10 ms·

Get the police department phone number from the town's government and not google maps.

by comrh 5y ago

rosndo 5y ago
And how do you identify the real government for some small town? There are many that don’t even have websites. Contact the state government to ask? There’s a good chance nobody will be able to provide the answers you seek on short notice.
- Forgeties79 5y ago
  If you're in a community that's so small it has no online presence for their government, then chances are you already know who to call anyway.
  - voxic11 5y ago
    So google gets one of these requests and supposedly its from a police force in a small town that has no government website. How do they know who to call to confirm?
    - l33t2328 5y ago
      The secretary of state for that state can provide that information.
      - cortesoft 5y ago
        Only in the United States. There are almost two hundred countries in the world. What if the request comes in from Kiribati?
      - coospep 5y ago
        If you give them days, weeks or perhaps months to come up with a response. Sure. Not going to work internationally anyway.
        verve_rat 5y ago
        You are being intentionally argumentative, and not in a devil's advocate, let's explore all the consequences of the topic at hand kind of way. You are engaging in bad faith, please stop it.
        Forgeties79 5y ago
        [flagged]
        rosndo 5y ago
        That’s really not the case. What is “bad faith” about suggesting that the secretary of state probably isn’t going to rapidly solve this problem for you? It’s not even about being a “devils advocate”, the balance of probabilities rests squarely on the side of this being far more difficult than many commenters here try to make it out to be. I think it is you who is engaging in bad faith.
    - rootusrootus 5y ago
      County? State? I would argue that this should be the method anyway. Start from the lowest level of known authentic bureaucracy and then work down from there until you reach a legitimate city government representative. I don't think website is an ideal method in any case.
      - rosndo 5y ago
        So your solution is to get rid of speedy emergency requests entirely? Sounds like you’re just repeating the point that authenticating these requests is impossible, as that authentication would have to happen fast. And then you need to do this internationally. What will you do? Contact the embassy? Suddenly your authentication process could take months, which is a problem if you’re legally required to comply sooner than that.
        Forgeties79 5y ago
        >So your solution is to get rid of speedy emergency requests entirely? Who said that?
        coospep 5y ago
        That’s the implication. A lengthy verification process makes speedy processing of requests impossible.
        Forgeties79 5y ago
        A fake subpoena is not a home invasion. It's not like seconds matter.
        coospep 5y ago
        Until you get in trouble for not complying with a real one. Worst case scenario is probably a horrible PR disaster after a child dies because you couldn’t process a real request fast enough. And we’re not talking about seconds, but easily days or weeks.
    - verve_rat 5y ago
      Are the white pages a thing in the States? I mean I want to call some entity in the US that doesn't have its number on a website, how do I do that now in a non emergency situation? Is there any reason that wouldn't work in an emergency? This doesn't seem like an actual problem anyone has ever had.
      - rosndo 5y ago
        No, except for easy-to-influence websites that scrape numbers from sketchy sources and accept user submissions without verification. Not that the inability to confirm a phone number in a hypothetical phone book would be an excuse for noncompliance anyway.
  - rosndo 5y ago
    I’m really confused as to how this relates to what is being discussed here.
    - Forgeties79 5y ago
      >And how do you identify the real government for some small town? There are many that don’t even have websites. This was the question I responded to. I'm not sure how else to explain it?
      - coospep 5y ago
        We are talking about fake law enforcement requests sent to big internet companies. Do you think these bigcos have presence in McMullen, AL?
- 3np 5y ago
  Somehow there were ways to get this done before websites existed. I do not believe that those channels for government no longer exist. If they choose to make themselves impossible to locate offline, this is on them. If all else fails, government-to-government should still be viable, and then the local government will take it from there.
  - coospep 5y ago
    > Somehow there were ways to get this done before websites existed Ah yeah, because fake subpoenas didn’t work before the internet existed? > I do not believe that those channels for government no longer exist. If they choose to make themselves impossible to locate offline, this is on them. Who says they ever existed? Back in the pre-internet days the situation was just worse. Even the federal government can’t manage this, just look at misissuances of .gov domain names.
  - astura 5y ago
    I'm not sure there was ever much verifying before websites existed. Just less fraud. Back in the NES days Tengen called the United States Copyright Office and told them they needed the technical details of the NES lockout chip to defend themselves in a copyright lawsuit. The Copyright Office faxed over the requested information. Except it was social engineering, there was no copyright lawsuit. Tengen used that proprietary information to build their own cartridges without paying the NES licences costs.
- jltsiren 5y ago
  Contacting the state government should be the right choice (but it may not be in practice). In many countries, every public official has the legal duty to direct you to the relevant authority if you contact them with matters outside their duties. That's a sensible requirement, because citizens should not have to be familiar with the internal administrative structures of government agencies.
- logifail 5y ago
  > And how do you identify the real government for some small town? There are many that don’t even have websites (Sorry to have to ask) but are there [m]any towns in the USA without telephones?
  - rosndo 5y ago
    Where do you intend to find the numbers to call? There are towns in the US where the local government consists only of a couple of people who may only do local government work for a few hours a week. There are towns with essentially no online presence, you could easily create your own fake local government, police and whatever you’d like.
    - logifail 5y ago
      > There are towns in the US where the local government consists only of a couple of people who may only do local government work for a few hours a week How does anyone authenticate anything allegedly issued by such small parts of local government? "Not very quickly" is presumably one part of the answer?
      - rosndo 5y ago
        In the real world these documents are usually not authenticated, perhaps beyond trying to get a person on the phone by googling the issuing authority. It’s actually a pretty novel idea that companies should be prepared to deal with fake court orders, etc. In theory it’s supposed to be the job of law enforcement to prevent this, but of course that is also essentially impossible. If the federal lawmakers wanted the federal government to undertake the herculean task of making all these documents verifiable and traceable, they could of course do that. Are they likely to do so? No. Also, there’s an important detail that is largely being ignored in this conversation: How many hours of paralegal time can we expect companies to spend verifying legal requests concerning accounts that don’t belong to paying customers?
        logifail 5y ago
voxic11 5y ago
So every major technology company will need to figure out the real contact details of every town government (how do you propose they will they do this?) and then when they receive one of these "life or death situation, you must respond immediately" requests they are supposed to call up the town, get the number for the police department in the town (hopefully the police department isn't shared between multiple towns or this could get confusing) and then call up the police department to confirm that they are the ones who sent the request? I guess I don't see the value the town government contact details is providing here. If you have some way of figuring out the real contact details for every town why wouldn't that same mechanism work for figuring out the real contact details of every police department?
- mywittyname 5y ago
  Someone will sell this information. West Law / Lexis Nexis already provide a lot of this kind of thing (contact info for judges and people in various government agencies).
  - voxic11 5y ago
    I wasn't able to find this information on West Law or Lexis Nexis, do you know what term they use to describe this category of information?
    - tiahura 5y ago
      Accurint
    - mywittyname 5y ago
      Try Judicial Profile.
- joelkevinjones 5y ago
  In the United States, does <area code> 555-1212 not work anymore? It certainly seems to: https://www.businessinsider.com/555-phone-number-tv-movies-telephone-exchange-names-ghostbusters-2018-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/555-phone-number-tv-movies-t... https://www.nationalnanpa.com/number_resource_info/555_numbers.html https://www.nationalnanpa.com/number_resource_info/555_numbe...
jahewson 5y ago
Create a fake small town?
- idontwantthis 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agloe,_New_York https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agloe,_New_York
  - mariojv 5y ago
    Fantastic story, it's hilarious that the "town" popped up on Google Maps for a bit.

Get the police department phone number from the town's government and not google maps.

by comrh 5y ago

Get the police department phone number from the town's government and not google maps.

And how do you identify the real government for some small town? There are many that don’t even have websites. Contact the state government to ask? There’s a good chance nobody will be able to provide the answers you seek on short notice.

Forgeties79 5y ago
If you're in a community that's so small it has no online presence for their government, then chances are you already know who to call anyway.
- voxic11 5y ago
  So google gets one of these requests and supposedly its from a police force in a small town that has no government website. How do they know who to call to confirm?
  - l33t2328 5y ago
    The secretary of state for that state can provide that information.
    - cortesoft 5y ago
      Only in the United States. There are almost two hundred countries in the world. What if the request comes in from Kiribati?
    - coospep 5y ago
      If you give them days, weeks or perhaps months to come up with a response. Sure. Not going to work internationally anyway.
      - verve_rat 5y ago
        You are being intentionally argumentative, and not in a devil's advocate, let's explore all the consequences of the topic at hand kind of way. You are engaging in bad faith, please stop it.
        Forgeties79 5y ago
        [flagged]
        rosndo 5y ago
        That’s really not the case. What is “bad faith” about suggesting that the secretary of state probably isn’t going to rapidly solve this problem for you? It’s not even about being a “devils advocate”, the balance of probabilities rests squarely on the side of this being far more difficult than many commenters here try to make it out to be. I think it is you who is engaging in bad faith.
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    County? State? I would argue that this should be the method anyway. Start from the lowest level of known authentic bureaucracy and then work down from there until you reach a legitimate city government representative. I don't think website is an ideal method in any case.
    - rosndo 5y ago
      So your solution is to get rid of speedy emergency requests entirely? Sounds like you’re just repeating the point that authenticating these requests is impossible, as that authentication would have to happen fast. And then you need to do this internationally. What will you do? Contact the embassy? Suddenly your authentication process could take months, which is a problem if you’re legally required to comply sooner than that.
      - Forgeties79 5y ago
        >So your solution is to get rid of speedy emergency requests entirely? Who said that?
        coospep 5y ago
        That’s the implication. A lengthy verification process makes speedy processing of requests impossible.
        Forgeties79 5y ago
        A fake subpoena is not a home invasion. It's not like seconds matter.
        coospep 5y ago
        Until you get in trouble for not complying with a real one. Worst case scenario is probably a horrible PR disaster after a child dies because you couldn’t process a real request fast enough. And we’re not talking about seconds, but easily days or weeks.
  - verve_rat 5y ago
    Are the white pages a thing in the States? I mean I want to call some entity in the US that doesn't have its number on a website, how do I do that now in a non emergency situation? Is there any reason that wouldn't work in an emergency? This doesn't seem like an actual problem anyone has ever had.
    - rosndo 5y ago
      No, except for easy-to-influence websites that scrape numbers from sketchy sources and accept user submissions without verification. Not that the inability to confirm a phone number in a hypothetical phone book would be an excuse for noncompliance anyway.
- rosndo 5y ago
  I’m really confused as to how this relates to what is being discussed here.
  - Forgeties79 5y ago
    >And how do you identify the real government for some small town? There are many that don’t even have websites. This was the question I responded to. I'm not sure how else to explain it?
    - coospep 5y ago
      We are talking about fake law enforcement requests sent to big internet companies. Do you think these bigcos have presence in McMullen, AL?
3np 5y ago
Somehow there were ways to get this done before websites existed. I do not believe that those channels for government no longer exist. If they choose to make themselves impossible to locate offline, this is on them. If all else fails, government-to-government should still be viable, and then the local government will take it from there.
- coospep 5y ago
  > Somehow there were ways to get this done before websites existed Ah yeah, because fake subpoenas didn’t work before the internet existed? > I do not believe that those channels for government no longer exist. If they choose to make themselves impossible to locate offline, this is on them. Who says they ever existed? Back in the pre-internet days the situation was just worse. Even the federal government can’t manage this, just look at misissuances of .gov domain names.
- astura 5y ago
  I'm not sure there was ever much verifying before websites existed. Just less fraud. Back in the NES days Tengen called the United States Copyright Office and told them they needed the technical details of the NES lockout chip to defend themselves in a copyright lawsuit. The Copyright Office faxed over the requested information. Except it was social engineering, there was no copyright lawsuit. Tengen used that proprietary information to build their own cartridges without paying the NES licences costs.
jltsiren 5y ago
Contacting the state government should be the right choice (but it may not be in practice). In many countries, every public official has the legal duty to direct you to the relevant authority if you contact them with matters outside their duties. That's a sensible requirement, because citizens should not have to be familiar with the internal administrative structures of government agencies.
logifail 5y ago
> And how do you identify the real government for some small town? There are many that don’t even have websites (Sorry to have to ask) but are there [m]any towns in the USA without telephones?
- rosndo 5y ago
  Where do you intend to find the numbers to call? There are towns in the US where the local government consists only of a couple of people who may only do local government work for a few hours a week. There are towns with essentially no online presence, you could easily create your own fake local government, police and whatever you’d like.
  - logifail 5y ago
    > There are towns in the US where the local government consists only of a couple of people who may only do local government work for a few hours a week How does anyone authenticate anything allegedly issued by such small parts of local government? "Not very quickly" is presumably one part of the answer?
    - rosndo 5y ago
      In the real world these documents are usually not authenticated, perhaps beyond trying to get a person on the phone by googling the issuing authority. It’s actually a pretty novel idea that companies should be prepared to deal with fake court orders, etc. In theory it’s supposed to be the job of law enforcement to prevent this, but of course that is also essentially impossible. If the federal lawmakers wanted the federal government to undertake the herculean task of making all these documents verifiable and traceable, they could of course do that. Are they likely to do so? No. Also, there’s an important detail that is largely being ignored in this conversation: How many hours of paralegal time can we expect companies to spend verifying legal requests concerning accounts that don’t belong to paying customers?
      - logifail 5y ago

voxic11 5y ago

So every major technology company will need to figure out the real contact details of every town government (how do you propose they will they do this?) and then when they receive one of these "life or death situation, you must respond immediately" requests they are supposed to call up the town, get the number for the police department in the town (hopefully the police department isn't shared between multiple towns or this could get confusing) and then call up the police department to confirm that they are the ones who sent the request? I guess I don't see the value the town government contact details is providing here. If you have some way of figuring out the real contact details for every town why wouldn't that same mechanism work for figuring out the real contact details of every police department?

mywittyname 5y ago
Someone will sell this information. West Law / Lexis Nexis already provide a lot of this kind of thing (contact info for judges and people in various government agencies).
- voxic11 5y ago
  I wasn't able to find this information on West Law or Lexis Nexis, do you know what term they use to describe this category of information?
  - tiahura 5y ago
    Accurint
  - mywittyname 5y ago
    Try Judicial Profile.
joelkevinjones 5y ago
In the United States, does <area code> 555-1212 not work anymore? It certainly seems to: https://www.businessinsider.com/555-phone-number-tv-movies-telephone-exchange-names-ghostbusters-2018-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/555-phone-number-tv-movies-t... https://www.nationalnanpa.com/number_resource_info/555_numbers.html https://www.nationalnanpa.com/number_resource_info/555_numbe...

jahewson 5y ago

Create a fake small town?

idontwantthis 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agloe,_New_York https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agloe,_New_York
- mariojv 5y ago
  Fantastic story, it's hilarious that the "town" popped up on Google Maps for a bit.