birth certificate or Social Security card) to obtain free ID cards at a state motor vehicles office could be disenfranchised.They claim that ALEC pushed for photo ID laws because poor Americans without ID are likely to vote against conservative interestsThe White House asked for feedback on the “Election Integrity Commission” on the White House website, which didn’t go so well. For example: [40]There was a lot of swearing:People called out Kobach and Pence specifically:Others questioned the integrity of the Commission:There were comparisons to Big Brother:Others demanded that the commissioners explain themselves:And my personal favorite:So, in conclusion, Trump’s “Commission on Election Integrity” is a waste of taxpayer money. The goal of the Commission is to create a “solution” that is looking for problems that don’t exist as well as creating problems.Are they going about it the right way? No.The premise of this Commission is based on lies.How the Commission is going about collecting the information based on a false premise is wrong.The data the Commission is wanting is likely a violation of privacy laws.Footnotes[1] Trump Asks Supporters to Prevent ‘Rigged’ Election by Becoming ‘Observers’[2] Opinion | The Voter Purges Are Coming[3] Some voters unregistering after Trump administration's data requests[4] Trump’s election integrity commission needs to redress voter suppression, not fraud[5] Analysis | Here are the first 10 members of Trump’s voting commission[6] Trump's election commission meets as critics condemn president's 'biggest lie'[7] Kris Kobach Email [8] This Trump administration official wants to make it more difficult to vote[9] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/07/20/this-anti-voter-fraud-program-gets-it-wrong-over-99-of-the-time-the-gop-wants-to-take-it-nationwide/?utm_term=.b08bbbc38661[10] https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3881818/SOS-Letter.pdf[11] Election Integrity Commission - State Responses[12] Trump’s voter commission is now facing at least 7 federal lawsuits[13] http://www.naacpldf.org/files/about-us/EIC%20Complaint.pdf[14] Watch Mike Pence try to defend Trump’s false claim that ‘millions’ voted illegally[15] Kris Kobach agrees with Donald Trump that ‘millions’ voted illegally but offers no evidence[16] EPIC v. Presidential Election Commission[17] https://epic.org/privacy/litigation/voter/epic-v-commission/EPIC-v-Commission-government-filing-on-DOD-database.pdf[18] American Civil Liberties Union v. Donald Trump[19] Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity[20] Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law Files Lawsuit To Halt Commission Hearing for Failure to Comply With Federal Law | Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law[21] Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law Files Hatch Act Complaint Against Kris Kobach | Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law[22] https://www.aclufl.org/2017/07/10/coalition-of-voting-rights-leaders-and-florida-voters-sue-presidential-commission-over-request-for-voter-information/[23] https://www.citizen.org/media/press-releases/public-citizen-sues-trump-administration-prevent-government’s-collection-voter[24] http://www.commoncause.org/press/press-releases/PenceKobachLawsuit.html?referrer=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/07/18/trumps-voter-fraud-commission-is-now-facing-at-least-7-federal-lawsuits/?utm_term=.696f889ac706?referrer=http://www.denverpost.com/2017/07/18/trumps-voter-commission-facing-several-federal-lawsuits/[25] All Your Voter Data Are Belong To Us | Take Care[26] http://www.ncsl.org/Documents/Elections/The_Canvass_February_2016_66.pdf[27] Full List Facts and Info - Voter List Information[28] States - Voter List Information[29] ELECTION CODE CHAPTER 18. PROCEDURES FOR IDENTIFYING REGISTERED VOTERS[30] President Trump’s Election Commission Has Already Violated Federal Law | Take Care[31] Trump voter-fraud panel’s data request a gold mine for hackers, experts warn[32] Voter Turnout Data - United States Elections Project[33] A News21 2012 National Project[34] https://s3.amazonaws.com/dl.ncsbe.gov/sboe/Post-Election%20Audit%20Report_2016%20General%20Election/Post-Election_Audit_Report.pdf[35] In 5-Year Effort, Scant Evidence of Voter Fraud[36] Analysis | Do voter identification laws suppress minority voting? Yes. We did the research.[37] States push new voter requirements, fueled by Trump[38] Oppose Voter ID Legislation - Fact Sheet[39] Oppose Voter ID Legislation - Fact Sheet[40] https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docs/comments-received-june-29-through-july-11-2017.pdf

Twilio is a company founded by developers for developers! Twilio provides a software-based platform which enables customers to easily add voice, messaging and video to their apps. Twilio is NOT selling a final product that can be consumed by an end-user (e.g., prepackaged software to solve their business problems), but rather is providing developers/customers with the prefabricated building blocks (i.e., APIs) needed to build any communication-based functionality they desire right into their application. By just virtually buying a phone number and swiping their credit card for potential per minute usage, developers can build contextually relevant communications by preventing their own customers’ users from leaving the application when they need to interact with someone (think why WeChat is popular in China). On this side of the world, popular use cases include ridesharing apps enabling anonymous communication between passengers and drivers and e-commerce companies sending automated delivery notifications or promotional messages.So how does it work?A developer signs up for Twilio, chooses a local virtual number (e.g., with 415 area-code for San Francisco, 212 for New York City) to send and receive voice, or SMS messages. The developer then maps the virtual number to a ‘request’ URL (the application’s URL, which Twilio would request from the developer’s application server when receiving a voice call on behalf of the developer/customer). The URL, or Uniform Resource Locator, created by the application developer, would describe to Twilio how to control the content of phone calls.The developer defines a set of business rules, or instructions to handling incoming and outgoing calls for each customer cohort. These instructions include: 1) Say - inform the customer that his or her order has been processed, or play a prerecorded sound file (message or music); 2) Gather - collect information from the caller; 3) Record - record the call; 4) Reject - hang up; and 5)Dial - dial this specific rep number to forward the customer to, or set up a conference call. In essence, on one end Twilio ‘ingests’ the phone call or the message flow, while on the other, it provides APIs for developers who, in turn, instructs Twilio on how to handle the incoming or outgoing phone calls. An API, or Application Programming Interface is a prefabricated block of software code that performs basic, reusable functions—e.g., displaying text on a computer screen, enabling inter-app communication—to allow developers to simply focus on building value-add, user facing applications.The call gets ‘load-balanced’ to a number of nodes/servers in Twilio’s cluster (managed by AWS). Each group of machines/servers perform specific roles—for example, some roles might be CPU-bound, a task is determined by the speed of the central processor, while others are memory-bound, determined by the amount of memory required to hold data—allowing Twilio to scale each group of machines independently of one another. The call comes in, gets load-balanced to a ‘Voice’ node cluster (i.e., a group of servers dedicated to voice function) to be answered by Asterisk, an open source PBX software platform.In general, a PBX allows telephone users to set up circuit-switched calls to other users in the same company (without toll charges) or to connect with users of the public telephone network. Effectively, PBXs shift some of the switching system out of the telephone company’s central office ‘CO’ and into the customer’s premise. The switch permits direct inward dialing ‘DID’ to a specific extension. Twilio stores the ‘DID’ numbers in its database; on the other end, the developer/customer would associate her or his assigned ‘DID’ number to a specific URL of a web application. As the call comes in, Twilio would make an HTTP POST request to that URL. In turn, Twilio would receive from the application server the XML instructions on how to handle the call.How does a phone call work? Historically, the telephone network has been a hierarchy of smaller networks performing different switching functions. In the US, switches were organized into classes from 1 to 5, Class 5 being assigned to the End Office or Local Exchange ‘LEX’. Classes 1 to 4 were Toll Centers or Transit Nodes ‘TN’. For a particular country, this network hierarchy would also be connected to international networks through a higher switch called International Gateway. Even if the modern structure has flattened, removing the Class 1 to 3 switches from the hierarchy, Class 4 and Class 5 designations remain in use today.The core of a telephone network is made of switches—TN and LEX. The primary function of these switches is to establish connections between telephones and the transmission equipment used to carry the voice call. When a called is placed, the switch detects that the receiver has been lifted, provides a dial tone and collects the called number. It then translates the dialled digits into a destination path by finding and reserving an idle circuit—if not it returns a busy-line tone. When the connection is established it sends a ringback tone to the caller until the destination picks up the phone. Then the connection is established by linking all the connections previously reserved in the transmission network and in the end terminates the call by releasing network resources reserved for the call.Typically, residential customers are connected to switches through an Access Node ‘AN’ or a Digital Loop Carrier ‘DLC’. This equipment converts the incoming voice into the appropriate digital format and also performs some basic call-processing functions. DLCs are access solutions that enhance the reach of the switch for remote customers. They do so by multiplexing many customer lines into just a few trunk lines that return to the switch.How does an internet connection work? The main historical way to access the Internet was a dial-up connection or narrowband access. Narrowband access uses the phone line to the Local Exchange, which is then connected to the data network through a Narrowband Access Switch ‘NAS’. The data network is typically a set of IP and/or ATM switches. The most widespread broadband internet access today is DSL. It re-uses the telephone copper wire up to Digital Subscriber Line access Multiplexer ‘DSLAM’ that directs the voice traffic onto the PSTN and the data traffic to the data network through a Broadband Access Router ‘BAS’. The PSTN, or the Public Service Telephone Network is a circuit-switched network that sets up dedicated voice circuits across a network of copper and fiber optic cabling.How do converged networks handle calls? There are many different ways to converge networks. In general, Network convergence requires the addition of two types of network elements: Media Gateways (MG) and Softswitches. Media gateways act as the physical bridge between the two networks. Their main purpose is to convert the TDM voice packet into data packets—generally IP or ATM. The softswitch acts as a media gateway controller by extending the voice network signalling ‘SS7’ into the data domain.When a phone call is placed on such a converged network, both the voice connection and the signalling are routed to the data network through a media gateway. The softswitch is a central database ensuring that Media Gateways properly communicate between each other.How does Twilio Fit in? To properly understand the inner workings of the Twilio platform, it is important to understand how basic web browsing work.What happens when you type a URL into a web browser. When you type aws.amazon.com for example, into a web browser, a behind-the-scenes process occurs translating the domain name (aws.amazon.com) into the IP address (54.239.31.69). The IP address is sent to the web browser so the user can be connected to the website. This process, called resolution, relies on a global network of name servers. The browser is a program that requests information from a web application server, which in turn finds the requested information and sends it back to the user’s client (desktop, mobile).A web server is essentially a software program that sits in the middle tier of an ‘N-Tier’ computing environment between client-side environments (web browser), and server applications. Application servers allows developers to focus on creating specific business logic objects without having to code at the system level. The primary role of the application server is to access enterprise servers (e.g., AWS’ servers) for business logic and data, serving application objects to clients in the form of static or dynamic HTML pages, JavaScript, etc.Clients and servers communicate using Hypertext Transfer Protocol Language (HTTP). IP addresses are what machines on the Internet use to identify one another. It is a 32-bit address defined by Internet Protocol, or IP that uniquely identifies each computer on the Internet. Every computer, or machine on the Internet has a unique IP address. If a machine does not have an IP address, it is not really on the Internet. When searching for frequently visited Websites (e.g., aws.amazon, Facebook, Google, etc.), the recursive name server already has the information cached in its memory and passes the IP address on to the user’s computer browser without having to take any further steps.The ‘conversation’ taking place between the browsers and the local recursive name server is analogous to the following dialogue:User’s computer: “What is the IP address of the URL Amazon Web Services (AWS)recursive name server: “I already know that. The IP address is 54.239.31.69.” The local recursive name server then delivers the address to the end user’s browser.Under ‘the cover’, a ‘load balancer’ differentiates between a request to a main page and another to its extension (e.g., www.amazon.com and today’s deal extension www.amazon.com/gp/goldbox ),and sends the request for the web page of today’s deals to a group of servers that is optimized for that task. A load balancer goes one step further by allowing traffic routing decisions to be based on the so-called HTTP header (HTTP, or Hypertext Transfer Protocol is an application-level protocol that is the foundation for the World Wide Web). A load balancer’s controller not only examines the URL, but also information such as cookies, client source address, etcTwilio Client SDK enables VoIP communications. Twilio Client enables developers to integrate Voice Over IP, or VOIP into their applications.To illustrate, let’s examine a scenario whereby hypothetical InsuranceCo were to roll out Salesforce CRM Call Center mobile application through which is provisioned several customer service numbers (local numbers, international, 1-800 etc.) provided by Twilio. InsuranceCo buys a virtual 1-800 number from Twilio. InsuranceCo’s customer calls the 1-800 number. Salesforce has set up workflows, on behalf of InsuranceCo, for how to deal with inbound calls. Twilio Client SDK enables VoIP communications within the Salesforce application. The customer’s carrier (e.g, Verizon) routes the call to a Competitive Local Exchange Carrier ‘CLEC’ with whom Twilio has contracted (e.g., Level 3) . The call is routed through AWS to Twilio, triggering an HTTP request to Twilio’s call API to initiate the call.On the other end, Twilio 1) looks up the voice URI (Uniform Resource Identifiers) of the Salesforce Service Cloud application, and 2) provides Salesforce’s web server +information about the caller (e.g., originating and dialed phone numbers, date and time of the call, geographic location of the caller, etc). Twilio would also request instructions from the Salesforce application server on how to handle the call. The process is quite similar to how a browser makes a request to a web server discussed above.Once the Salesforce application receives the caller’s information (i.e., the call is logged into Salesforce). Processing function follows, involving a caller/customer database lookup to map customer’s caller ID to her or his historically stored information (e.g., caller's support ticket history). Caller’s information are then injected into the Salesforce application workflow. In this example, InsuranceCo.’s marketing database (maintained by Salesforce) has been capturing data about the customer’s behavior from various sales and communications channels.Twilio’s TaskRouter. Salesforce’s application server then sends to Twilio’s server (which is hosted on AWS) XML instructions on how to handle that specific phone call (e.g., since the analytical engine determined the caller is a high value distributor/customer, please forward immediately the call to highly skilled call-center rep A). An HTTP request is sent to a virtual call router’s API (i.e., Twilio’s TaskRouter's API). The call router, or TaskRouter authenticates, or looks up the account holder’s unique ID, matches the caller to the intended rep, then sends an HTTP request to Twilio’s server to initiate the phone call between the caller and the rep.The existing data on the caller/customer is enhanced by the overlay of the real-time contextual communication data elements; i.e., putting the customer call in context of the Salesforce’ customer service application, providing the call center agent real-time intelligence, needed for improved customer profiling. The agent can instantly access and view prior communications, use real-time analytics identify the personalized best next-action for the customer (e.g., promote a special offer, provide a service alert), and through, for example, Pitney Bowes’s content-creation platform, automatically integrates incoming data, compose new offer and send it to the customer through the relevant channel.What is Voice over IP ‘VoIP’? Voice over IP (VoIP) is a technology that involves sending telephone calls over data networks, such as the Internet, rather than the traditional Public Switched Telephone Network ‘PSTN’. Traditional phone calls across the PSTN use a dedicated circuit that transfers calls as uncut streams, allowing no other information on the circuit regardless of available bandwidth. Conversely, IP networks transfer data more efficiently in packets that get reassembled on the receiving end rather than using a dedicated circuit. For a VoIP call, audio is first converted from an analog signal to a digital signal through a codec, separated into discrete packets, sent across an IP-based network, put back into order at the termination point, and then converted back to an analog signal to create audio that the end user can recognize. There are three major VoIP protocol standards—namely, H.323, SIP, and MGCP.The Session Initiated Protocol, or SIP In March 1999, the Internet Engineering Task Force ‘IETF’ introduced Session Initiation Protocol ‘SIP’, which was designed to support quicker call set-up times and enhanced Web capabilities. SIP does not require gateways to maintain all call information during the life of the call and, as a result, it is less demanding of servers and is more scalable.SIP focuses on session initiation, modification and termination, and leaves the session and connection details to be negotiated by the end points. SIP uses a simple text command structure with HTTP syntax and URL addressing. Thus, SIP is well suited for any Internet- and Web-based applications.SIP allows direct communication between clients via a peer-to-peer ‘P2P’ connection using only IP addresses, and in most cases a SIP proxy will query a Domain Name Server ‘DNS’ to resolve a domain name into an IP address of record. An important characteristic of the SIP protocol is that it allows endpoints to establish a peer-to-peer connection and communicate directly. This is in contrast with other protocols that require resources on the network to control communications between end points.How does SIP “Work”? To initiate a phone call, the SIP phone issues an INVITE containing the caller’s IP address and the type of media requested (e.g., voice). From there, the SIP servers (Proxy and Redirect server) send back the SIP-URI where the called party can be reached. In this respect, the SIP servers somewhat resembles the DNS, or Domain Name Server servers on the Internet.What is the Domain Name System ‘DNS’? The Domain Name System (DNS), a global, distributed database infrastructure, is part of the fabric that holds together the Internet—performing the simple, straightforward function of mapping URLs (Uniform Resource Locator) to IP (Internet Protocol) addresses. Every Web server on the Internet has one or more unique IP addresses, represented as four sets of numbers, called octets, separated by periods (e.g.,140.211.169.9). The DNS enables people to use domain names (e.g., www.opendaylight.org ), which are much simpler to remember, to identify Web servers as opposed to IP addresses (e.g., 140.211.169.9). Each time a user enters a domain name into a computer’s Web browser, the DNS translates the user-friendly URL into the IP address needed to locate the appropriate Web server.SIP uses the above request and response method to establish communication among the various network components and ultimately enable a multimedia conference between two users. Users are identified by globally reachable unique addresses called URIs. URIs use the same format as email addresses to describe IP service points (e.g., [email protected]). Users register their assigned URIs with the registrar server, which provides this information to the location server upon request. Users can have multiple URIs with different service providers that point to the same device, but they can also be reached with traditional telephone numbers. Calls using these traditional numbering schemes are translated into SIP URIs using the ENUM method.E.164 Number Mapping ‘ENUM’: Telephone Numbers on the Internet ENUM, or E.164 Number to URI Mapping translates telephone numbers into Internet addresses. ENUM is a protocol that merges the Public Switched Telephone Network ‘PSTN’ and the Internet—mapping complete international telephone numbers to URIs. Since the SIP protocol is IP based, it provides users (and applications) globally reachable addresses called URIs (Uniform Resource Identifiers). URIs use the same format as email addresses to describe IP service points (e.g., tel: [email protected], mms: [email protected], etc.) and can be reached with traditional telephone numbers. Calls using these traditional numbering schemes can be translated into SIP URIs using the ENUM methodology.To put ENUM into context with the aforementioned technologies, SIP performs the initiation of interactive communications sessions between users, as well as termination of those communications and modifications to those sessions. SIP is one protocol that may be used by ENUM to send out initiation attempts to multiple locations in order to find the user who is receiving a call. By placing telephone numbers into the DNS, ENUM can facilitate a range of applications including addressing for fax machines, email, instant messaging, etc.What Value Does ENUM Add? ENUM enables users to access Internet services from Internet enabled phones, ordinary phones that are connected to Internet gateways or proxy servers and/or other Internet devices that may have inputs limited to a numeric keypad.ENUM also provides users with greater control over communications, including allowing users to indicate their preferences for receiving communications. For example, a user can indicate a preference for voice mail messages over live calls during certain times, or may specify a call forwarding location.ENUM allows an end user to reach an IP device by dialing a telephone number rather than entering a URI. A traditional number is entered into the calling device, and the number is then transformed into a fully qualified address by an application or a device that supports ENUM.A developer’s customer dials a Twilio provisioned virtual phone number. The SIP proxy queries the ENUM DNS server to resolve the fully qualified domain name into a URI. The SIP proxy will then query a DNS server to determine the IP address to send the invite. To illustrate, let’s walk through a scenario whereby End User A dials a Twilio’s business customer, or User B:User A dials User B’s phone: +1-646-470-8021.Internet Gateway converts number to a domain name and queries VoIP local recursive name server: 1.2.0.8.0.7.4.6.4.6.1.e164.arpa. By using ENUM, e.164 numbers can be used in DNS by transforming the phone number into a hostname. This is simply done by reversing the numbers, separating each digit by a dot and then adding the e164.arpa suffix.13 For example, the number +1-646-470-8021 would be transformed to the fully qualified domain name 1.2.0.8.0.7.4.6.4.6.1.e164.arpa.Local recursive name server: “I don’t know that address, but I’ll check with a name server that does. Hold on for a millisecond.”e164.arpa Tier 0 server: “Here are the addresses for the authoritative name servers for the CC1 1.e164.arpa domain.”domain.com name server: “The URI for 1.2.0.8.0.7.4.6.4.6.1.e164.arpa is [email protected].”User A’s telephone contacts User B’s (Twilio’s customer’s) telephone at returned IP Address. The local name server launches a query to the DNS, which responds with the IP address (e.g.,108.231.245.239) of the local proxy server associated with [email protected]. The SIP proxy server in User A’s network contacts the SIP proxy server in User B’s customer network, and the proxy server in User B’s network then contacts User B’s destination SIP IP phone.When the called agent receives the INVITE request, it determines if it can accept the call. If it can, it will ring the phone and then send back a response to let the calling agent know that it is ringing. When the phone is answered, User B’s, or Twilio’s business customer’s phone sends an OK response back to the calling agent along with its media capabilities. Both agents agree on a media channel, and User A’s phone sends an ACK to User B’s phone.After responses and acknowledgments are exchanged, an RTP ‘Real-time Transport Protocol’ session is established between SIP IP phones of Users A and B, or the end-user and Twilio’s business customer.Traditional Voice and the Public Service Telephone Network ‘PSTN’. The voice telephone systems are referred to as the PSTN ‘Public-Switched Telephone Network or POTS ‘Plain Old Telephone System’. PSTN is a circuit-switched network that sets up dedicated voice circuits across a network of copper and fiber optic cabling. The structure of the traditional telecommunications industry varies by country and depends on the nature of the regulatory environment.In the United States, the industry has been pushed into a competitive model consisting of a variety of participants, primarily oriented around local exchange carriers ‘LECs’ that provide last-mile connection for consumers and businesses within specific geographies ‘LATAs’, and Interexchange Carriers ‘IXCs’ that provide long-distance services. A more graduated categorization includes ILECs ‘Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers such as SBC/Verizon), CLECs ‘Competitive Local Exchange Carriers’ (e.g., Level 3), IXCs (e.g., MCI/Verizon and AT&T), and ISPs ‘Internet Service Providers such as Earthlink and Prodigy/AT&T.Twilio interconnects to the so-called Tier 1 carriers - carriers that own or control sufficient portions of their underlying network infrastructure;e.g., Verizon, Level 3 - to provide the PSTN integration. It uses SIP (described above) origination and termination to ‘talk’ to originate and terminate calls on the PSTN.Traditional PBX. As discussed above, a PBX is a telephone switch located on the premises of a company. Traditional PBXs were typically hardware-based solutions that ‘sat’ inside customer premises ‘CPE’, providing businesses with the benefits of direct dialing, call forwarding, and a variety of enhanced services. Put another way, PBXs were originally designed for businesses as a cost-effective alternative to the provisioning of individual lines to each end-user from the phone company’s central office. The PBX is like a mini-CO, owned and operated by the corporation itself. In this respect, traditional PBXs reduced both line provisioning costs for the corporation and telecom services expenses associated with intra-office calls.Mostly Proprietary. Nonetheless, because PBXs are highly proprietary systems, enterprises have had to rely heavily on the PBX vendor to deploy or integrate any new applications. In a traditional PBX, there is a proprietary operating system running on a computer processor in a proprietary chassis. The applications are also proprietary, running on the same or separate processors. The interfaces—trunk cards and line cards— are also proprietary. In short, the traditional PBX is like a black box, with the vendor controlling virtually everything—the addition or adjustment of applications generally needs to be made by the PBX vendor. The proprietary nature of the technology is often predicated by its complexity. In fact, a high-end legacy PBX usually incorporates about 5 million lines of code.Limited Scalability. One of the most significant limitation of legacy PBX systems may be scalability. PBXs are typically designed for a specific number of users, and once the enterprise expands beyond that specific capacity, a new and bigger PBX needs to be installed. Sometimes, small businesses have to purchase a higher-end PBX than they need in case of possible future expansion, resulting in a particularly inefficient use of capital. It is also problematic to connect PBXs across multiple sites, and the signaling between PBXs is proprietary. Another key problem is that handsets which customers may have purchased for the lower-end PBXs often do not work with higher-end PBXs. As a result, customer upgrades to a higher-end PBX system often necessitate the additional cost of purchasing new handsets.Asterisk and IP-PBXs. Enterprise networking focuses on three primary goals: 1) Scalability, 2) Controlling the cost of communication through the most efficient use of technology and carrier services, and 3) Improving the productivity and performance of workers by distributing information to support their activities. With the advent of the Internet, IP PBX systems were introduced and allowed for phone calls to be placed over IP-based, rather than over TDM-based networks. In such an IP environment, distributed communications servers ‘IP-PBXs’ provide scalability and redundancy by sharing and quickly reconfiguring resources in the event of individual server failure. This redundancy and distributed processing is only feasible because the architecture separates the voice traffic from the PBX, leaving only call signaling and processing responsibilities to the PBX; hence, enabling independent scalability.Asterisk, on the other hand, is commonly used open source PBX software platform, developed in 1999 by a company called Linux Support Systems that later changed its name to Digium. The development of Asterisk is predicated on the idea that modularity, or separating a PBX system into interconnecting components—akin to a boxful of LEGO bricks—would enhance scalability. An Asterisk based IP-PBX is essentially a x86 communications server, running on Linux.Hosted PBX With Hosted PBX, PBX functionality is delivered as a service over the carrier’s network. Enterprise customers typically pay for the service under a leasing arrangement. Rather than having a PBX system located on the enterprise’s facilities, those functions are located in the carrier’s network and delivered over IP-based trunks to the enterprise.SIP Trunking involves the direct IP connection of a SIP-enabled IP-PBX and SIP-compliant VoIP service provider. It is an IP-based service provided by telecom operators (and Twilio) to connect an enterprise’s PBX with the service provider’s network. Put another way, SIP Trunking is an IP connectivity consisting of a single pipe which connects a service provider’s network to an enterprise IP PBX. As discussed earlier, SIP, or Session Initiation Protocol, is the protocol used to set up IP-based sessions between network endpoints such as end-user devices or servers. SIP trunks allow operators to provision VoIP voice sessions. Enterprises benefit from SIP trunking as it consolidates their voice and data networks, replacing premise-based connectivity, and thus reducing overall costs. In the past, enterprises had to connect bundles of physical wires—PSTN lines—to a business—PSTN endpoint. A SIP trunk eliminates the PSTN lines—reducing the number of SIP connections per port—and other associated equipment such as PSTN gateways.Thus, SIP Trunking offers a number of advantages over traditional TDM-based connectivity. First, SIP Trunking allows the enterprise to reduce its telecommunications costs. While many enterprises already save on the cost of voice calls between their sites by implementing IP-based PBX systems and using intra-corporation VoIP calling. Using SIP Trunking, enterprises can further expand their ROI by extending VoIP outside of the corporate LAN.The savings comes from: 1) Getting rid of traditional analog/POTS, ISDN BRI ‘Basic Rate Interface’, ISDN PRI ‘Primary Rate Interface’, or T1/T3 subscriptions; 2) More optimal use of SIP trunk bandwidth as both voice and data services can be delivered over the same connection; 3) Greater flexibility in purchasing voice capacity as enterprises don’t have to purchase lines in groups of 24 T1 or 30 E1 lines; 4) Flexible routing of calls to preferred carriers —long distance calls can be made for the cost of local calls; and 5) Lower operating costs of IP-PBX systems vis-à-vis traditional TDM-based PBXs.For most enterprises, the desire to save money is the primary force driving adoption of SIP Trunking. Least cost routing is an interesting example. Enterprises can utilize SIP trunks from multiple service providers and proactively route specific calls to certain carriers based on country codes—operators often charge different international rates based on availability, time zone differences, and geography.Moving beyond these types of cost-reduction initiatives, SIP Trunking enables a host of additional capabilities that enterprises can benefit from. As discussed earlier, the SIP protocol itself was designed to initiate all types of real-time communications over IP networks — not just voice. Today, enterprises are taking advantage of not only the significant cost savings afforded from SIP Trunking, but also the ability to improve enterprise productivity through the deployment of Unified Communications applications.Where Twilio fits in: Elastic SIP Trunking.Companies such as Acme Packet (acquired by Oracle) use their Session Border Controllers SBCs as SIP firewalls. A session border controller is a piece of network equipment or a collection of functions that control real-time session traffic at the signal, call control, and packet layers as they cross a packet-to-packet network border between networks or between network segments. SBCs are typically located at the perimeter of disparate IP networks, such as between headquarter and branch offices, and/or between call centers and enterprise data centers. They provide network operators with ‘policy-based control’ over VoIP sessions, furnish basic protocol inter-working and defend the carrier backbone against a variety of attacks.SIP trunks are VoIP trunks from service providers that use SIP for call control and routing,enabling enterprises to create a single, pure, IP connection to a carrier’s core network. This can be viewed as an Enterprise IP-PBX that peers with the service provider core SIP proxy. “Twilio-SIP is for use in TwiMl type applications to terminate or originate a call from a known SIP endpoint or address. Elastic SIP Trunking is utilized when you have an existing application or appliance that needs to have origination and termination capabilities (think a PBX like Asterisk/Freeswitch) and Twilio will be that provider”.Programming Messaging.Twilio’s Messaging API enables developers to embed text-based communications in their applications. Using the same virtual number, our hypothetical InsuranceCo (discussed above in the voice section) can use the same both make and receive voice calls, and send and receive SMS.SMS would follow a similar pattern of voice--the flow from caller/sender to receiver--yet with the addition of an SMS aggregator. Say for example an Uber rider contacts a driver. The Uber application would use Twilio’s API to generate and initiate the SMS to the driver’s number. The SMS is routed through AWS to a CELC (e.g., Level 3). The CELC would then route the message to an SMS aggregator with whom Twilio has contracted (e.g., Syniverse). The SMS aggregator routes the SMS to the driver’s carrier (e.g., AT&T). The driver’s carrier then routes the SMS to the driver.The SMS Aggregator. An SMS aggregator such as Syniverse (acquired by The Carlyle Group)is essentially a ‘clearinghouse’ provider that facilitates wireless roaming between different carriers’ networks. As a third party intermediary, it plays a necessary role in a complex telecommunications environment characterized by different network architectures, signaling standards, billing record formats, and network protocols. The aggregator serves as the middle hub connected to all carrier partners, allowing each to roam on other’s network (assuming a roaming agreement is in place).Continuing on with the Uber example, when the SMS is sent by the rider, a detail record is created. This detail record contains basic information about the SMS (e.g., who is the sender, where they sent, the length of the message, the carrier that authorized the message). This record is then stored in one of the several formats. For GSM, the format is known as TAP, or Transferred Account Procedure (TAP) file, while for CDMA the format is known as CIBER.The data record must now be communicated to the right partners—this is where an SMS aggregator comes in. Syniverse, for example, receives the information in its data center, aggregates the data, and distributes the information to the right carriers. The company then calculates the net obligation of each carrier based on the information detailed by the data records.The Short Message Service Centre (SMSC). SMS includes a number of distinct features, which I have highlighted below. These are made possible as messages are sent via an SMSC. The SMSC mainly acts in a similar way to a router of messages. However, it also acts as an important interface with other parts of the network and other systems on that network.In general, one of the main features of an SMSC is the ability to store and forward messages. If the receiving device is switched off, the central system stores the message until it receives a signal that the device is now switched on, when it will then deliver the message. In addition, the functions of an SMSC can include providing the senderInterface with Other Network Elements. In addition to the store and forward features, the SMSC can provide an important interface to an operator’s other applications and act as the router between these. For example, the SMSC may interact with the pre-paid billing system, location servers, user profiles and platforms for other SMS based applications.