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Comment by TrainedMonkey | Hacker News Reader

While this does describe a real problem that we want to address, article reads like surveillance propaganda. I think it reads that way because of strong implication that cell phone technology is bad because it does not allow authorities to obtain quick geolocation fix on a cell phone.

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The issue is that GPS is not as accurate as a landline port assignment lookup. 20 years ago, if a toddler dialed 911, the 911 operator knew what building or floor a call came from.

That's just fundamental. It's not surveillance state stuff.

At one time, this problem was limited to a smaller population of cellphone users. Most people in one of these horrible car accident situations, etc didn't have access to a cellphone, so they just died.

Now, landlines are a thing of the past, so calls from office buildings, homes, etc are coming in without actionable information.

I think that GPS would be accurate enough, in many cases, like traffic accidents. However, GPS capabilities require Wireless Phase II, which is not always available. Otherwise, the location being presented to the PSAP is that of the cell phone tower.

Speaking on the disappearance of land-lines, another issue is the increase of VoIP subscribers. Keeping address information up-to-date is the responsibility of the subscriber. If they take their VoIP service to the cottage, and call 911, emergency service could be dispatched to their home residence instead.

> ... surveillance propaganda. I think it reads that way because of strong implication that cell phone technology is bad because it does not allow authorities to obtain quick geolocation fix on a cell phone.

That may be, but not being able to locate people in an emergency is a legitimate problem, and it's happening because people are ditching their landlines (which did have known locations).

I live on the shore of Puget Sound in Washington State, right by the water. This means my cell phone is much more likely to connect with a cell tower on the opposite shore -- and people on the opposite bank get connected to cell towers on this side. This means depending on a cell tower for location is totally misleading for all these people. The only people who can be automatically located are those who (a) have smartphones with built-in GPS, (b) the GPS location is set to be included with each call, and (c) are outdoors when they make the call.

It's a mess, and conspiracy theories aside, it needs to be fixed.

The cell phone could be programmed to do all this on a 911 call (well, short of stepping outside). I think that's actually a pretty reasonable idea.

Agreed, we have to be wary of this being turned into an argument for more blanket surveillance or for constant tracking of cellphone geolocation data. But the conclusion does not have to be that. It would be good, for example, if cellphones could deliver rapid and accurate geolocation data specifically when the cellphone had initiated a call to a known emergency number.

Someone who is calling 911 (or 999) should have no expectation of privacy from the government as to their location.

To my knowledge, there is no special back channel through which your cell phone will transmit GPS data to the dispatcher when you place a 911 call. The telco will always have access to cell tower triangulation data, which can be shared with 911 services (or law enforcement), but in general they are not being fed GPS or WiFi geolocation from your smartphone OS's location service (unless I just don't know about it).

To get that kind of data from your OS to a 911 dispatcher simply by placing a call would be to concede the ability for that kind of data to be leaked over telephony at all, or otherwise constantly uploaded to telcos/authorities.

I believe almost all phones in the US now supply GPS info for 911 calls. I remember flip phones 10 years ago having the option in settings to only enable location transmitting for emergency numbers. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RRLP for an example and look up Wireless Enhanced 911 for more info.

Regardless of whether or not cell phones currently have the technical capability to upload GPS data, I assert that a Reasonable Person would not be surprised to learn that by calling 911, they were giving their location to the dispatcher.

e911: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_9-1-1

Any argument that may tangentially, hypothetically help enable surveillance, with that being very far from the aim, along with only being possible in a terrible implementation, is not automatically surveillance propaganda.

I think the parent was making the more general point that, when people become increasingly skeptical of some form of government power (surveillance in this case), it is natural and expected for the government to highlight the useful aspects of that power while downplaying or hiding the negative aspects. People are busy and thinking about these things imposes a cognitive load, so many will not distinguish between 911 emergency location technology and the technology of bulk phone surveillance. Since we've already seen the latter part of the government's marketing strategy (downplay the bad stuff), it wouldn't be surprising if the government used articles like this to highlight the benefits.

ANI/ALI look it up. We did not have these problems when the majority of 911 calls originated from land lines. period. full stop.

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