Date: Sun, 7 May 2000 11:08:43 +0930 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: Alex Stamos <stamos@cs.berkeley.edu> Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: [OT] Finding people with GSM phones (was Re: GPS heads up ) Message-ID: <20000507110842.C53611@freebie.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <391479C4.2784A121@cs.berkeley.edu> References: <200005061850.MAA18384@nomad.yogotech.com> <200005061907.MAA07403@mass.cdrom.com> <200005061939.NAA18540@nomad.yogotech.com> <391479C4.2784A121@cs.berkeley.edu>
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On Saturday, 6 May 2000 at 13:00:04 -0700, Alex Stamos wrote: >> >>> What's the actual background behind this? >> >> Being able to track 911 calls in the case of emergency. > > While some people may find this a convenient excuse for more Big > Brother tactics, I once spoke to a paramedic friend about 911 cell > phone tracking after it was first announced. She said that she > couldn't overestimate the problems caused by people giving bad > directions or locations over cell phones. Apparently, its not > uncommon for a person, still dazed from an accident, to report their > location as "Somewhere on Interstate 80". -For those non-Americans, > I-80 is a 3,000 mile freeway that starts in San Francisco and ends > in Boston.- That's not the only issue. Recently somebody called 112 (the international GSM emergency number) from the local golf course in Mt. Barker SA, saying he had had a heart attack. He specified exactly where he was in the golf course, but help didn't come. It *did* go looking for a golf course in Mt. Barker WA, about 2000 miles away. The emergency centre didn't know about Mt. Barker SA, and the caller didn't realise they weren't local. One of the disadvantages of having a separate prefix for mobile phones (in Australia, they all use area code 4). Greg -- Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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