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911 Call Tracking Site Stirs Concern
Frosty Piss writes, "This story comes from the Seattle Post-Intellegencer. For the past year, John Eberly has operated Seattle911.com, a site that until this week took real-time feeds of 911 calls from the Seattle Fire Department and plotted them on Google Maps. But on learning of Eberly's site, officials cited 'security concerns' and altered the way they display 911 calls on their Web site, changing the format from text to graphical, preventing Eberly from acquiring the raw data. (Several programmers are quoted musing how trivial it would be to work around this evasion.) Fire officials worry that allowing others to display where fire crews are on an Internet map could make things easier if terrorists were planning an attack. That logic left Eberly and others scratching their heads, as the information continues to be publicly available on the Fire Department's site. 'We're not obligated to provide this information. It's something that we did for customer service in the first place,' a Fire Department spokesperson said. So is this public information? Should the data be available to the public in real time?" The Seattle P-I story ends with a quote from Bruce Schneier: "The government is not saying, 'Hey, this data needs to be secret,' they are saying, 'This data needs to be inconvenient to get to.'"
"But the plans were on display ..."
"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
"That's the display department."
"With a torch."
"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"But look, you found the notice didn't you?"
"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard."
liqbase
They're afraid of terrorists attacking a fire?
Learn to know, the dark side of the force, and you will achieve a power greater than any Jedi...the power to save your w
Come on, does anyone really think that making the information a tiny bit harder to get is going to discourage real terrorists? Why do so many people persist in the idea that if we make the world hard to use that bad people won't be able to use it, bad people are the ones who will invest the time to learn how to work the system. A change like this does one thing, inconvieniences those people who may have found some use for this program. It doesn't stop terrorist, it doesn't help the public, it doesn't even make a good public relations story. How long before someone rebuilds the site to grab the graphics and translate them do you think? And how long after that before the govenment makes the data in those funny letters on forums at which point they may as well not even publish it. Every time I think I've grasped the limit of stupidity it moves further and further away...
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
If this was just for fires, I don't think it is incredibly bad, but my first thought on seeing the headline was, "why are they releasing 911 data in the first place?" I mean, were they posting medical emergencies, too? That is kind of creepy.
But on the other hand, if they were releasing the information, I don't see anything wrong with someone actually using the data. The shock to me is that they were releasing it publicly...in real time to begin with.
Transporter_ii
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
I was in a metro bus and wanted to take a picture of some trees outside. The bus driver told me, "Hey, you can't take pictures in here."
I asked, "Why not?!"
He said, "I'm actually supposed to report you to the police, if you do. Terrorism."
"What are they going to do, reverse engineer the bus timetables from photographic evidence? This can't possibly make us any safer."
He replied, "Well, who's to say."
Who's to say indeed.
Absolutely absurd.
Note that busview will give you the location of all Metro busses in real time.
EMS heckling is a big thing here. Lots of fun.
You call that a tracheotomy?
Maybe I'm spending too much time w/med students, though.
If we're not a first responder, why do we need the info in real time? I'd agree with letting the information out, but delaying it for, say an hour or so. Not to make it inconvenient to get to, just not immediate info.
"The government is not saying, 'Hey, this data needs to be secret,' they are saying, 'This data needs to be inconvenient to get to.'"
Now they just need to apply the same logic to their lists of gun owners.
I don't know seattle911.com, so I don't know if it's absolutely critical to have the data in real-time. But if not, just make the data available in the convenient format, but an hour or so later. As far-fetched as the terrorist scenario may sound, with this solution everybody could be happy, no? Or is this just another subtle reminder of the never-ending War on Terrer?
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
So the educated Pyro can wait until everyone is else where, hop on the motorbike, and start five, ten fires and really tie up the fire department. Great.
You could do that to begin with, but now you can plot your course to string everyone out better and more efficently.
There is no way that 911 call information should be available at anything approaching real-time data.
They want to make the information available for customer service purposes then good, put it on a 24hr delay.
>Re:Why do we need it?
So the GPS tranceivers in emergency vehicles can provide data so that alternate routes for other road users can be made to permit safer emergency travel, and less stops and inconveniences for the remainder of road users.
Eventually, when cars are automatic, such a feedback loop will be a natural part of the road navigation process. This will increase efficiency, decrease traffic congestions and decrease travel times for all concerned.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
This is the most sensible solution - delay. The FAA does this with radar info, its all delayed 15 minutes. 15 minutes might be too soon for this info, but an hour seems reasonable.
Its a shame that the people running the system are too worried about public perception and politics instead of thinking about the problem.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
The standard big bad wolf that was used anytime someome wanted to stop you from doing something completely reasonable in the US used to be "Sorry, but due to liability, you cant...".
That implied some kind of financial damage if you did not listen.
Now the standard has changed to "terrorist threat". Imagine being sent to GitBay, shipped to Syria and tortured, and imprisoned forever. That is a hell of a lot more efficient.
I have noticed that in the US nobody dear to
1. Cross the line into the garage to look at the guys changing tires on their car anymore.
2. Allow thir children to ride in the shopping carts
3. Use opposite sex bathrooms
4. Engage in significan physical activity
5. Any other activity that looks like terrorist planning or execution.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
So your travel-aide computer can automatically alert you to the fact that your planned route is blocked by a huge accident very soon after the acciden occurs?
The data isn't normalized so response dispatchments to the same place can be peppered throuh the data. Mapping the data greatly simplifies understanding what's going on.
That said, the data presented was minimal, the listings we're linked into full police reports, but said "medic response", "automatic fire alarm", etc. Occasionally, one could find "haz mat spill cleanup" or "armed assult". The system also tells you if the incident is closed. Overall, a nice service to have to know what's going down in your neighborhood.
Anyway, making it inconvenient to access is a silly half retraction of the service.
I was just at Heathrow over the weekend- waiting for my wife to get back from the duty free in Terminal 3. It's one of the world's crappiest terminals- not even chairs at the gate. SO there I am waiting, sitting on the only space available, the floor. Here comes some guard saying I can't sit there- "security reasons". So WTF am I supposed to do, call to my genie wife to bring me back into her bottle with her? "Security Reasons" is the catch phrase of power-hungry bureaucrats everywhere, it means, "I'd like to push you around and you'd don't dare even question me when I give you even an unreasonable command on a whim". I got a headache when I read about the RFID tags at the Hungarian airport. Security is used by all the worlds' despots as the rationale for their staying in power. No kidding Capt Obvious you say? Well, what's the best way to push aside this reason without being labeled treasonous?
So, if there is a fire downtown you don't think it will possibly make traffic just a tiny bit more congested?
This has nothing to do with terrorism and just a small bit with security. I'm a Firefighter/Paramedic in Northern Florida. Most large incidents are picked up by local news agencies within hours and the information widely broadcast.
Publically disseminating private emergency call information in realtime can compromise a fire scene investigation and open medical responders up to HIPAA http://http//www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa/ violation lawsuits. A patient's PHI (Personal/Private Health Information) includes anything that connects their name/address/whatever to their medical condition. This is also the reason EMTs and Paramedics in our EMS company are not allowed to take photos of motor vehicle crashes because that photo then becomes part of the patients medical record and must be protected under HIPAA regulation. We know that anyone with a radio scanner can listen to live dispatches and that's why we never give names over the radio. Briefly looking at Seattles dispatch page I don't see any PHI.
My opinion is that Seattle is overreacting a bit.
Florida Highway Patrol put incidents up on their website with a delay...http://www.1stresponder.com/First Responder News delays their "live" dispatch stories about 30 minutes. As long as no personal information is given the public has a right to know what emergencies are going on in their neighborhood. Many fire departments and EMS services are struggling to keep up with these information issues but it ultimately comes down to patient privacy. Would you want the world to know that you called an ambulance because you tripped over a garden hose and did a face-plant on your patio?
By the same logic, websites that show traffic conditions should be shut down too. Well, ya, terrorists can make sure they don't get stuck in parking lot on the I-5.
Oz
Just last week. Chemical explosion and nasty fire in north carolina.Not the first, not the last. I guess you could wait 24 hours to tell people about it, as the clouds of shit that could kill them drifted over them. How about brush fires, you ever been in one? I used to fight them as a volunteer, sometimes people have minutes to evac- minutes, tops-so they shouldn't have a way to find out until it's too late? How about armed standoffs or bad car crashes that block whole roads for hours? Would it be nice to know about them in a timely manner? How about if you are a newsie, nice to get to where the news is going down? I can think of a LOT of reasons why this restriction is misguided, lame, stupid and fairly unconstitutional once you get down to it.
Really, this is government public business, the public has every right in the world to be informed of it, absolutely no different from any joe citizen can go sit in on court to any case you want if there's room in the pews.. no different at all, really.
This is allegedly a government by and for the people, not by and for the 1% connected elite and their hired on order taking and following drones. We had a revolution over that bit, remember?
Government is supposed to hold only a few cards with our express permission, everything else IS our business and THEY work at our suffrance, as our employees. I, for one, am SICK AND TIRED of government-as-masters and overlords who assume everything is theirs by default and you must grovel before them. As the expression goes, F dat shyte! They have just usurped all the powers and now make you beg for it, and whenever they find out you are using your born with rights they get all bent out of shape and want to take it away or sell you "permission" or something. Screw that! We tell them what to do, not the other way around! This ain't a massah/slave deal, none of that plantation action, no thanks!
Giving into this "everything revolves around terrorism" stuff is pure grade-A brainwashed crapola. You are a smart guy, you *really* don't believe all this hysteria crap they have whipped up to control the mouth breathers, do you? I understand the 'tards swallowing it because they think pro rasslin' is real, but not anyone normal who is reasonably intelligent. You can see through it for the extreme power grab and consolidation it really is? The Heglian Dialectic angle? Think about it, really think, imagine you are joe terrorist.. Anyone with a room temp IQ and above, with "tools" available at any qucikstore starting with a cig ligter, working completely alone, could go around the country and commit "acts of terrorism" on a daily schedule. And get away with it. Assymetrical warfare, pretty easy stuff really. So--where's the beef, where are all the attacks from the "OMG fundy islamofascist tarists sleeper cells all over gonna steal our freedom fries and rape the cattle!". Well??? Where are all the attacks?? There aren't any except for over were THEIR nations are being invaded, which is more or less understanable given the context of them..being invaded.
Maybe we have had one or two-maybe-I am still not convinced yet, to me it looks a lot more like a government reichstagg fire inside job.. the evidence we can see points way more to it being an inside job, using some stupid patsies at best.
Anyway, this "terrorism" jazz is primarily pushed for and by the coup plotters and those who profit from this coup takeover, and it really *is* a coup that has happened. They use "terrorist" as this generations buzzword to induce and perpetuate fear, uncertainty and doubt.
It's a scam, man, really, a freakin' scam...
Country Fire Authority and Department of Sustainability and Environment are two pages I have constantly open
First of all, I am John Eberly (I read slashdot, but have never posted) and I hosted this site for free with no advertisements. I grabbed their data every 2 minutes via cron/perl and posted it on my site. I am sure I "saved" them bandwith. Real time police and fire data is nothing new, NYC has both Police and Fire data here... http://gothamist.com/labs/map. Where do they get their data you ask? They subsribe to a server for a $100/year over the internet. I am sure glad the terrorist can't figure that out. Once I had figured out they switched their data feed to a jpeg, I did a quick 30 second google search, apt-get install gocr, etc. and I had the feed again... It was actually even slightly easier than before, not tags and extra junk to strip, just fixed width text. I am a little tired of government crying "terrorism" and implementing worthless security measures. You don't need a "fancy software program" to get the Police/Fire resources tied up, just place about 3-4 bogus phone calls. By the way, my blog has been up/down today, because have some "runaway process on a separate node" according to my VPS. My server easily withstood the 20,000 hits in 12 hours from reddit.
Well, let me give a little firefighter's instinct on this -
> I'll have to start out by saying I'm amazed such information was ever available. I'm just surprised anyone would think to post that for people.
> I have to say I'm with the government on this one. Why does anyone need to know exactly where all the 911 calls are coming from in real time?
You forget that this data is provided BY the government; the government is NOT saying they don't want this public, nor realtime; they are saying that they do not want a 3rd party to one-up their text-based webpage with a google map on a different site. Note well that the government response was NOT taking down the data; the response was to thwart the parsing of it.
So, you are not "with the government" on this one! (and, right or wrong isn't relevent; you simply do NOT agree with them.)
> I can understand why such data should be available, but why not give it a 24 hour delay? There are just SO many uses for this data for evil (where you can torch a house, when you can steal something with few cops nearby, where you can go to ambulance chase the most successfully, etc.)
Again, this isn't relevent to TFA, which discusses someone's use of the data; that the data is "realtime" has no bearing, and this "someone" is merely re-posting data that is publicly provided by the 911 center. The "use for evil" isn't even limited to a realtime feed, either. To ban any data on realtime emergency response means that there must also be a corresponding "news blackout" - after all, as an evil supervillan, I can wait for the fire dept to be stretched with 5 structure fires that drains the district (as you suggest)... or I can wait for a 5 alarm fire, a single large event that drains the district. Oddly, the 5 distinct fires won't make the news. But the big mega-fire will - with live coverage, helicopter-cams, the works, and the whole universe is going to know about it. And I can tell you... the 5 alarmer is a LOT more dangerous (from a complexity standpoint) than 5 distinct calls... if our supervillan wishes to "sneak under the radar", odds are much better during the chaos of the single, large, harder-to-manage event.
So, if this realtime data should be hidden... we likewise need a press blackout. No "live coverage" during fires, no reports of traffic accidents during our treks to work and home. Otherwise, we flatly contradict our reason for "no realtime data", I'm afraid.
A lot of people question why realtime data would be relevent in the first place... and I can tell from the tone of your post, your gut is crawling with the potential for abuse.
But, the data already readily available. It goes across the radio as a dispatch, and for $20 you can listen in. And as mentioned earlier, larger events are on the TV and radio. Of your examples (which are good)... putting this data on the internet enables *nothing*, any more than removing it from the internet *prevents* anything. You can't think of a single reason someone would need this data... I must ask, can you think of one action that removing this data is going to thwart? Just one? Don't feel bad if you can't... I can't, either.
For a 911 center, posting the data would be wonderful. It enables all of the value-adds with no labor on your part - radio station traffic reports, news agencies, even TomTom updates. You can facilitate all that crap, and even have some control over the wording of the information (which is huge, believe me). Or, you can force these same parties to scrape radio traffic for audio snippets, and then deal with the Absolute Joy of them paraphrasing 2nd-hand information that is completely without context. As a 911 center, you can choose one or the other. And, it doesn't seem to be a tough choice. Banning such data to "businesses" is downright silly... since all that does is create an artificial barrier to entry for the hobbiest / amateur-developer-who-wants-to-start-something. And believe me, the bulk of the GOOD fire-service software comes from such pe
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
Just for everyone information, my server was down earlier due to a rogue node on my VPS server (great timing by my host), not slashdotting. Here is my blog post on this issue that started some of this http://blog.eberly.org/2006/10/12/worlds-worst-use -of-a-jpeg
Here are the comments at Reddit.
http://reddit.com/info/lxbt/comments
Reddit sent over 30k hits in a short period to my server and it handled it fine, it just seems every Saturday somebody on my server gobbles up all the resources. I really will never recommend VPS from this host to anyone.
[rant]
I suspect that I'm not the only one whose getting tired of hearing about taking this or taking that away because we're concerned about Terrorists. Terrorism is real, it sucks rocks, but we're living in those times where conventional wars apparently are a thing of the past. We have to get over it and get on with life.
How long are we going to let FUD hang over us and control us? If there's a non-terrorism reason, like you've got alot of people using the data to follow the emergency services and get in the way while gawking at what's going on, then yes, change the policy. Don't throw up a nebulous excuse that 'terrorists will use it!' Then we all go duck and cover and hope we don't get blown up.
Too many people have fought and died for our freedoms. Are we so frightened now, that those lives are meaningless, and we should give up our hard-won freedoms for the illusion of safety?
[/rant]
Sorry. I'm just getting tired of it.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
You can't pop down the street to the cafe and surf the net to see how many hours it will be before the fire truck you paid for with your Seattle taxes actually shows up.
Especially if you're blind or vision-disabled, as graphics won't work properly with their new system.
So, if you're a blind Seattleite, it's NOT an "improvement".
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I use it to stay away from the seen. I heard a lot of sirens in my area 3 months ago, checked my site and saw that is was a major gas leak (12" natural gas line ruptured). I called my girlfriend and sister who were on their way home and told them to stay at work/school. Seattle911.com guy, John Eberly by the way here is the one line way to get the data. curl "www2.cityofseattle.net/fire/realTime911/sfdIncide ntList.jpg" | djpeg -pnm -gray | gocr -
Well, I don't know...as we are aware that Seattle is such a hotbed of terrorist activity.
That's why we haven't got Bin L. yet in the mountains of over Middle East way- he's operating out of the Cascades!
OMG! I'm crawling into my shelter here in Oklahoma right now! *sarcasm off*
WTF? Terrorists responding to fires?- give 'em a hose and let them help fight the fires!
We know that they would not be smart enough to use a scanner, use their ears and follow the sirens, watch the frikken news- but heaven help us if they have access to Google Earth!
Damn, the insanity in this country is starting to drive me crazy.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Rule of thumb in the US seems to be that information cannot be secret unless the government has a "compelling interest" to make it so. It's not up to the public to make the case that they need the information, it's up to the government to show they have a compelling interest in keeping it from them.
I actually contacted the SFD about my site when I first put it together and they liked it. They had no problem with it, but were unwilling to link directly to seattle911.com because they could not ensure the integrity of the data. I responded that I totally understund their viewpoint. I grabbed their data every X minutes and some people visited my site. So, every visitor to my site used my bandwidth that I paid for, not the governments. (It makes you wonder why I wasted money on this). Now, the city would like to prevent sites like mine and the visually impaired by providing a jpeg instead of text. Well, this doesn't prevent me from using the data (curl/gocr, etc) and it requires 8 times more bandwidth to serve the jpegs. Not to mention the time for the developers and the software expense (I sure hope they didn't buy software to convert jpeg to text, but I wouldn't be surprised). All of which, must be paid by the taxpayers of Seattle. I personally wish they would spend more money on firemen salary and equipment and less of paper-pushers.
The kind of thinking on display here frightens the hell out of me.
"If we're not a first responder, why do we need the info in real time? "
"'ll have to start out by saying I'm amazed such information was ever available"
"Is it important to know, in real-time, where emergency crews are? "
"There is no way that 911 call information should be available at anything approaching real-time data"
This is completely ass-backwards.
There should be no need for me to prove that data, _any_ government data, should be available to me.
The government needs to prove there is a compelling reason for them not to make it available.
This sort of data serves some useful purposes and some not so useful purposes, in terms of tracking allocation of resources, seeing where hotspots are, knowing where that firetruck that just roared past you is going, and yes, pure entertainment.
The governments "counter-argument" consists of bogeymen in a closet.
The idea that anyone could come down on side of the government in this case is, to me, a sad commentary on the willingness of the populace to accept any old excuse that limits their access to the workings of their government.
-ajb
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
...Please look up RCW 42.56.030 and read it. You can look it up at http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/
Its been Washington State law since 1977.
Good question.
I want to give the City of Seattle time to react since most of the press about this was published over the weekend. If I implement the "work around" on my site right away, it doesn't help the majority of people who go directly to the source, and don't use my site.
I hope that the city will reverse their original knee-jerk decision and put up the text feed again. We all need to get practical with our security concerns.