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Comment by obmelvin | Hacker News Reader

I don't think that is a fair comparison. In most situations there is no reason to presume danger when you pull over a car. If you are responding to a hostage call, well then you very well should assume it is a dangerous situation.

> How many hostage calls are real, vs. fake?

How do you propose verifying if a situation is real vs fake short of entering the premise prepared for a real situation?

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Caller area code.

For starters; he had to call a general, city line, to get the public (non-local, 10 digit) line for the dispatchers, so he could actually call the '911' (three digit) line.

From what I gather, The area code itself is a give-away.

If you say 'what about people who just moved, but haven't changed their number yet,' then I'd say that the dispatchers (should) be able to see if it was a honest 911 (three digit), or the public line (10 digit.)

The plea bargain says that he used VoIP to appear to be calling from the local area code (although I agree that the dispatchers could still be informed whether the call was placed by 911 or via a 10-digit emergency number—but currently VoIP subscribers might also be able to register their self-reported location, in which case a distant VoIP 911 call might conceivably look the same to a dispatcher as a nearby VoIP 911 call).

Caller area code.

Easily spoofed, and the phone company will laugh in your face if you ask them for the billing address of the person who called you at 10:37pm on Nov 12, 2018.

I believe that the defendant in this case did frequently spoof caller ID, so relying on that wouldn't be particularly helpful. But 911 operators do also already receive more information about who is calling them, and perhaps the quality of that information can be improved and augmented.

(I think this is tough in the general VoIP case because the Internet itself supports anonymity and location transparency—which in my opinion are usually good things that are not primarily used to murder people. Even if VoIP operators verify some kind of information about subscribers' identities before allowing them to establish service, it's not completely clear what they should ideally report to 911 services in all cases because they'll presumably never be certain of the end-user's identity and location at a particular moment. And for other purposes, users of the phone network might want to reduce how much the phone companies know about their whereabouts.)

But 911 operators do also already receive more information about who is calling them, and perhaps the quality of that information can be improved and augmented.

Yeah, I didn't say the information didn't exist, I'm saying the phone company makes it basically impossible to get, and certainly the most difficult for home customers.

because the Internet itself supports anonymity and location transparency

I don't care. If you're calling me, I should be able to find out who's paying for the call, and the phone company knows this info. Sure, there's still an "over 9000 proxies" bug, but that's not the problem. The problem is robocallers and telemarketers, and I should be able to configure my line to block every call that originates from any portion of that billing entity. Heck, when I describe it that way it could be blockchain'd!

> How do you propose verifying if a situation is real vs fake short of entering the premise prepared for a real situation?

I meant statistically. Most cops don't approach a car with their guns drawn, because statistically most car stops don't end up with anyone getting shot. (Although some do.) How many hostage situations are actually a danger to anyone, vs. not?

Are you suggesting dispatchers use simple statistics to determine whether or not a call is real or not?

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