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Apple sets up iPhones to relay location for 911 calls

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Re: Apple sets up iPhones to relay location for 911 calls

#221

Post by forapurpose »

reaperducer wrote: post #132
VonGuard wrote: post #63

Oakland needs this help so badly. Call 911 on a cell in Oakland, and you're going to wait on hold for 30 minutes, most of which will be you being transfered to the wrong departments over and over. You start at a call center somewhere in middle America with a person who does not know where Oakland is. They pass you to CA CHP, who don't know Oakland either, because their dispatcher on the line is out of Sacramento. Fin…

Sadly, this is not unique to Oakland. Several of the cities I've lived in have been plagued with 911 hold times of 10-20 minutes or more. In one city, the mayor threatened to put a checklist on the ballot so people could decide which types of emergencies would be responded to, and the top vote-getters would be funded. In another, a city council member publicly told his constituents "the police are not here to protect…

> I would like to see a city sell the tanks it gets from the feds and use the money for 911, and other needed services.

I'd like for my fellow citizens to agree to fund the police properly, as well as the schools. I know "taxes" are a bad word, but either we agree to pay for these things or they will underperform.

I know there is inefficiency and corruption, but if the budget is $100m and $20m is lost to inefficiency, cutting the budget to $60m won't cure the inefficiency, it will only cut the available funding to from $80m to $48m. (Also, I'm not convinced that government is so inefficient relative to other large organizations, such as every large company; politicians promising 'more efficiency' seems like a promise of hand-wavy magic that will get something (more resources) for nothing.)

Re: Apple sets up iPhones to relay location for 911 calls

#222

Post by forapurpose »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #217
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2017, police killed 1,129 people. Were the vast majority of those "perfectly justified?" How about the vast majority of the 718 that were suspects in nonviolent offenses? Or the 147 that were unarmed? Are you sure? I'm not. The reason "the narrative" exists, I think, is that there's a widespread perception that regardless of the circumstances of the shooting -- even if the evidence clearly shows the police shot an…

The vast majority absolutely are. There are some examples that are not, and whenever something even remotely questionable happens, the narrative pushers jump on it immediately. If you think the vast majority aren't, then go find some examples. You won't be able to come up with more than a couple.

It would be good if either of you could back up your claims.

People in minority communities around the U.S. have said for generations that the police abused them; I give that some serious credibility. Also, there is much more to abuse than killings; there are many reports on widespread abuses by police departments, such as Baltimore and New Orleans.

I will add that in at least some other countries police do their job and shoot hardly anyone; I think in Scotland it's on the order of one per decade.

Re: Apple sets up iPhones to relay location for 911 calls

#223

Post by npx »

I went to elementary school with the founder of RapidSOS and it's pretty cool to see one of us country boys making the front page of HN! If I'm being objective about this, I think it's a fairly good idea in the abstract but it will be very difficult to monetize. Where I grew up, there are still huge gaps in cellular coverage and this won't help people who can't even make a call. I do think there is a there there but it's fraught with peril. That said, best of luck to Michael! At the very least, his heart is in the right place.

Re: Apple sets up iPhones to relay location for 911 calls

#224

Post by jodrellblank »

dingaling wrote: post #178
dbcooperlives wrote: post #106

I have been deploying e911 call taking systems for more than 10 years. All the areas that I service have been getting pretty accurate location data on mobile callers since I started. Initially, the providers send the location of the tower they are on and the triangulation data with the call. A couple of seconds later they will send more accurate GPS coordinates for most calls, which are usually pretty good. Sometimes…

> A couple of seconds later they will send more accurate GPS coordinates for most calls I wish my day-to-day GPS initialised and obtained an initial fix that quickly. Usually it needs at least five minutes, sometimes over an hour. From an earlier job I vaguely remember that a NavStar cold-fix requires two or three minutes at a minimum with optimal conditions.

What is your day-to-day GPS? If it's a dedicated GPS device and not a cellphone, that might explain it.

Cellphones have Assisted-GPS where they get satellite orbit information and accurate time from the cellular network, and sometimes can offload computation to it, so they can get faster locks.

Apparently it was developed for 911 reasons - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GPS

Re: Apple sets up iPhones to relay location for 911 calls

#225

Post by AmericanChopper »

forapurpose wrote: post #222
AmericanChopper wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority absolutely are. There are some examples that are not, and whenever something even remotely questionable happens, the narrative pushers jump on it immediately. If you think the vast majority aren't, then go find some examples. You won't be able to come up with more than a couple.

It would be good if either of you could back up your claims. People in minority communities around the U.S. have said for generations that the police abused them; I give that some serious credibility. Also, there is much more to abuse than killings; there are many reports on widespread abuses by police departments, such as Baltimore and New Orleans. I will add that in at least some other countries police do their job…

The claim that there is systemic racially motivated killings carried out by police is the claim that needs to be backed up. This is a claim that is not supported by facts. There is a small number of officer involved shootings that are found to be unjustified, and there are entire communities of people who will jump at the chance to report on them, so it’s not like they can slip under the radar on a massive scale. The crime rates in different countries have absolutely 0 bearing on whether office involved shootings in the US are justified. The occurrences of unjustified office involved shootings in the US don’t come even remotely close to anything that could be considered ‘systemic’, the whole narrative is an outright lie.

Re: Apple sets up iPhones to relay location for 911 calls

#226

Post by matt_the_bass »

jakebasile wrote: post #67
VectorLock wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey dying person, whats your PIN code?

Every cell phone has a way to bypass the lock to call 911 or local equivalent emergency number. It'll even work if the phone line is disabled for some reason, or if the phone doesn't have a SIM.

I’m curious want the statistics are for this usage. Does anyone do this in practice?

Re: Apple sets up iPhones to relay location for 911 calls

#227

Post by tedmiston »

mcculley wrote: post #199

Today I had to call AAA to request a tow truck. I called from my cell phone and the automated system told me that it was determining my location from the cell towers and using that to route me to the best place. How does that work? I have worked with Twilio but I don't see any API for getting a caller's location. Is that something available with different providers?

Pretty sure what they're using is just cell tower triangulation. At least in my experience, they also ask you to describe your location more precisely as well.

Re: Apple sets up iPhones to relay location for 911 calls

#228

Post by dbcooperlives »

phjesusthatguy3 wrote: post #207
dbcooperlives wrote: post #106

I have been deploying e911 call taking systems for more than 10 years. All the areas that I service have been getting pretty accurate location data on mobile callers since I started. Initially, the providers send the location of the tower they are on and the triangulation data with the call. A couple of seconds later they will send more accurate GPS coordinates for most calls, which are usually pretty good. Sometimes…

I have a favor to ask: I have a bunch of numbers through Twilio, do you know what Twilio numbers look like when they come into your systems?

I haven't personally had any experience with Twilio, but I have overheard conversations at conferences and from what I understand, a PSAP is lucky to even get a number from Twilio. Most calls end up coming via the national emergency calling center with no ani/ali.

Re: Apple sets up iPhones to relay location for 911 calls

#230

Post by gregsadetsky »

mclehman wrote: post #209
lisper wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The GP is me. :) Oh, sorry, I didn't see that. (This thread has grown a lot of tentacles.) > I was only referring to emergency situations That was very unclear. When you wrote: > Consider how 911 is but one service that sure sounded to me like you were advocating making this information available very broadly.

I could be wrong, but I read "Consider how 911 is but one service" as advocating expanding the idea to other countries' emergency services, not necessarily more broadly within the US.

That’s exactly what I meant.
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