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from the Google-knows-where-your-phone-is-better-than-the-phone-company-does dept.
Google conducts test to help 911 accurately locate callers
Google has conducted a trial to test the efficiency of using its technology to help 911 operators more accurately figure out the location of cellphone callers. The test included tens of thousands of 911 calls over the span of two months in several states, and had encouraging results, as reported by The Wall Street Journal.
The test was done in conjunction with two companies that have connections into 911 centers, West Corp. and RapidSOS. Under the current 911 system, wireless carriers are normally responsible for providing location information, but it isn't very accurate. RapidSOS says that using Google's technology, about 80 percent of the 911 calls had more accurate location data within the first 30 seconds. Google's data also dramatically shrunk the estimated radius of a call's location, from 522 feet down to 121 feet and arrived faster than carrier data.
Also at Engadget.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 19 2018, @06:24AM (3 children)
War is peace
Freedom is slavery
Ignorance is strength
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 19 2018, @06:46AM (1 child)
If you are calling 911, and you want to mislead who and where you are, maybe you are the criminal?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 19 2018, @07:38AM
Yeah, if you buy into the idea that this will only be used when people call 911. That's very foolish.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 19 2018, @02:19PM
I clicked the link, to say very much the same thing.
Back in the mists of time, like, the prehistoric days before computers and internet, there was no 911. In fact, there were no paramedics, no EMT's. All there was, were the police, the fire department, and an ambulance service. Most towns couldn't even conceive of having an air rescue unit - that was a military concept. Maybe some large cities had helicopters for medevac, but we certainly didn't hear about them in my neck of the woods. Ambulance - remember, that's an ambulance without paramedics or EMT's. About all an ambulance attendant did, back in those days, was to slap a pressure bandage, or a tourniquet on badly bleeding patients. Some services were better than others, but there was no nationwide standard that those ambulance services had to adhere to.
Back then, if a kid, or a spouse, needed to "disappear" from life, it was pretty easily done. You've all heard the song, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4xoHjNjxus [youtube.com] Maybe you need to get away from a job, or the bos himself, or maybe even the mob.
Today? Those ubiquitous telephones are already giveaways. Wait for another few years (ten? twenty?) when the cellphose is embedded into some convenient place on your body. And, painful to remove. And, impossible to replace - having removed your telephone, you have broken any number of laws, and face prison.
Almost everyone regards the telephone as some kind of a godsend. Me? I see it as a dystopian tool of a dystopian government. Not to mention the dystopian society that is so very greedy for all the new shinies, offered by Apple, or anyone who can manage to build a working phone.
I need for Google and/or the police to be able to locate me within 100 feet like I need a lead suppository in my head.
"But, ohh, Runaway - what if you have a stroke, or a heart attack?!?!?!"
Big deal. No matter what I do, or don't do, I'm going to drop dead one day. Pardon me for not fearing death so much that I am willing to wear a leash. A cell phone may be a very long leash, but it is a leash. Anyone can track you down - former spouse, hostile drug pusher, the mob (alright, so the Mavia has gone mostly legal these days, in the US, but that doesn't mean they can't get pissed off at someone and make him/her disappear) or maybe even some soldiers from a drug cartel. Why do I want that?
Kids. I presume that Azumi Hazuki might weigh in with some horror stories. Sometimes a kid simply has to disappear - or someone is going to die. What, some of you still thought that my nickname was a joke? It's for real. I walked before I killed - and I mean that in the most literal way. Sometimes, a kid has got to go. And, government, Apple, Google, along with others are working hard to ensure that a kid cannot ever disappear. The alternative, in some cases, will be a body assuming ambient temperature.
As AC stated - spying is helping. Welcome to 1984, people. You're going to LOVE 2084. By then, telephone monitoring will have enabled the police to issue you a remote ticket for having farted in a crowd. An ambulance will come racing if you should happen to have a fit of uncontrollable hiccups.
Slip the leash, people. Stop accepting all of this "help" being offered to you. When you have finally discovered that the leash is attached to a choke chain, it's going to be a little late to object.