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Comment by imglorp | Hacker News Reader

FCC stopped taking E911 seriously long ago.

There used to be rules with teeth that cell carriers must be able to locate 911 callers for the operator. Cingular got a tiny fine in 2003, less than their office party spend, but it motivated them (as AT&T) and TMobile to adopt the (expensive) UTDOA technology to comply. Sprint and Verizon did not, staying on A-GPS which has indoor limitations. People kept dying indoors, but meanwhile, the regulations demanding indoor accuracy are still in "proposal" and "study" phases in 2018 [2].

You can still get fined a little if you drop a BUNCH of 911 calls altogether, but for wireless location, life isn't worth much.

1. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB105546175751598400

2. https://www.fcc.gov/public-safety-and-homeland-security/poli...

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And yet we are being tracked like wild animals because "what if somebody kidnapped you and stuck you in a trunk?"

Really? (And yes, I'm aware of many cases of trunk-kidnapping victims saved by phones. The point that everybody had to have something, so carriers and others deployed all this tracking crap, and everybody sure is making a lot of money off of it, but as it turns out, just kidding.) yay?

It's not about kidnapping, it's about callers not knowing/being able to tell where they are.

This is a very common situation.

The GP poster is saying that cell position tracing is available, universally, because of a requirement for it by law-enforcement.

That data is just not exposed through the particular API needed for 911 operators to access it.

Okay the long story is that CGI (cell tower or maybe antenna/sector) is always available to the public safety operator, roughly 1km radius of accuracy. Higher accuracy locations were mandated by FCC but half the carriers chose to use the less expensive (almost free for them) AGPS, which has its limits like sky view and multipath. There's also some medium priced but inaccurate solutions. That's where we remain: the carriers drag their feet and complain, and the FCC allows them to.

Hey at least they're passing the savings onto the subscribers.

That's an awfully presumptuous assumption to make, that all the executives and shareholders are also subscribers.

Are they though?

I'm 90% sure he's being sarcastic.

Ye golden ol' times that remindeth me of my fine lord and property keeper who did in fact pass back to me one of my fine birds after taking a mere 80% of my yield

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