By Julie Steenhuysen                      July 7, 1998

  CHICAGO (Reuters) - For the past 10 years, Robert Bulmash has been waging a war against what he considers junk telephone calls.

  His weapon: a clever interpretation of contract law that has allowed him and his allies to charge phone solicitors $500 per unwanted call.

  Since January 1996, members of the group have collected some $147,000 and reduced their unsolicited calls by 70 percent, said Bulmash, founder and president of Private Citizen Inc. of Naperville, Ill.

  The group's strategy has caught the attention of the Council of American Survey Research Organizations (CASRO), which has begun fighting back. CASRO, which represents 175 polling firms  -- including such heavyweights as Louis Harris & Associates and The Gallup Organization -- issued a statement last month claiming Private Citizen's tactics were tantamount to extortion.

  CASRO claims researchers have a First Amendment right to communicate with people, distinguishing marketing and opinion researchers from telemarketers, which are required by a 1991 federal law to observe so-called ``Do Not Call'' registries.

  ``The federal government in its wisdom has exempted marketing and opinion research from 'Do Not Call' registries because we are different from telemarketers,'' said Diane Bowers, executive director of CASRO. ``We will respect those people who refuse to participate in a survey, but we would like the right just to ask.''

  The debate goes to the whole question of whether Americans have the right to refuse to be a part of  survey researchers' universe of subjects.

  Researchers are pressing the point, said CASRO Chairman Richard Day, because for survey research to be reliable, it must count both the people who refuse to participate and those who don't. ``Such a process guards against sample bias and thus the ability to generalize to the population,'' said Day in CASRO's statement.

  To the 2,800 members of Private Citizen, however, any unwanted phone call, whether for survey or sales purposes, is an intrusion. ``They say that if a person doesn't want to take a survey, all they have to do is say no,'' Bulmash said. ``Why can't they say no in advance? The issue is not having to be dragged to the phone.''

  To guard against such home invasions, Private Citizen publishes a membership list which it distributes to more than 1,500 telemarketing and research companies. The list includes a notice and offer for the use of members' telephone equipment and personal service in responding to such calls on a for-hire basis of $500 per call. ``If they wish to use my phone, they have to pay the 500 bucks,'' said Bulmash.

  Companies that refuse to pay can wind up shelling out even more in legal fees defending themselves in small claims court. While CASRO so far has no plans to back its claims of extortion with a lawsuit, it does intend to fight on principle, Bowers said. ``If you pay the $500 because it's the easy way out, you're giving merit to his argument,'' she said.

  Privacy expert Alan F. Westin, professor emeritus of public law and government at Columbia University, however, believes the argument does have merit.

  ``For CASRO to say that they've got to pursue every respondent with intrusion is an insupportable argument,'' said Westin, who does consulting on privacy for a number of major companies. Westin  said CASRO could solve its research reliability issues by simply adding an asterisk to its methodology statement indicating that Private Citizen's members were excluded.

  Until then, however, Bulmash intends to have his group's members keep collecting the $500 fees. ``If   they don't want to pay the money, it's easy,'' he said. All they have to do is nothing.''

  Reut12:52 07-07-98

  (07 Jul 1998 12:52 EDT)