
Apple sets up iPhones to relay location for 911 calls - chmaynard
http://www.wpri.com/news/us-and-world/apple-sets-up-iphones-to-relay-location-for-911-calls-1/1246399748
======
gregsadetsky
This is an extraordinarily important and interesting “space” ripe for
innovation.

A few weeks ago, I was awarded one of the highest civilian public awards from
the Commandant of the US Coast Guard in DC for my volunteer web mapping work
during Harvey. That work helped coordinate 700 helicopter sorties and save
1700 lives.

I’ve been thinking — and talking with Emergency Responders — about what an up
to date 911 would look like. Location is a huge part of it. Texting, sending
images and videos would also be on the timeline.

Consider how much real-time location info — and live HD video streams — can 1
mobile phone produce, and how close to none of that is available in an
emergency situation.

Consider how 911 is but one service, and that this is a worldwide problem. And
that smartphones are worldwide too, and that there’s hundreds of millions of
them.

I’m starting to plan out next steps. Connecting smartphones and emergency
responders. Being a worldwide emergency digital-first dispatch service.

Imagine!

~~~
lisper
> Imagine!

I am, and it scares the hell out of me. If I have to choose between having
emergency responders possibly not being able to locate me, and having the
government be able to track my every move along with everyone else's, it's not
even a hard choice: I'll take the former as by far the lesser of the two
evils.

Being able to reliably hide my location is every bit as important to personal
freedom as being able to encrypt my communications. If that means I have to
take some additional steps to summon help in an emergency, so be it. It's a
price I'll happily pay. Life's quality metric is a vector, and safety is not
the only dimension.

~~~
patmcc
>> it's not even a hard choice: I'll take the former as by far the lesser of
the two evils.

Right or wrong, I think you're in the extreme minority here.

Edit: I'm not necessarily speaking for myself here, but then I'm in a low-risk
area and demographic, so am not especially likely to need 911. But I think the
average "man on the street" would not give a second thought about it.

~~~
lisper
I don't know how "extreme" the minority is, but yes, most people seem to
choose safety over freedom. It's a defensible choice. But it should be a
_choice_ , not the default assumption.

~~~
forapurpose
> most people seem to choose safety over freedom

I don't think that's true as often as our pessimistic sides would assume:

People risk their lives for freedom, in fighting wars, in challenging
oppressors, in trying to escape. To say it more dramatically: A few people
once agreed to risk their lives, their fortunes, and their honor for liberty,
not the other way around.

------
VonGuard
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. Finally, you get dumped to the
local 911, which is overwhelmed, has long hold times, and sometimes even hangs
up on you.

Just FYI, if you are ever in Oakland and have trouble, DO NOT CALL 911. Call
the police directly at 510-777-3333

This Oakland 911 problem is, I think, the biggest single technical problem
with Oakland as a whole, and it's been this way for 20 years...

~~~
reaperducer
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 you. If you want to be safe, get a gun and a dog."

In Las Vegas for several years recently, the police department stopped
responding to traffic crashes unless someone was killed. The insurance
companies put pressure on the city to reverse that.

Unfortunately, it seems that all of the "homeland security" money that the
feds send to the locals goes into military-grade weapons, and not into basic
services like 911 and police patrols.

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.

~~~
himom
Ouch. Sounds like a failed state scenario: anarchy by services disappearing
and unconcern for community. When a government ceases to provide a fundamental
function, such as protecting its citizens, it risks irrelevancy... and
citizens better form their own government to replace the one not doing its
job, or they’re inviting criminal thugs reminiscent of ISIS to fill the power-
vacuum.

~~~
zolthrowaway
Many political philosophies believe THE fundamental purpose of government is
to protect. Not performing the reason why people accept government in the
first place means that the government has failed to do the reason it was
created. It's not a legitimate government.

Your post and example is right on the money. This is incredibly scary and
seems to be happening more and more as governments aren't allocating funds to
do critical functions.

------
bungie4
I work in 911, Telematics, alarm, PERS space. We are a PSAP (Public Safety
Answer Point)

The device might send a Geocode, but reverse geo-coding (turning a long/lat
into a human readable place) is a highly inaccurate thing. Secondly, most
responders have no means of turning a long/lat into a point on the map, short
of using their personal phone. Next, altitude is not factored in. Imagine
being in a downtown office building. If nobody is downstairs to guide
responders, or if the caller was unable to speak, they will have a really
difficult time determining just which building/floor you are in.

Its all gotten much worse with the advent of mobile/VOIP and now, WIFI phone
systems where your phone can move. Its a system ill equipped to handle it.

~~~
Terretta
> _”reverse geo-coding, turning a lat /long into a human readable place highly
> inaccurate ... no means of turning a lat/long into a point on the map”_

Three words for you ...

[https://what3words.com](https://what3words.com)

~~~
antsar
That helps with _communicating_ the lat/long, but not with determining where
that actually is. With what3words, not only are first responders still
required to use some mobile device, but they're also reliant on a proprietary
service (read: point of failure).

~~~
bungie4
Exactly.

------
dbcooperlives
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 there are issues where a provider will send a call to the wrong PSAP
because the users location is unclear. This is usually fixed if the 911
operator rebids the call... it will be routed correctly almost 100% the second
time and is generally quicker than a manual attended transfer.

I am not saying that they couldn't do better, but this article insinuates
there is some kind of major problem where there isn't.

All that being said, people with specific risk situations (an elderly parent
they care for or a disabled child for example) should call the business line
for your local 911 public safety answering point and have them add specific
information to the file associated with your number.

~~~
dingaling
> 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.

~~~
21
Maybe you just need a new phone/device? With each new phone I had faster and
faster GPS lock time.

~~~
nradov
Cellular devices can get rough location fixes very quickly because the cell
towers cue them with assist data, plus they can download the satellite
constellation ephemeris data in advance. Stand-alone GPS receivers are much
slower since they lack all of those clues. And if the device was just powered
on and hasn't gotten a fix near the current location within the past few hours
then they can get really slow. If you take your cell phone out in a canyon
somewhere with no cell coverage, turn it off for a few days, and then turn it
to get a GPS fix expect it to take a while.

------
ajeet_dhaliwal
Good for Apple for helping to save lives. As someone who's had to wait for an
ambulance while someone is dying I understand how horrible that wait is and
how desperately you want them to get to you as quickly as possible. The second
part of this however is to ensure it's not open to abuse (by criminals or the
government) for non emergency calls.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I’d like to see Apple help subsidize the cost of upgrading the software
required in rural emergency call centers if it’s required to interoperate with
this new feature (perhaps coming out of their corporate social responsibility
budget).

~~~
Rotten194
maybe apple could actually pay taxes and those could be used for the same
benefit ;)

~~~
abritinthebay
Apple _does_ pay taxes. Want them to pay more? Vote.

------
rwmj
I had to make a 999 call a few years back because I saw a woman faint and bang
her head on a concrete pavement. Although I was in the local area which I know
very well, it was really difficult - when put on the spot in an emergency - to
describe my exact location.

~~~
Waterluvian
Yeah. I regularly test myself when bored while driving to verbalize where I
am. "Highway 401 East.. uhh I think I passed an exit for Guelph a while ago? I
don't see a marker at the moment."

Off topic: if you're often bored while driving, learn the NATO phonetic
alphabet using license plates around you. It helps me four or five times a
year when reading off things to people in customer service. The beauty of it
is that people who don't know it can still understand it when said to them.

~~~
balabaster
Do you know how many times I use the phonetic alphabet and then have to
simplify even more because the person on the other end of the phone doesn't
understand it? :D

F for what? S? F is now Frank and S is now Sugar, because Foxtrot and Sierra
often just get "was that s or f? What is Soxtrot?" it's ridiculous. I think
everyone should be taught the NATO phonetic alphabet in school. When I'm
talking to someone on the phone, I don't want to have to resort to Apple
Banana Chocolate like we're all 5.

Also, I live just down the road from Guelph and worked in Guelph for a while
:)

~~~
kbenson
> When I'm talking to someone on the phone, I don't want to have to resort to
> Apple Banana Chocolate like we're all 5.

So, the solution to not wanting to feel self conscious while saying decidedly
simple and inoffensive words, and for task simple enough that people could
probably be given a simple sentence or two instruction (choose a word that
doesn't sound like another one) and could come up with valid examples (like
you just did), is to force them to learn a semi-universal and generic set of
mostly nonsense words and names?

I did tech support for years, and any time I had to have someone type out a
specific set of characters, it was not hard to just rely on common names,
animals, or other extremely common words. The amount of wasted man-years in
teaching and testing a phonetic alphabet for such little benefit would be mind
boggling. The military has very specific requirements which change the cost
benefit analysis greatly (verbal communication during battle conditions, for
one), but those don't really apply to most people. It's trivial to come up
with something that works well on the fly.

~~~
magduf
No, because it doesn't work just as well, because everyone comes up with
different words.

The NATO alphabet isn't just used by NATO, it's used worldwide by civil and
commercial aviation personnel (pilots & ATC). There's a reason for this: these
words were carefully selected because they're unique and won't be confused
with other words.

It absolutely should be taught in school; it's not hard at all, and everyone
has problems spelling words out on noisy communication channels (like
cellphones).

~~~
beenBoutIT
It could be taught in preschools along with simple things like basic gun
safety, swimming pool safety, and how to avoid perverts. Unfortunately all of
these things are educational luxuries for the rare kid with parents that take
the time to teach them to their kids. It seems like intelligent people could
put together a laundry list of simple, easy-to-teach things along these lines
that could be taught in schools for very little money.

~~~
balabaster
Taught in preschools... like basic gun safety :D

Why does this seem like it should be wrong? XD

I'm now imagining 5 year olds field stripping, cleaning and re-assembling
semi-automatic rifles like miniature Marine snipers, hahahaha.

~~~
JackCh
_Basic_ gun safety is like _basic_ shop safety. _" Don't touch this machine,
you could hurt yourself"_. Learning how to use it comes later, if at all.

------
emptybits
Will it be possible to make an anonymous 911 call?

There can be scenarios, I think, where we (society) do not want to deter
someone from reporting an emergency due to fear of being identified. Off the
top of my head, consider a situation involving organized crime taking place,
where call centre staff (or law enforcement) may be compelled to leak the
identity of a witness.

~~~
jakebasile
I don't think it's possible to make an anonymous 911 call unless you're using
a public phone. I think this is ok, since 911 is specifically for emergencies
and you generally want the police/EMS to know where you are immediately since
seconds can count. I think of it a bit like implied consent in first aid: by
calling 911 you are inherently consenting for your location to be shared since
it is likely you are in some form of distress requiring that information.

You're mentioning things like organized crime reporting, which are not
emergencies. In that case, I'd expect someone to talk to someone in the police
department in person, or through an intermediary lawyer - not 911.

edit: added the implied consent thought

~~~
NedIsakoff
Buy a cheap phone with cash. Call 911.

~~~
hhh
Better yet, use the victim's phone if possible.

~~~
VectorLock
Hey dying person, whats your PIN code?

~~~
jakebasile
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.

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

------
LinuxBender
Cell phones have been sending gps coordinates since 1997 as part of the e911
project. Support for it was a hardware requirement in GSM phones in '98 and
was supposed to be in all phones shortly after that. Who dropped the ball?

------
craftyguy
> The approach developed by Apple and RapidSOS sends location data from an
> iPhone to a "clearinghouse" accessible to emergency calling centers. Only
> the 911 calling centers will be able to see the data during the call, and
> none of it can be used for non-emergency purposes, according to Apple.

How long until this information is available to law enforcement?

~~~
jonknee
> How long until this information is available to law enforcement?

Well in this case that's entirely the point, people are calling law
enforcement. But if you were concerned that someone could just pull up your
location at any time, their system only gets your location data when you call
911:

[https://info.rapidsos.com/blog/bringing-apple-device-
locatio...](https://info.rapidsos.com/blog/bringing-apple-device-location-
to-911)

> When this feature is made available later this year in an iOS software
> update, Apple phones will send fast and accurate device location to the
> NG911 Clearinghouse when a user dials 9-1-1.

That said, law enforcement can already look up where your phone is based on
tower triangulation. This is just about getting more detailed information to
first responders more quickly.

~~~
craftyguy
> people are calling law enforcement.

Not always. Sometimes it's a medical emergency, or a fire. Law enforcement's
access to precise location information should be limited to strictly only
emergency scenarios that require their involvement. Any other use should be
protected behind a warrant, but it's not clear that this is the case. This is
a big shiny object for them that would 'help' in a wide variety of non-
emergency situations, so expect abuse.

> law enforcement can already look up where your phone is based on tower
> triangulation

Tower triangulation is not very accurate. This technology is about being able
to locate someone within a handful of meters, not within a a few hundred km^2.
It's orders of magnitude more powerful than the current technology they have.

~~~
jonknee
> This is a big shiny object for them that would 'help' in a wide variety of
> non-emergency situations, so expect abuse.

Did you miss the part where I linked to and quoted that this data is only sent
from your phone to the database _when you call 911_? In non-emergency
situations no one will be able to search this database for your location
because your location is not in the database.

~~~
craftyguy
> when you call 911?

Right, and there's no possibility for this system being abused in non-
emergency situations? Oh please.

~~~
jonknee
If you call 911 it is by definition an emergency situation, so no I don't
believe this could be abused outside of emergency situations. Also, 911
already gets your location and that feature isn't something that gets abused
(again, I fail to see how it could, your phone sends its location when making
the call, it's not the authorities requesting its location when receiving a
call).

Automatically letting 911 know where you are when you call is something that
saves lots of lives, trying to improve the speed and accuracy of that is a
good thing that should not be controversial at all.

------
rando444
For those not aware, enhanced 911 / 112 has existed in some way shape or form
for almost the past 20 years.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_9-1-1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_9-1-1)

~~~
GeekyBear
More specifically, this is an implementation of Enhanced 911, Phase 2. Support
for Phase 2 will be required in the US next year.

911 service has gone through a few different capability upgrades.

Basic 911: You communicate the nature of the emergency and it's location by
voice.

Enhanced 911: The call center receives your landline phone number and looks up
your address from a database.

E911 Phase 1: The call center receives the mobile phone number and the
location of the cell tower taking the call.

E911 Phase 2: The call center receives the mobile phone number and the phone's
location.

[http://www.marioncoks.net/Departments/EmergencyCommunication...](http://www.marioncoks.net/Departments/EmergencyCommunications/WhatisPhaseIIEnhanced911/tabid/7542/Default.aspx)

Apple is simply implementing the new standard here.

------
thomasfedb
As an Australian it's horrifying to hear the US experience with 911. We dial
000, and the standard experience is that it's picked up straight away, you
answer "Police, Ambulance, or Fire" and "State and Town" and you'll be
speaking to a call-taker in less than half a minute. Every now and then
something goes wrong (like a big cable gets cut) and the national Telco gets
an appropriately huge flogging, but 99.9% of the time it's clockwork.

~~~
cstrat
As an Australian who has never had to call 000... I am glad to hear that it
works :)

~~~
thomasfedb
Best advice I can give when calling 000 - let the call-taker follow the
script. There will be a point in the call when you can add extra info, but
they have a list of things they have to ask before they can press 'Dispatch!',
you'll both have a better time if you let them ask their questions in order.

~~~
cstrat
cheers, thats a good tip I hope I will remember if I ever need to call in.

------
joecool1029
I must be missing something,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_9-1-1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_9-1-1)

Hasn't 911 location been shared via gps location in pretty much every
cellphone for the past decade?

I remember shitty verizon kyocera clamshells advertising gps for 911 in like
2004.

~~~
scrooched_moose
The accuracy and timing requirements are terrible and still use some
combination of radio location and raw cellular data. Some extracts from the
article you linked:

> Wireless network operators must provide the latitude and longitude of
> callers within 300 meters, within six minutes of a request by a PSAP.

> Code division multiple access (CDMA) networks tend to use handset-based
> radiolocation technologies, which are technically more similar to
> radionavigation.

> Mobile phone users may also have a selection to permit location information
> to be sent to non-emergency phone numbers or data networks, so that it can
> help people who are simply lost or want other location-based services.

Presumably Apple is going to share their Wifi-assisted data instead of raw GPS
signal or radiolocation data.

Looking at my location in a dense urban zone, 300m would narrow my location
down to roughly 300 houses. Good enough to get emergency services on the way,
not nearly good enough to render assistance if the caller can't speak/doesn't
know where they are.

------
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.

------
ensignavenger
How does this differ from the existing system? I thought your cell carrier
would already use GPS if it was available to communicate your location to the
911 call center, and route it to the appropriate call center?

------
walterbell
For anyone with the iOS12 beta, is there an opt-out for this system service in
the Privacy -> Location Services -> System Services list?

What happens if "Location Services" has been disabled by MDM policy, or was
never enabled since the device was setup?

On a new iOS11 device, if you decline to enable Location Services during
setup, it stays disabled. Once enabled, it can no longer be disabled, and the
system service "Share My Location" cannot be disabled, even if all other app
and system services are blocked from accessing Location data.

~~~
abtinf
In what circumstances would you want to contact 911 but not reveal your
location?

~~~
vxNsr
Maybe you just don't want your location ever being sent to a gov agency no
matter your predicament.

~~~
Rotten194
The point of 911 is to have emergency responders come to your location. If you
don't want emergency responders to come to your location, you shouldn't be
calling 911, full stop.

~~~
chillingeffect
> full stop.

Maybe your brain finds it convenient to shut off there, but not for many of
us. We have experience reporting crime but don't want to be identified because
the rest of the criminal's cronies could turn on us.

Without knowing how our information travels once it leaves our hands,
retaliation from crooked government organizations, gangs, small time mobs,
abusive family members is all too possible. And we all know how information
wants to travel.

~~~
dpark
You are claiming that you have experience calling _from your cell phone_ to
report organized crime, and you believe that heretofore those calls were
untraceable?

Providing the location has literally nothing to do with anonymity in this
scenario. If your cell phone is not traceable to you, then it doesn't matter
if your 911 call is accompanied by location info automatically. You're going
to provide that same location info to the dispatcher anyway. And the criminals
involved will _also_ know the location because they are _there committing the
crime_.

------
mseebach
It would be quite useful in a general sense to develop a technique to transfer
modest amounts of data over a voice call - location, obviously for 911, but
also for plenty of other applications where installing an app (never mind
developing it) is overkill. Such a technology could also be used for
automatically transferring reservation/membership numbers when calling
customer service, or even enabling some kind of secure challenge/response for
calling your bank.

I suppose it could work with some kind of low-speed acoustic modem combined
with an "intents"-style protocol. You'd hear a short sequence of beeps, your
phone would vibrate and show a dialog "Caller wants to know your GPS
location", and when clicking OK, your phone would send back your location. In
the other direction, when initiating a call with metadata, the receiving party
would play a beep when ready (like a fax) and your phone would play off the
metadata for the call -- this would basically be implemented like query string
parameters on the phone number URL.

------
bpowah
Undoubtedly desperately needed tech, but I don't understand why the
geolocation couldn't be embedded in the voice call itself (14.4k modem style).
It's such a tiny amount of data, it wouldn't need to interfere with the call
at all, or necessarily even be audible. Why the need for a "clearinghouse" and
a third-party private company service lock-in by already stretched emergency
services?

------
chicob
I see this pattern more often, whenever new tracking systems are deployed with
little to no discussion, be it 911 or eCall: it is for our own good.

------
mcculley
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?

~~~
tedmiston
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.

~~~
mcculley
I get that they are using cell tower triangulation. I'm wondering what API
allows AAA to get that information from the incoming call. Do they have some
system talking SS7? Can smaller players build something similar?

------
austinshea
[https://info.rapidsos.com/blog/bringing-apple-device-
locatio...](https://info.rapidsos.com/blog/bringing-apple-device-location-
to-911)

------
davidgh
It was a holiday weekend nearly two years ago. I decided to take my family
into the downtown area about an hour from our home to get away for a bit.

I have a large family and hotel pools are always a draw. After an hour or two
at the pool, the kids started getting out and toweling off. Our three-year-old
took his life jacket off to to dry himself and my wife and I started gathering
our things. Some of the kids were still in the hot tub so we weren’t exactly
in a rush.

After what felt like a very short period of time, my wife says “Where’s Zach?”
in that motherly-urgent tone. Just as my eyes focused on the pool, I heard a
shriek from my wife unlike anything I’ve ever heard in my life. There is our
three-year-old boy, face down in the pool, absolutely still.

I jumped in the pool and pulled him into my arms and set him on the deck on
the opposite side of the pool. To this day I have no idea how I climbed out of
that pool with him in my arms but I was in and out of that pool seconds. As I
looked down at him - he was this awful, unnatural color and I knew we were in
a very serious situation.

I’m not a trained medical professional. Like most, I’ve had training on how to
handle various emergency situations here and there, but nothing extensive. As
I looked down at my still and lifeless son, I realized that the decisions I
made in the next minute may be the difference between life and death. And I
didn’t really know what I was doing.

I’ve been in stressful situations before, but nothing like this. It was as if
I was plucked from reality and placed into some type of metaphysical reality.
I don’t know how to describe it. In some ways, I became incredibly focused. In
other ways, I was completely dazed and confused.

A couple things came to mind. 1) Call 911. 2) Administer CPR. I yelled out to
my oldest teenage daughter to call 911. I told her to call from the hotel
phone. Again - in this moment my thoughts were very scattered but I remember
thinking that would be the most certain way to relay our location
automatically. I had no idea the address or even the street we were on. At
that moment I sincerely couldn’t say for certain if we were at the Hyatt,
Hilton, Holiday or Hampton. If it was the Hyatt was it the Grand Hyatt, Hyatt
Place or just the regular Hyatt? In my mind at least this though was clear:
call from a land line and tell them to come and they will come even if you
can’t tell them where you are.

I began to administer CPR to my son. Was it breaths or then compressions, or
the other way around? How many breaths? How many compressions? How long to I
wait to see if he’s got a pulse? The adrenaline is so high there was no way
I’d be able to distinguish a pulse with my shaking hands. I gave a couple
breaths and started compressions. He was absolutely still. I hoped for the
Hollywood-like water puke, cough. I got nothing. Repeat breaths, compressions.
Nothing. Repeat. Nothing.

I don’t know how much time had passed, but it felt like an eternity. Why
wasn’t he responding to my actions?? Desperation quickly settled in - I don’t
know what I’m doing and he will probably die because of it. More than ever I
felt a desperate need of help.

I look up and see my daughter scrambling around, still in the pool area. My
wife is next to me, trying to help me administer. I scream out to my daughter
in absolute desperation “you have to call 911 NOW!” My attention goes back to
my son. Breaths. Compressions. Anything? No. Repeat.

The scene around me was absolute mayhem. My other children, of various ages,
were letting out blood curdling screams and moans. Whenever I bring myself
back to the moment, it brings tears to my eyes. The kids didn’t know exactly
what was happening, but they knew this was very, very bad.

The daughter I had instructed to call 911 is very calculated, precise and
responsible. I had told her to call 911 from a hotel phone because it was my
thought that it was the best (only?) way to reliably provide our location to
the responders. She was trying to do exactly that. But the problem was she was
locked out of the hotel. She was fumbling through our towels and bags looking
for the key card to her her back into the building. She couldn’t find it. It
turns out it was in a very natural and obvious spot - my pocket - but in a
moment like that, simple things are not always clear. I don’t realize it was
in my pocket. She thought it was with our stuff and was digging to find it. In
hindsight, I should have told her to call from her cell phone while looking
for a hotel phone.

I’m desperate. Help is not coming. What I’m doing doesn’t seem to be doing
anything. Every tick of the clock the situation is getting worse. Tunnel
vision was setting in. I cannot property articulate the feeing of absolute
terror and paralysis that was setting in. “This is actually happening.”

I don’t remember how, but eventually the key issue was resolved and my
daughter got into the hotel and began her sprint to the front desk. She was
met by the staff part way there. “911 is on the way”, they said. What? Why? We
never called.

It turns out, an off duty airline pilot was summoned to the window of his room
due to the screaming below. Observing the situation, he summoned help. Around
the same time, a nurse was checking into the hotel and had been told her room
was not ready. She later told me she was frustrated and decided to take a
walk. She passed by the pool area and came to our attention and started
helping while the ambulance was making its way to us. At his point, I heard a
faint - oh so faint - whimper from my son. Details are fuzzy to me at this
point, but 911 arrived and whisked him off to the nearby children’s hospital.

We spent a couple of days at the hospital. He made a full recovery and we were
sent home with much gratitude, forever changed by the situation. I know these
stories like this so often do not have a happy ending, and I am so, so sorry
for the families and loved ones of those who experience other outcomes.

A few thoughts that came to my mind after this experience.

\- A mobile phone has the ability to relay location very reliably, and more
precisely than a phone registered to an address. A hotel is a big building -
sure they might have guessed we were by the pool, but do the first responders
know where in a massive hotel the pool is? Seconds matter. It sure would have
been nice to know that all I had to do is call 911 from my mobile phone and
say “please come” and they could respond with “we are on our way”. \- I
thought it would be helpful to have a 100% offline-capable, blazing fast, dead
simple app with common emergency situations and what basic steps to take. In
the state I was in, I’m not sure I would have thought to go to an app. But
perhaps a bystander with such an app, even untrained, could use such an app to
help coach a situation. \- Why on earth was there no phone outside by the
hotel pool? You won’t be surprised to know this particular hotel solved that
problem. \- This all unfolded within our “field of vision”. Our backs were not
turned when our son went in the water. But we were focused on gathering our
stuff, chatting with each other and just weren’t paying attention. We are
different at pools now. \- I’ve wondered if some type of device could be
strapped to a toddler’s head that would sound off a close-by alarm if
submerged for more than x seconds or of the device was removed. It would have
to avoid going off with common splashes and quick dunks in the water. As I’ve
carefully observed since, the forehead seems like a logical position for such
a sensor. Little ones don’t go in below their forehead often for much longer
than a few seconds, and in a drowning situation the forehead is always
submerged. I fear that such a device, however, would provide aflame sense of
security and perhaps would encourage worse supervision.

I am very much looking forward to the day when I can be confident my mobile
phone can relay my precise location to emergency responders.

------
wintorez
I'm OK with this.

------
ape4
I was expecting it was going to be sent as tones in the voice call.

------
microcolonel
Seems like it would be better for this to be transmitted in-band, like caller
ID. This is a good step though.

------
josefresco
I'm reading almost near universal praise. Isn't this essentially a "back door"
to location services, only accessible to law enforcement? Sounds ... familiar.

It gets worse/better(?)

 _Apple 's upcoming 911 feature relies on technology from RapidSOS, a New York
startup. The approach developed by Apple and RapidSOS sends location data from
an iPhone to a "clearinghouse" accessible to emergency calling centers. Only
the 911 calling centers will be able to see the data during the call, and none
of it can be used for non-emergency purposes, according to Apple._

So Apple AND RapidSOS get to see my location when using 911? Cool cool.

~~~
ForrestN
If the text you quoted is accurate, the data is only accessible to emergency
calling centers, so no, unless they are lying neither company can see your
location. Perhaps it’s encrypted, a bit like sending an iMessage to the 9/11
dispatcher, or some other means of anonymization is used.

~~~
josefresco
_the data is only accessible to emergency calling centers_

This same argument is use to justify why we _shouldn 't_ allow encryption back
doors. The reasons include: access will leak, law enforcement cannot be
trusted.

I don't see anything in this announcement that addresses those concerns.

~~~
jonknee
The location is also only sent during the 911 call, so if you don't dial 911
your location isn't in the database and the security of the database doesn't
matter, your location is "safe".

[https://info.rapidsos.com/blog/bringing-apple-device-
locatio...](https://info.rapidsos.com/blog/bringing-apple-device-location-
to-911)

> When this feature is made available later this year in an iOS software
> update, Apple phones will send fast and accurate device location to the
> NG911 Clearinghouse when a user dials 9-1-1.

~~~
josefresco
My point was that despite policy/law, the arguments against back doors for
encryption rely on the assumption that "the system" and those that control it
cannot be trusted. So while it's great that Apple and others are telling us
that the location is only shared when calling 911, critics of encryption
backdoor would claim this "promise" is just that ... a promise. If good guys
can access this data, that means bad guys can too (just like encryption
backdoors!)

