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Android's phone app automatically shows GPS info during 911 calls
A lot can happen during a car accident. Between the initial shock from the impact, airbags going off and general disorientation, when you reach for your phone to call 911 you might not know where you are. Couple all that with cell phones' notoriously flaky ability at transmitting your exact location information to emergency service operators, and getting an ambulance to the scene of your accident can be incredibly difficult. To help sidestep that, Google has updated its Phone app to automatically display your location when making a 911 call.
Some OnePlus 5 owners can't dial 911 without the phone rebooting
Making an emergency phone call to 911 on your OnePlus 5 could wind up with your phone rebooting. A handful of owners have taken to Reddit to share videos of the glitch in action, and they suspect that it could have something to do with the phone's GPS system. For its part, OnePlus says it's contacted the customer and is looking into what could be the problem. Should your OnePlus be doing the same, the company asks that you contact its support inbox. It sounds like this might be fixable via firmware update -- unlike that whole "jelly scrolling" thing last month.
Apple fixes iOS loophole that overloaded 911 centers last fall
Last October, a teenage hacker figured out how to trick some iPhones into calling 911 repeatedly, racking up thousands of bogus calls. That attack took place months ago, but Apple has just now updated iOS to keep such an incident from occurring again. As noted by The Wall Street Journal, iOS 10.3 (which rolled out earlier this week) closes the vulnerability that 18-year-old Meetkumar Hiteshbhai Desai allegedly exploited.
T-Mobile 'ghost calls' to 911 linked to two deaths in Dallas
911 outages as a result of cellphones have been a problem before, especially for T-Mobile, and it looks like the issue still hasn't been resolved. In the past week, an infant and an adult male died as a result of calls to 911 not being handled promptly, according to the Dallas Morning News. When a T-Mobile customer calls 911 in Dallas, the publication says that the phone will continuously dial 911 and the call center registers them as hang-ups. The 911 dispatchers need to then call the numbers back to verify the calls, which in turn means legitimate callers are placed on hold.
Amazon Echo and Google Home want to be your new house phone
Right now, you can order a pizza, manage your to-do list and call an Uber on Amazon Echo and Google Home. The latest development from the smart speakers would give us yet another reason to leave our phones in our pocket. The Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon and Google are considering adding telephone functionality to their devices, but it won't be easy.
Giuliani as Trump's cybersecurity adviser is an unfunny joke
I had just finished hacking the Gibson when I heard the news: Rudy Giuliani, the guy who said he was gonna solve cybersecurity, had just been named Trump's cyber adviser. I hopped onto our hacker mafia's government-proof encrypted chat app to make sure everyone knew that we were in real trouble. When I got no response from Mr. Robot or Anonymous, I got my rollerblades on and got out of my mom's basement as fast as possible. I dialed our ringleader with a secret, anti-authority encrypted phone app while hacking all the traffic lights between here and his mom's basement as I raced over. When he picked up I blurted, "Stop hacking baby monitors and trying to crash the stock market!"
Teen arrested for sharing exploit that almost brought down 911
An Arizona teen is discovering why you should think very carefully about sharing exploits online: you don't know what people will do with them... or in some cases, that you're sharing the right exploits. Phoenix police have arrested 18-year-old Meetkumar Hitesbhai Desai on computer tampering charges after he publicly posted a version of iOS-based JavaScript attack that he thought would only deliver annoying pop-ups, but actually made bogus 911 calls. In the Phoenix region, there were so many hang-up calls (there were 1,849 link clicks in total) that there was the "potential danger" of emergency phone services going down, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office says. California and Texas police saw call spikes, too.
Facebook's trending algorithm promoted a 9/11 truther story
Facebook's trending news algorithm has failed once again. Earlier today, Facebook users who clicked on the "9/11" trending topic on the social network were directed to a tabloid story by The Daily Star, which claimed that bombs destroyed the World Trade Center towers. As The Washington Post reports, the story was quickly removed after they contacted Facebook.
AT&T, Verizon sued for giving businesses discounts on 911 fees
Calling 911 is one of those things you just expect to work regardless of the circumstances. A new lawsuit alleges that mobile carriers including AT&T and Engadget parent company Verizon are shortchanging the indispensable emergency service, however. Apparently, in an effort to cut deals with business customers, the aforementioned telcos have been lowering the typical $1 fee per-line charge that goes straight to funding 911 call centers, according to The Wall Street Journal.
NYPD's smartphone program is shortening crime response times
The NYPD Mobility Initiative is paying off in spades for Gotham's police. The force's Deputy Commissioner for Information Technology Jessica Tisch recently revealed that thanks to the initiative that puts smartphones and tablets in police hands, response times to crimes in progress are down 12.6 percent. Gotham's 36,000 officers are able to arrive at crimes in progress within 4 minutes and 26 seconds. According to a report by the New York Daily News, that's the lowest the responses have been in more than half a decade. That expediency extends to 911 call responses as well. With a dedicated app, the police are able to start moving toward a crime scene before a dispatcher even contacts them.
Sprint to pay $1.2 million over six-month 911 outage
The FCC has slapped Sprint with a $1.2 million fine after it discovered that the network failed to properly handle 911 calls from people with hearing difficulties. The company was found to be neglecting the Captioned Telephone Service, which effectively provides closed-captions for emergency calls. Unfortunately, Sprint, along with the firms that provide the technology, let the system fall over for nearly six months. Anyone trying to make a 911 call between March and September in 2014 using the offering would have been blocked from getting through. Even worse, however, is that Sprint still collected its FCC subsidy that's handed out to maintain the service and prevent it from being a financial burden on the carriers.
T-Mobile to pay $17.5 million over last year's 911 outage
To settle a Federal Communications Commission investigation into 911 outages, T-Mobile will pay $17.5 million. The FCC investigation revealed that two separate outages occurred on the carrier's network last year, lasting around three hours total. While the incidents were separate but related, they prohibited customers from reaching emergency personnel. The outages happened last August and affected T-Mobile customers nationwide, which the FCC says would've kept around 50 million people from calling 911 with their mobile phones during that time. After the carrier also failed to provide timely notification about the outage (according to FCC guidelines), it promised to overhaul procedures to avoid a similar incident in the future as part of the settlement. "The Commission has no higher priority than ensuring the reliability and resilience of our nation's communications networks so that consumers can reach public safety in their time of need," explained FCC chairman Tom Wheeler. "Communications providers that do not take necessary steps to ensure that Americans can call 911 will be held to account." [Image credit: Photo by Steve Sands/WireImage]
Senate passes USA Freedom Act (update: signed by Obama)
For the first time since the 9/11 attacks, both houses of Congress have agreed to limit the government's domestic surveillance powers. Earlier today, the Senate voted 67 to 32 and passed the USA Freedom Act, echoing the House's vote in May. The bill is designed to counter the Patriot Act's controversial section 215 -- the bit that enabled the NSA to collect phone records en masse, request "roving wiretaps" and seize business files -- just one day after the provision officially expired. Update: According to several press reports, tonight President Obama signed it into law.
Washington, DC's 911 dispatch system beset by delays and malfunctions
Washington, DC, has a new 911 dispatch system and it's not working. Late last year, tablets were installed in ambulances and firetrucks. But instead of boosting efficiency, the system has been malfunctioning almost every day. Following the death of an 18-month-old boy who choked on a grape, an investigation revealed that dispatchers alerted an ambulance about a mile away, instead of a unit closer to the toddler's home.
Verizon pays $3.4 million after failing to fix a 911 outage in time
American phone carriers are supposed to keep 911 lines up and running as long as possible, and Verizon is learning that the hard way. It's paying $3.4 million after the FCC determined that it fell short of obligations when an outage left 750,000 Californians without emergency calls for six hours. The settlement also asks Verizon to clean up its act: it has to do better jobs of both protecting against outages and speeding up its repair times when things go horribly wrong. Big Red won't be reeling from the blow given that it makes billions in profit every quarter, but the odds are that it would rather give you better 911 reliability than pay millions more the next time network problems strike. [Image credit: AP Photo/John Minchillo]
Carriers have to let you text 911 by the end of the year
You've had the option of texting 911 in a handful of US cities for a couple of months, thanks in part to voluntary efforts from bigger cellphone carriers. However, the FCC doesn't want you to be left out solely because you're on a smaller network. The agency has just adopted rules requiring that all American wireless providers have the capability for text-to-911 by the end of the year. You won't necessarily get emergency messaging by that point, but carriers will have six months to implement it in a given region if a local call center makes a request.
90 percent of 911 calls made in Washington, DC lacked accurate location info
Data pulled from a recent Freedom of Information Act request reveals that an overwhelming majority of 911 wireless calls made over a six-month period last year in Washington, DC were delivered "without accurate location information to find callers who are lost, confused, unconscious or otherwise unable to share their location." Only ten percent of calls from the first half of 2013 within the city included detailed location data. At the moment, FCC regulations demand higher location accuracy only on outdoor calls, making built-up areas like DC harder to hone in on. Public safety officials told the Washington Post that these location issues are widespread.
Emergensee is a security system in your hand
I remember walking around my college campus late at night, not long after campuses had begun to install the "blue light" boxes for security. Essentially an emergency phone that immediately dialed campus security, these were great if you happened to be near one. Of course, today everyone has a cell phone in their pocket. But who do you call in an emergency? More likely, who do you notify if you are just concerned, walking alone at night and perhaps not under immediate threat? This is just one problem in which EmergenSee, an app and service, looks to solve. EmergenSee is a free-to-download app for iPhone and Android. The core product is very simple: Launch the app and begin transmitting audio, video and GPS coordinates to EmergenSee's servers, where the data is recorded. The service allows you to specify contacts so you can also alert family members or others (up to three). For US$8.99 a month you get access to a 24/7 response center, where they can coordinate not only first responders but also alert them to your exact position and warn them in advance of medical conditions. Young or old, the potential for EmergenSee to assist is enormous, as you are sending audio and video and your location to a remote center staffed 24/7 with a response team. EmergenSee is fast. I saw video uploads that were available almost instantly, plus the "call" goes straight to whomever it needs to. EmergenSee is already in use at some schools, which can customize the system to alert the campus police. This small aspect is actually a big deal if you run any sort of institution (a hospital, college, etc.). Knowing who to contact when you don't necessarily need to contact 911 is a very big deal. Having a record of what's going on is also a very big deal, and EmergenSee does a terrific job of creating a record of events the moment you need it. Not only that, but the app will also send notifications to family members or anyone you wish when you report an incident, and it does so instantly. Speaking of the moment you need it, those blue light phones? Studies show they aren't very effective. EmergenSee, on the other hand, tracks and records every incident and you can access those later. The cloud aspect of this is quite important, as having a persistent log of incidents could be beneficial in bullying or other scenarios. In terms of design, EmergenSee is super simple and that's a good thing. A big red button is all you need to start an incident. Here's an instance where "widgets" or buttons for apps on the iOS lock screen would really handy. There's nothing EmergenSee can do about it on iOS (although it's possible on Android), so here's hoping Apple finally gives developers a way to allow customers to interact without having to open the phone and launch an app. In this particular case, it could literally save lives. One feature I thought was quite brilliant, and was created because the company listens to customers, is Virtual Escort. This is a preset timer you create for an activity that will set off an alarm if you don't complete it within that time. The best example is walking to your car late at night. For late night workers, there's often the trepidation that comes walking into a creepy, half-empty parking garage. With Virtual Escort, EmergenSee immediately reports to your contacts if you don't stop the timer. EmergenSee has many other features, like built-in messaging, a stealth recording feature (you probably don't want to go around with a bright light in your hand), and some key features for personal security at institutions. A couple of these features include geo-fencing and mass broadcast notifications. With geo-fencing the app knows when you've wandered off campus, so if you're within the boundaries of your college, your incident will go to the campus authorities (which is a bit easier if your school happens to be working with EmergenSee). Similarly, mass notifications work if your college or business have already partnered with EmergenSee and work just like mass texts that go out when there's a campus-wide emergency. Ideally, where you go to school or work should partner with EmergenSee to coordinate features like geo-fencing. But individuals can still use the app just as well, complete with the response and reporting. There are a variety of packages available, for personal or organizational use. If you just want the app to report to three of your contacts, that's free. The app will also upload your GPS, audio and video for free. But if you want it to also contact the 24/7 response centers, that service will currently run you $8.99 a month. Not a bad price, considering how much alarm companies charge for basic reporting. Hopefully you can see the numerous use cases for EmergenSee. There are customers who use it for their college kids, and kids who use it to keep an eye on their elderly parents. The company has its roots in institutional use, and continues to enhance the product with unique features like the Virtual Escort. It's a free download, so check it out and see if it's for you. Compared to the competition, EmergenSee offers the best value and feature set of the bunch.
Now you can text 911... just not from everywhere
Text-to-911 became available in select markets today. As the name implies, the service allows you to text your emergency to first responders rather than call. There's just one issue: it doesn't work in most places. The list of supported cities is so small in fact, you should probably just assume the feature isn't up and running in your town. Today's launch stems from a policy the FCC adopted back in January to make text-to-911 available everywhere. All four major carriers signed on to launch the service by May 15th -- that's today -- everywhere a call center could support it. Turns out, they're pretty few and far between. Locations that are online today are using existing TTY systems (traditionally used by the hearing impaired) to accept texts, or new browser-based solutions. However, Iowa, Maine and Vermont are the only ones who've managed so far to get support statewide.
9/11 Memorial Museum Audio Guide app released
On May 21, the National September 11 Memorial and Museum will open to the public. On that day, visitors to the museum will be able to use their iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to take official self-guided audio tours of the facility through the free 9/11 Museum Audio Guide app Three audio tours are available. The first, narrated by actor Robert De Niro, is called "Witnessing History" and provides visitors with insight into the museum from the perspective of people who were witnesses to the terrorist attacks, whether first responders, members of victims families, recovery workers or others. A second tour, "Building History" highlights the architecture and design of the original World Trade Center and the museum, as well as providing insight into the archaeological remnants of the iconic twin towers. Finally, "Discovering History" is aimed at children from 8 to 11 years of age. "Witnessing History" is available in a variety of other languages, including Mandarin Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish, as well as in American Sign Language. The other tours are available only in English, and the app supports Apple VoiceOver to ease navigation by the visually impaired. The museum released another app last year -- the 9/11 Memorial Guide allows visitors to the Memorial locate sponsored cobblestones on the Memorial plaza, search for names on the Memorial, and listen to remembrances of those lost as a result of the attacks.
