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This is not about opening a backdoor that would allow 911/etc. to request your phone’s location. It’s only about sending your location when you specifically as

This is not about opening a backdoor that would allow 911/etc. to request your phone’s location. It’s only about sending your location when you specifically ask for help in an emergency situation. — That being said, mobile phones are inherently trackable by mobile carriers using triangulation. I know it’s obvious, but it’s worth considering that staying untrackable with a mobile is, as far as I understand, fundamentally impossible.

lisper 8y ago
> It’s only about sending your location when you specifically ask for help in an emergency situation. No, it's not. Go back and re-read the comment I was responding to. Pay particular attention to the following passages: > 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. The GP is specifically talking about expanding the capability beyond just location and beyond just 911, and talking about this as if it were a foregone conclusion that this will be an unalloyed good. That is what scares me.
- deleted 8y ago
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- gregsadetsky 8y ago
  The GP is me. :) I apologize if my original comment was not clear, or could leave itself open to a different interpretation. I really did mean that when someone in an emergency situation needs help, presently, they do not have the ability to send their location, a text message, an image or a video. That’s it — I was only referring to emergency situations, and anything that I am discussing would be user-initiated.
  - lisper 8y ago
    > 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.
    - mclehman 8y ago
      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.
      - gregsadetsky 8y ago
        That’s exactly what I meant.

lisper 8y ago

> It’s only about sending your location when you specifically ask for help in an emergency situation. No, it's not. Go back and re-read the comment I was responding to. Pay particular attention to the following passages: > 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. The GP is specifically talking about expanding the capability beyond just location and beyond just 911, and talking about this as if it were a foregone conclusion that this will be an unalloyed good. That is what scares me.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
gregsadetsky 8y ago
The GP is me. :) I apologize if my original comment was not clear, or could leave itself open to a different interpretation. I really did mean that when someone in an emergency situation needs help, presently, they do not have the ability to send their location, a text message, an image or a video. That’s it — I was only referring to emergency situations, and anything that I am discussing would be user-initiated.
- lisper 8y ago
  > 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.
  - mclehman 8y ago
    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.
    - gregsadetsky 8y ago
      That’s exactly what I meant.