Striking A Balance On The Availability Of Location Information
from the find-them-and-bring-them-home dept
Tech web sites were covered last week with the sad story of the Kim family, who got stranded in the Oregon wildnerness. While the family's two daughters and their mother were rescued after more than a week, father and husband James Kim died after setting out from their car in an attempt to get help. It appears that one piece of information that helped rescuers narrow their search area was location information from the family's cell phones -- and it helped them narrow that area significantly. Now, in the aftermath of the tragedy, a a timeline of the search efforts shows that the cell information came from an employee of a mobile operator working on his own, and it came to authorities a week after the family was stranded, and three days after they were reported missing, leading some to wonder why this information wasn't considered sooner. This certainly isn't to criticize the efforts of the search and rescue team, but rather to wonder what can be done to make this type of potentially useful and life-saving information more easily and quickly available to investigators. This isn't the first time this issue has arisen: another operator got criticized earlier this year when one of its customer-service operators wouldn't reveal GPS information from a phone in a car stolen with a baby inside. Obviously there are privacy issues at play, and the whole HP pretexting scandal reveals that personal information is, in some cases, too easy to get, but there is a balance to be struck. In cases such as this, perhaps location information is too difficult to get to the right people, and some collaboration and coordination of efforts among mobile operators and authorities before the next tragedy happens might just help prevent it.
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GPS information
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%@)#&^!@(& Bureaucracy
In such a litigious society we tend to forget this concept and worry about the process.
P.S. I'm not voting for chaos, and there's still a difference between this and the 'emergency' wiretaps but sometimes there shouldn't need to be a "process" for individual events... if it's obvious, just do it!
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insert typical individualist smear here[]
[spin doctor] Well, people wanted privacy, and now with the
PRETEXTING it's hard to cooperate. It doesn't matter if it's a government number calling for info, it's what you asked for!!!
Ideas:
*Voluntary GPS tracking that can be turned on or off
*Hi-power cellstations out there
*Maybe an emergency lodge near the few main roads people are known to travel on, manned by park rangers during the active seasons, with a bright orange microblimp attached to it with a bright orange cord so people who get lost don't die out in the wilderness. Also, put an emergency phone on the outside for when there's no ranger.
*Incentive program for assisting government agancies in search missions
P.S.: I'm not against capitalism or individualism. I'm just also not against collectivism and communalism.
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Geez, this is just ridiculous!
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easy solution
Preferably all parties to the release would be required to log that they have requested, received, released information for who, when and what pretext.
An extra layer of protection can be given by making police request the information, but the release actually goes to an independent search and rescue group. Said group would of course be responsible for reporting cases where they didn't expect to receive information. And they don't give it to police unless their organization is involved in said search.
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Is there no responsibility for Mr Kim?
take appropriate provisions,
know the weather conditions and prepare accordingly,
use a GPS Nav system.
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@6
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sad
--Unfortunately, it also goes without saying, that as soon as people understand "the system", they will determine how to "trick" the system as well (people who shouldn't get that information). I would say that a missing person report should be enough for law enforcement to tap into their cell phone for location. At least that...
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Big Brother is Watching; Little Sister is Taking N
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Re: Anon Coward
One could argue that better maps and a GPS could have helped, as well as signage on that road (yes, I'm familiar with it), and a concerted effort by the on-line mapping tools to flag seasonal roads would have made all of the difference.
HOPEFULLY, CNET will take the ball and lead Google, MS and Yahoo (etc.) to make a difference and keep it from happening again.
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Device for Rescuers
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Re: Is there no responsibility for Mr Kim?
And:
pay attention to warning signs,
fight get-there-itis by reminding yourself that your safety is more important than that trying to keep to your original schedule,
and once you realize that you're lost, stay together and stay put.
One of the critical points of failure appears to be that someone cut the lock on a gate which was there specifically to keep people off this road in the winter. It's likely that the local rescuers didn't think to check that road immediately because they knew the gate was there.
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A device like this?
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Re: A device like this?
I live in Oregon, and every year people get stranded. If they leave the phone on it would take rescuers hours to locate them (sifting through false leads from other cell phones)
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GPS transmissions
SAR helicopters should be fited with antennae to listen out for te ping signals, allwoing moibile phones to be found. THis would allow quick inspection of all areas where there are people in the right general location.
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