NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: [Dewayne-Net] How To Fix 911 -- a threat to the entire nation!
It sure seems like a transparent ploy to spy on everyone everywhere all the
time!!!!
"At least 100 call centers are already testing various features. The new 911
will be an entirely new creature: an intelligent network of networks that
will not just find you faster but also read your texts and watch your video
at the same time that it may track threats to the entire nation."
Apparently the solution is to have an even more centralized system that
completely misses the lessons of the Internet the idea of communicating
directly between end points and between devices. It keeps all the central
dependencies of 9-1-1 while adding a new feature -- watching every
conversation everywhere.
What could be a worse idea?
We can use new technologies to develop a better emergency alert and tracking
system but not if we have a fearful command and control mentality using it
as an excuse to drag us down.
[ The part about being able to activate people's cellphone
cameras remotely is just precious. Now what could
possibly go wrong with that capability? "Honey,
is that an iPhone in your pocket or are you just
glad to see me?"
-- Lauren Weinstein
NNSquad Moderator ]
-----Original Message-----
From: dewayne-net@warpspeed.com [mailto:dewayne-net@warpspeed.com] On Behalf
Of Dewayne Hendricks
Sent: Sunday, April 17, 2011 17:30
To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] How To Fix 911
[Note: This item comes from reader Monty Solomon. DLH]
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Date: April 16, 2011 9:11:45 PM PDT
Subject: How To Fix 911
How To Fix 911
By Christine Kenneally
Saturday, Apr. 16, 2011
Time
The phone rang at 4:43 a.m. on March 27, 2007. Patty Michaels, a
dispatcher at a 911 call center in Belleville, Ill., picked up. On
the other end, a woman screamed for help. She said her husband had
attacked her. Michaels heard a baby crying in the background. The
caller's address appeared on Michaels' screen: it was in O'Fallon,
Ill., less than 10 miles away. Michaels asked the woman to confirm
it. "That's when it got really tricky," she says. The caller wasn't
in Illinois. She was in South Korea.
Two days earlier, the woman and her baby had left O'Fallon to join
her husband, an Army serviceman posted in Seoul. She was locked in
her bedroom, afraid for her life. But because the woman had dialed
911 from a VOIP - voice over Internet protocol - service, using a
computer, Michaels had no way of finding her. The 911 system doesn't
locate computers; it shows only the address that the phone service is
registered to, and when Michaels' caller left the country, she didn't
update her address.
That small lapse underlies the fundamental problem of 911: it was
developed for landlines back in the days when copper wires ran
between a telephone and a central switch. But since 1968, when the
first 911 call, a ceremonial test case, rang in Haleyville, Ala., the
service has grown to cover 96% of the U.S. and now receives some 240
million calls a year - less than half from landlines in many
communities.
Americans assume we can connect to 911 in all the ways we connect to
each other. Our GPS-enabled smart phone, Google and Foursquare may
know exactly where we are at any given time, but unfortunately, these
technologies aren't compatible with standard 911. Traditional
emergency services don't take texts, photos, Skype calls or videos
either. Then there are social media like Twitter and Facebook, which
work when our phones don't. After the March 11 earthquake and tsunami
in Japan, millions of people communicated through social networks
when landlines went down and mobile networks were overwhelmed. Within
an hour of the earthquake, more than 1,200 tweets a minute were
coming from Tokyo, including video updates on the scene. But a system
like 911 - the first first responder - is out of the loop.
...
<http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2062452,00.html>
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