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HOW TO HANG UP ON THOSE AUTOMATED PHONE CALLS

You're finally home from work, you've just sat down to dinner and the phone rings. What now? A disembodied voice that reminds you faintly of the paranoid computer HAL in "2001" wants to sell you something. And whether you want to buy or not-even if you hang up-the voice's tape sales spiel will tie up your phone until it's run its course.

Junk mail is bad enough, but at least it doesn't keep you from getting the mail you really want. But what can you do about endless junk phone solicitations-dialed automatically, to one number after another, without human intervention? Or about the growing plague of junk fax, which can occupy your machine with somebody's sales pitch just when you're expecting an important document that can't wait for overnight mail?

With some help from Congress, which is currently considering several bills to regulate telemarketing, you could do quite a lot.

At the least, as Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.) proposes, Congress should require an automatically dialed call to disconnect within five seconds after the targeted number hangs up, leaving the line free for emergency calls.

Unsolicited advertising by fax should be banned outright, as it would be under a bill offered by Sen. Larry Pressler (R-S.D.). Why should you provide paper and electricity for somebody's unwanted ad?

Every telemarketer should be required to compile a "don't-call" list of people who have indicated-perhaps quite vehemently-that they don't want to be bothered by future calls. (This newspaper deletes numbers from its computerized telemarketing list on request.) If that doesn't work, a national "don't-call" database may be necessary.

HAL, you'll recall, seized control from humans for a time. These bills would wrest it from machines and put it in human hands.

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