Slashdot Mirror
NYC 911 to Accept Cellphone Pics and Video
SpaceAdmiral writes "New York City is developing a plan to allow images to be sent to 911 emergency operators from cellphones. This will likely give emergency operators better information to pass along to responders. They're also planning on implementing a program of street-corner video cameras, as seen in the city of London. According to John A. Feinblatt, Mayor Michael Bloomberg's criminal justice coordinator: 'The more information that the police have and the more quickly that they get it, the more likely that they are going to fight a crime.'" How practical do you think it is to expand this sort of project to cities across the country? Moreover, is it worth the expense?
I for one welcome our Dispatcher Overlords. Oh, wait, I'm a Dispatcher! BOW DOWN BEFORE ME SWINE! McF
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
They're also planning on implimenting a program of streetcorner video cameras, as seen in the city of London.
...'How practical do you think it is to expand this sort of project to cities across the country? Moreover, is it worth the expense?' But rather, do we want to live in a police state?
There is a much better article on News.com.com: New York to use cell phone photographers to help fight crime
The service is to be implemented by PowerPhone which has a Press Release here: Technology delivers cell phone photos to 9-1-1 operators
Have you read my journal today?
Anyway. I wonder what the cell phone company will charge you for sending a video clip to the 911 service. :P
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
How practical do you think it is to expand this sort of project to cities across the country?
Very. Chicago is, I understand, laying a massive fiber loop for just this purpose. I don't know how far advanced their scheme is though. It is interesting that cities around the country are cutting back on public services, and yet still have plenty of money to spend spying on us.
Moreover, is it worth the expense?
Nope.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I think this is ingenious. A very good idea. This will help police get a visual aid.
And yet another instance in a long line extending back perhaps as far as civilization in which personal freedoms are traded off under the guise of short-term security. It pains me to no end to see the citizenry erode its own independence like this.
This will no doubt stop a few crimes, but is it worth the costs?
Honestly, as trifling as it seems and may be, shit like this is why I will never bring children into this world.
Perhaps life really is full of possibilities.
Did anyone read this and think WTF? So police don't fight crime if they don't have cell phone pics to solve it for them? Great.
Worth the expense to who? The taxpayers, or law enforcement?
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
One aspect of this that could be especially valuable is for the Emergency Medical Services side of 911. I'm a Firefighter/EMT, and responding to a call, the more information we have the better, and pictures/videos could definitely be useful. Often times we get dispatched for things like a hemorrhage or amputation, and its not clearly communicated to us responders what we are going to find - whether it is just someone that lost a fingertip, or if their whole arm is gone (which understandably affects what we'll bring with us to the scene as well as how we manage the whole call. My guess is this probably mostly a result of the people on scene (understandably) freaking out in an emergency and not being able to clearly communicate the severity/magnitude of an incident, so if they could send 911 operators a picture, that would help a lot.
Considering how often we hear about people calling 911 for driving directions or other ridiculous reasons, I can't help but wonder when dispatchers will start getting stuff like tubgirl...
Does this mean they will shoot less bullets into unarmed grooms?
While I agree that the privacy issues are a little scary, I do think it would be great if there were a medical emergency (or maybe a fire) and 911 operators could get more information that way.
Maybe they could offer better advice if someone needed CPR or poison care, or something.
So I've seen.
mainly, because what if i can't talk on the phone eg home invasion and i'm hiding or i'm mute or something.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Even wiht cell phone video and stills, the police cannot respond fast enough to prevent an unarmed person from becoming a victim, and a statistic. We should all have the unrestrained right to defend ourselves, and go out strapped. Just showing a potential attacker that you are carying on your belt is enough to make him melt away.
Street corner video cameras prety much everywhere in the UK from the smallest towns to the largest citys, We live under the eye of big brother over here
Paul Gogarty
Orwell, 1984:
"The children, on the other hand, were systematically turned against their parents and taught to spy on them and report their deviations. The family had become in effect an extension of the Thought Police. It was a device by means of which everyone could be surrounded night and day by informers who knew him intimately."
Ben Franklin:
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"
I personally think that cell phone images should have been implemented to be received by 911 long before this... and wish it had. My biggest concern.. though it is not likely.. would be what if the images are altered. By this, I mean, it is not unreasonable to think that there is a part of the population (although not a majority) who could possibly alter the images before it is sent to 911.
If.. an image was altered before it was sent to 911.. that could change the outcome of what would happen. For instance.. it could change the fact that an innocent be portrayed to be the person commiting the crime. Though as I said, it is not likely by a majority, but it is a possibility. I would hope that there are people on top of things that would be able to tell an image that is caught live vs one that has been altered before submitted.
Could these images received by 911 - like voice calls are - be submitted as evidence in a courtroom afterwards.. and if so, will the authenticty be able to be proven?
Not that I am against this.. for I am all for it. But along with new technology as this being able to be submitted.. you also run the risk of fradulent images being submitted as well.
On the other hand, this opens a whole new door of being able to identify the criminal or warning emergency works on what they are getting into. One of the worst parts of responding to 911 calls - especially for domestics - is not knowing what you are getting into arriving at the scene. This really could be a very positive thing!
... and a spell checker to provide correct spelling for Slashdot posts.
I wouldn't want to go out packing, for the simple fact that the weapon would more than likely be taken from me by the assailant. Sure, I could spend a lot of time and money learning how to use the gun, how to defend myself and the gun from having it taken away from me, etc, but I don't want to spend my whole life doing nothing but learning how to defend myself. And I sure as hell don't like the idea of a small mugging, where some thug punches me in the nose and steals my iPod, turning into a shooting, where some thug punches me in the nose, steals my iPod and my gun, and then shoots me with it. At least (although I'd be out an iPod and I might need my nose set) I would probably get to go home that night.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
Jeeze arent we just getting closer and closer of George Orwell's fears of the future.
Thanks for the pointer to the PowerPhone press release. What's interesting to me here is that this technology has a shelf life of maybe two years. As it stands, the Cell phone networks are moving from circuit-switched calls to voice over IP; with VoIP,
SIP signalling is used to connect the two end points with whatever types of media are negotiated. With that in place, you can
initially negotiate only the voice side (a codec like AMR or EVRC), then later issue a re-invite to negotiate video codecs (if appropriate). You can also use SIP's message service (A.K.A. SIMPLE) to send still photos; alternatively, many networks offer MMS, which is similar to email (except in charging model).
The number of SDOs already developing work for VoIP is very high: 3gpp and 3gpp2 (cell phone standards groups ); NENA (the
U.S. emergency folks), ETSI-EMTEL (the European emergency folks); the IETF (in the ECRIT working group, as well as the SIP and
SIPPING working groups).
Nothing about having the right to do something, means you have to do it.
E.g., I think a woman should be able to have an abortion, even though I am not a woman and therefore cannot ever exercise that right. Just because it would seem on the surface not to be a particularly useful right to me, personally, doesn't change the fact that I think it ought to exist.
Saying 'well, I wouldn't use it, therefore why care if I have the right to do it?' is both narrow-minded and dangerous.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I think "Cops" has just got a new more entertaining angle...
20th century Marxism is not progress...
How much does a human life cost, exactly? Can you trade them on the stock market? Does the value depreciate with time?
could it be?
Drugs can be patented; this usually makes them expensive.
Soldiers go to war with the shoddiest equipment a billion dollars can buy.
People all over the world starve because they can't afford food, or because greedy people refuse to distribute the food because they aren't getting their cut.
There are all sorts of examples of human life costs due to price tags--that's not the argument-finishing riposte you think it is. I don't like putting a cost on human life myself, but running _that_ up the flagpole isn't the way to approach this situation, especially with the huge, glaring privacy concern with the little "oh, and a camera on every corner" tacked on to the end.
How soon before you start seeing this hardware on ebay? I don't know that Londoners (??) would be apt to steal such equipment, but I can absolutely see it happening in NYC.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
lots new fines for crimes on camera, all those jaywalkers = profit! because its easy to do, feel the mu
bring bak the ponies!!
NYC is already covered in security cameras, though the situation isn't quite as bad as it is in London yet. Still, the idea that anyone could look at the situation in London and think that's a good model to base your own project on is frightening.
Secure beneath the watchful eyes indeed.
I listen to my scanner here in Ellensburg frequently. Usually something happens, like a hit and run, and the police are off searching for a vehicle that fits a usually broad description. People generally do NOT have time to snap off a pic of a criminal event occuring, BUT IF THEY DID, they could use their own picture taking device to zoom in and get say... a license plate number... and report the same infomation to police moments later on either another cell phone or after calling back 911. If they are laying out millions of dollars for this I say it's a waste. But if they're spending a small amount of money, and the major carriers and cell phone manufacurer's build this into their products, it could have some usefulness, but on a limited scope. Any benefits received from such a system would not outweigh the negatives of living in an Orwellian society, where camera's are on every corner and if you piss off the wrong person, prior image "evidence" can be used to persecute you... And no, I don't think saying such a system of camera's on every corner leads to an Orwellian society is a slippery slope fallacy.
I've read Slashdot for the last 5 years, and now I start posting... Go figure
I also am a fulltime FF/EMT. If there was one thing that cell phone users could do to help, it would be a law requiring callers to stay on the scene when they call in something. You would not believe the number of calls we get for a dead guy (who is really a drunk guy asleep against a building or a tired traveler sleeping in their car), smoke investigations which turn out to be smoke from a fire place, odor investigations which can not be found at all, car wrecks which can't be found. Many times we are sent on a wild goose chase because the information we got from the caller isn't enough for us to locate the complaint. Having the caller stick around to point out what they found or educate them on their stupid call in so they don't do it again would be great. I can see where it could be usefull for having pictures or video sent in. We have computers on our apparatuses that send us information from dispatch. Getting a picture of a reported sturcture fire where you can see flames coming out of the windows could aid in planning and requesting additional resources early. This is opposed to the call for a structure fire when its really just some dummy who left their beans on the stove too long and smoked up the whole apartment. One engine can take care of that instead of having an entire first alarm respond to take a smoking pot out of the building.
One day while walking my dog I found what I thought were some explosives in a dump site. Took a picture and emailed it to the police along with a Google maps shot of exactly where it was. The local bomb squad chaps were around in jig time to pick me up to take them to the exact site incase they could not find it and blew the stuff up.
They liked the idea of the photos because they could actually see the problem and they did not have to rely on a probably unreliable witness that might have wasted their time.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
to goatse 911, and how exactly would they deal with it?
I'm not sure about anywhere else, but I know Baltimore, MD already has a system of "blue-light" cameras in place on some street corners (which would seem like a more relevant example than London, considering London isn't even in the United States).
Parent says: "this will: waste tax payer money, inconvenience innocent people, and have zero impact on actual criminals."
This has a significant impact on criminals. I speak from experience.
I own a business across the street from an unused building. For years it has been a site for heroin dealing, vandalism, muliple assults and batteries, and at least one mugging. I got a netcam, put the camera feed live on a web site, and informed anybody who cared to listen ( this included neighbors, cops, drug sellers and buyers, etc ). It took several months for people's behavior to change ( which was odd...I expected it to change almost overnight ) But now all we have is an occasional vagrant.
BTW, I share the concern, expressed by several posters, that cameras can be misused. The solution is to make them all public netcams, available to anyone with a browser. The cops can use information, but it is less likely for them to misuse it, because anybody could have copies.
I lived in New York for thirteen years, and I've been living in London for almost ten years now.
If you've ever been to London you'd notice cameras are either 1) Positioned on poles, really, really high up - some as high as fifty feet. Or 2) low lying cameras are arranged in pairs so one includes the other in its field of vision.
So you either can't steal them because they are too high up, or if in snatch range you'd be filmed stealing them. And keep in mind some are monitored by humans, so as soon as you setup your stepladder The Police are on their way.
A message from our sponsor
..put up in a public place until we have one installed in EVERY government office in the land, so that "we the people" can monitor OUR EMPLOYEES.
So what happens when you send a pic to 911 of the cop about to bust yer chops for sending pics with yer cell phone?
Fer some reason, I get mental images of cats with buttered toast strapped to their backs...
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
I just don't get why this tradeoff is necessary.
If police respond to too many bogus or non-priority complaints, they need to come up with a system or penalty that addresses that.
If they need to prioritize severity of complaints being considered for immediate response, I don't see how a cell phone photo or street-corner camera is going to provide an accurate enough assessment to make that kind of critical determination.
If there simply aren't enough police to cover a territory, then tell the taxpayers they need to provide more police.
This is exactly how big brother measures get implemented and it's totally predictable. At first there is a good cause, and eventually once the system is in place it gets abused.
if I correctly remember the figure my Engineering Economics professor said state governments typically use to decide trade-offs between safety improvements on a road, intersection, etc. vs. fatality reuctions.
Pics or it didn't happen.
From Wikipedia: New York City has an estimated gross city product of $457.3 billion(2006), larger than the GDP of Switzerland ($377 billion). If it were a country, the city's economy would be 17th largest in the world, and at $56,000 per person, New York would have the second highest per capita GDP in the world after Luxembourg.
Translation: there are a lot of things that might make economic sense in NY that don't make sense anywhere else in the world. I don't mind a few cameras to make the city safer, though I'd like rules on the lifetime of stored footage. Eighteen months, unless the footage is in use for an in-the-works legal action/investigation and there's a court order to hold it, maybe?
Of course, I *also* wouldn't mind if NYC took a bit of the money and paid down the national debt. (I'm not sure about the city's own budget.) Our national debt is ridiculous, and is going to bite us someplace rather tender eventually if we don't take care of it.
How many assaults, and even murders NYC will have just because someone snapped a pic of someone during a crime? Many will start buying those phones just because of the stats for the picture quality, and hit the streets. I just wonder if this will cause assaults just because the one doing the crime went after the person snapping away?
The other thing I wonder about is... will more people just take pictures of the crime, and ignore trying to give assistance or aide to those that were victims?
How hard would it be to buy a pay-as-you-go-phone,
load it up with some photoshopped images,
and then dupe the 911 operators?
Seems like 911 might be getting a lot of crank callers...
"Look! Hillary Clinton is trying to break into the White House!'
That said, 10-20 years down the proposition is a bit scarier. I for one will be wearing a ski-mask everywhere.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
I was reading this thinking "That sounds like a good idea, although I don't know how feasable it would be, and whether better advice could really be given to people needing an ambulance than is already the case, because the person calling is not trained and experienced at medicine in the field and is therefore incapable of performing some kind of drastic surgery or something".
Then I read on...... to the effing POLICE??! "Help, my stuff has been robbed! What's that? Send a photo? Of what? An empty house? You'll see it in a few minutes anyway!"
(and I'm sure that people close enough for long enough to get a good photo are already busy getting mugged or raped, something which admittedly the criminal would obviously want to get captured on a phone, but I think they would prefer it on their drugged up mate's phone rather than the victim's, because "Send it me wiv bluetoof or else!" is not a threat that can be taken seriously)
How can somebody grab your gun if they are dead?
You don't show the gun unless you are willing to shoot.
Once you show the gun, the shooting is automatic if they approach you or if they start to pull out a gun.
If you don't get the gun out until you're already in a fight, you just shoot.
It's rather unlikely that you'd need to shoot though. You can expect an "Oh, fuck!" or "Sorry!", maybe a nervous smile, maybe hands up, maybe running from you. Of course, you do have to be ready to fill the bastard with 15 shots to the chest if the unexpected happens.
Why does this article have a "bigbrother" tag? Allowing people to send images to 911 operators will only assist them in resolving problems or dispatching the right kind of help faster than they currently can. And putting video cameras in the streets is simply smart. Nobody could claim that their privacy is at risk when the cameras only monitor public places, and it'll drastically cut down the rate of street crimes, as it has done in London. The only people afraid of being recorded in public have something unlawful to hide, and message boards like this help to point out who those people are. Just look for the "they're taking away my privacy!" outcries.
911: Nine-one-one. What is the nature of your emergency?
Caller: Help! I've been abducted! Someone stuck me in their car trunk and is driving away!
911: Okay, sir. Where are you right now?
C: Where am I? I'm in the trunk. Hold on...
911: What kind of car is it? What color is it? Did you get the license plate number?
C: [rustling sounds]
911: Sir, are you still there? Did you get a good look at the abductor(s)? What do they look like?
C: Wait a sec... [more rustling, then keypad tones]
911: What the hell is this?
C: There. I just used my cameraphone to send you a photo of the inside of the trunk. Now how long will it take for you guys to rescue me?
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
A good feature of the NY 911 cell phone plan is that citizens send images when they choose and a good feature of the permanent cameras is that they operate as a deterrent.
But these can be combined, as they are in the design of a research project called Video 911. It sends data before something has happened, but only when someone on the ground feels a threat to safety. When you launch the app on the phone it begins transmitting video and sound to a call center. The user holds a button on the phone to signal that they still have control. When they release the button, they have a short window to type in a code to neutralize the recording. Otherwise it is inferred that they have lost control (or choose to signal some emergency) and the video and GPS data are passed on to an operator who decides whether to dispatch police.
It's more little brother than big brother. More details are in the paper and presentation.
So you either can't steal them because they are too high up, or if in snatch range you'd be filmed stealing them. And keep in mind some are monitored by humans, so as soon as you setup your stepladder The Police are on their way. Ski mask and quickness. It's really not all that difficult.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Heavy. Metal. Bolts.
It doesn't happen in London; why would it happen in New York?
Criminals are the same everywhere. The New York criminal element isn't endowed with some "world class competitive advantage, shees!
No, sorry, I don't see large scale theft of cameras happening in New York as it doesn't already happen in London. Sure, an odd camera here and there, the low-lying fruit (i.e., cameras on 50' poles wont' be stolen at all). Maybe they'll even get away with it who knows?
But keep in mind these cameras are in public places; can't hardly stroll up in your ski mask without totally panicking the public can you?
A message from our sponsor
These links about government surveys show that CCTV has almost no effect on crime.
link, link, link (PDF), link, link (PDF).
Reduce, reuse, cycle