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Cell Phones, Missing Persons, and Privacy
An anonymous reader sends in a Seattle PI story about the use of cell phone records in missing-person cases. Typically, phone companies turn over location information to police without a warrant if one of their customers is reported missing; the police need only to state that the person may be in danger. In any criminal case, a warrant from a judge would be required before the telcos divulged any information. While in some poster-child cases lives have been saved as a result of this practice, it seems like a class-action lawsuit waiting to happen. It is not a crime to go missing.
It's probably how I'll be found when I crash my car in to a ditch.
No but it is a crime if someone has taken you against your will. They're not investigating the person missing for criminal activity but because they think that they have been victimized. Privacy is great, perspective is even better.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
It's really hard to get worked up about this. If someone is missing, the police look for them. It's great that they use all of their resources. Privacy is great, but so is staying alive.
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
The police can dispense with warrants and procedure in cases where they believe immenent harm is possible.
Also, since we're reading about this in the "Seattle PI", it's worth mentioning that suicide is illegal in the State of Washington and the phone they were tracking belonged to a suicidal young man.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
And I can only assume you won't be charged with a crime for going missing. Not sure what the point of the article is. If you want to "disappear", get rid of your cell phone.
Just wait. There will be a lawsuit where some white woman is found in a ditch somewhere and the family will say they and the police begged for the location, but were denied all information. Lawsuit will ensue. I bet they'll settle, too.
it's unlikely that the police would be able to use any unsavory information they uncovered in any sort of criminal trial. Given that, I can't really get too upset about it.
s/security/freedom/g
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
"Where is this person, we believe him to be in danger" is not "we wish to covertly monitor this person", nor is it "reveal to us this person's whereabouts for the last six months". The police *should* be able to locate people who are believed to be missing, and I'm not very worried about granting them broad powers to go about it. This is a useful task. Assuming the telco isn't enjoined to secrecy, this seems balanced to me.
Yes, it's theoretically possible to parlay powers granted that way into other, less useful acts, but... look, I'm no apologist; I think that many things they do are thoughtless, wicked, and treasonous, but they do have their uses, and in this instance? I'd need to see a case of it being abused, and I'd need it proven that existing case law wasn't sufficient to redress the abuse, before I got too excited about it.
Yahoo! Pipes are awesome. How awesome? http://pipes.yahoo.com/jesdynf/slashdot
If you're that concerned about it, tick a box to say that you do not wish your location be disclosed if you are ever missing.
Prevents lawsuits from the " found in a ditch" mob and the "I don't want to be located" group.
I for one think that this is hardly a stab at liberty, but more a common sense exception when my life may be in danger.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Seems to me that this opens the door for exploitation by many people, including law enforcement, since the police have to accept any and all reports, without any burden of proof on the part of the reporter (while it is illegal to file a false report, the standard is whether or not the reporter knew that the reportee was missing - sort of like he said/she said). But we have to think of the children!
It's not a bug, it's a feature
Why should I have to ask for my freedom?
(Yes, freedom comes with personal responsibilty)
I thought lesson 1 was "Dump the cell phone."
Okay, here comes the big gray area. As much as I love my privacy and hate it being violated, let's be real here. There are times when privacy can be JUSTIFIABLY violated. Especially if the case (I know this wasn't here, but still) involves a person who was in a violent relationship. Or (more towards this case) the person has been depressed or expressed desire to hurt him/her self. There has to be a little bit of a compromise where personal information should be able to be acquired.
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
I have gone out on searches for missing people, including ones that have basically called 911 and was able to say basically "I am stuck in the snow and dieing" but they had no idea where they were. This was before most cellphones had a GPS, and our 911 center had no idea where the call came from. Calling the cell company, we had the Sheriff on the phone along with the parents of the missing kids, and the parents paid the bill, and AT&T would not release the location info. Their friend had another phone provider (MCI? I can't remember it was so long ago), and they released the last location ping to us immediately. We also were able to quickly pull the last credit card purchase from them and figured out between their gas and snack runs and their last cellphone tower used they were probably in a certain camping area. Sure enough, a airplane spotted them shortly after we re-focussed our efforts and a few hours after that the helicopters and ground teams on snowmobiles (of which I was one) reached the party of 6 and was able to pull them all back out to their families. While I am huge on privacy and a person's rights, I also was infuriated when the cell company that was used to make the 911 call for help refused to release the location information to us. I am sure they could have seen that 911 was recently dialed, and having the family members on the phone as well pleading with them to release it to us, they refused. There may be a class action suit on the way for releasing private information, but what about if they don't release it and the victims die? Does the family then sue the cell company for having life-saving information and withholding it, essentially preventing or hampering rescue efforts? Is this the same as not yielding to a fire engine responding to an emergency?
If the telco is required to inform the customer each time their location is provided to law enforcement (or anyone else), that will stop abuse. If I'm stuck in a ditch, a text message to the effect that my location has just been provided to assist in my rescue isn't going to upset me.
Have gnu, will travel.
For those of you who remember this incident a couple of years ago:
http://www.news.com/2100-1028_3-6140118.html
James Kim's family was rescued because of a *single* ping received from a dying cell phone at a remote tower in Oregon.
If you choose to go missing, then you obviously should be allowed to do so. Like anything else you do, you have to be responsible. Cancel your phone, your bank accounts, credit cards, and the like. Use cash to pay for everything for as long as you want to be missing. Leave a note, if you don't want people to think you've been "disappeared"
If you go missing against your will, then the police have every right to search for you. But they cannot know if you choose to go away unless you tell them first.
Police perform searches that would normally be in violation of the 4th Amendment if they were looking for evidence or suspects all the time to check up on people on behalf of worried family members. This is known as a "community caretaking search," and was established as a legal basis for searches in Cady v. Dombrowski.
It's worth noting that 4th Amendment rights almost entirely enforced via evidence suppression motions in criminal trials. If you aren't on trial for a crime, then generally you have no real legal way of challenging a search.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Perhaps there should be a box to check when you sign your contract as to if you prefer privacy or help.
Sigh. An Alaskan trip would be nice right about now. Damn life and all its responsibilities.
If they use that info to find a lost person - cool. Mama and Papa are happy - nice newspaper articles are printed and everyone feels good and shags their squeeze feeling the hero they are.
If any info used for a criminal case is obtained 'illegally' (such as without a warrant) it is declared 'tainted' and is unusable. No one gets shagged, no one's a hero, some DA ripps some one a new ass and whatever nasties were discovered are now protected.
What's the big deal? It's not a perfect system - but parts of it generally do work, now and then.
Senior NCO in the fight against entropy. I've seen things, man. Things no one should have to see.....
I'm pretty sure it's criminally negligent to fail to disclose your whereabouts to people who are likely to worry and file a missing persons' report.
Causing cops extra work for no reward is universally punishable by law, by some strange coincidence.
You can't take the sky from me...
would also help find the occasional kid.
Cell phones with GPS (mandated for our benefit) could also be used to help find missing people, like those terrorists. Terrorists that speak out against the government, or a political party, or anyone claiming to be law enforcement.
Most states have laws which allow state district attorneys to sign a warrant to obtain phone or internet records. A JUDGE'S SIGNATURE IS NOT NECESSARY. There is also a federal version of this law for our attorney friends in federal offices. This whole idea that the information is legally protected is COMPLETE BULLSHIT. NO ISP OR PHONE COMPANY REQUIRES A JUDGE'S SIGNATURE TO OBTAIN RECORDS.
Any Telco/ISP that receives a DA-signed warrant will either 1. comply or 2. get owners/officers dragged into court, and into jail if they refuse to comply.
I know this because I brought such a case to the Oregon ACLU, who was very interested. So intersted that within 12 hours of my detailed e-mail, they asked their lawyers to look at it. The lawyers pointed out the Oregon and federal laws to me, and explained that other states had equivalent statutes. Game over.
The basic case was this: Somebody with a laptop lojack-type tracking software installed had their laptop stolen. The company who managed the tracking software had pinpointed it to an IP address on my network. A Portland, OR police detective then sent an affidavit signed by a Portland DA to get the identity of the user behind this IP address. I refused to give him the information, thinking that there was legal protection for my network user. The detective threatened to drag me into court and so I contacted the ACLU. The ACLU's contact page said I should wait up to 36 days to get a reply. This was around 8 PM. At 8:30 AM the next morning, the office of the director called me back with a keen interest in the case. Cool, eh?
hen, their lawyers got involved. They informed me of the multitude of laws which make this perfectly legitimate activity. This was not the answer I expected (and apparently not the answer that the Oregon ACLU director's office expected, either, because they completely lost interest.) They also told me that the threats to force us to appear in court over the matter were no joking matter.
In the end, we never heard from the customer that we outed, or at least they still pay their bill. So, it may have worked out ok for everyone. Anyways, the guys who are out there selling anyone's phone records for the asking are doing the same thing with the carriers - pretending to be district attorneys, not judges.
There is "missing", and there is "missing". I, too, have been on searches (sometimes with S&R) for missing people. But a 911 call or a child missing is a VASTLY different situation from someone who has simply "vanished" and nobody has seen them for a day or two.
As I have mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I have been the victim of illegal search by overzealous law enforcement. And if I find out that somebody has illegally accessed or searched my phone records (or other private records), then they would get sued. Period. I would use the best lawyer I could manage to retain, and I would go for the throat.
Again, your situation was a 911 call, and you were right to be furious. But the primary matter under discussion here is VERY different.
And I can answer one of your questions above quite easily: the cell phone company is prohibited by law from disclosing those phone records. You would not get anywhere suing them for complying with the law. But you could most likely sue them for violating it by giving up your records without a warrant.
And no, in the vast majority of cases it is nothing at all like not yielding to a fire engine that is responding, because they are very seldom "911" situations. And if they are, the police CAN typically get an "emergency" warrant in under an hour. So the illegal search is STILL not justified.
If you are stuck in a ditch and can receive a text message, then there is no need for them to track you down.
:0)
Okay, okay, I guess you meant get a text message later. I can buy that.
I am disappearing on purpose. Have a nice day. Sincerely, Jane.
Come on, folks! It's painless! And if we could implant them ALL as soon as they are born, we might be able to save as many as 10 or 12 lives every year!
Maybe you are right in Oregon, but hardly everywhere. A DA-signed document is not a "judicial warrant". That would be like allowing the head County prosecutor to authorize searches in criminal cases... and that would be ridiculous. Further, there ARE communications companies that refuse to give over records without a judicial warrant (QWEST was a recent high-profile example).
So maybe Oregon has such state laws, but in my state that would never fly.
There are a number of federal laws, also, that make it ILLEGAL for at least some communications companies (telephone companies in particular) to turn over records without a warrant. (And by warrant I mean a normal judicial warrant, authorized by a judge with jurisdiction.)
Perhaps these same "common carrier" laws do not apply to ISPs... but they should.
If a person was kidnapped then they would take the phone off the victim? If a person went missing then they don't want to be found? If a person is lost then they deserve to be?
Good luck with that.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I suspect that the TOS allow it (or would quickly get a clause to that effect). Then the ball is in your court.
If you want to disappear without your family being able to find you, just get yourself a new cell phone. It seems kind of stupid to keep running around with the old one anyway.
Hmmm.... I read your post again and noticed that there is a lot you did not say.
Was the information requested as part of the discovery process in an ongoing trial? If so, then a subpoena is all that is necessary, not a warrant.
Did the owner of the equipment give consent to have his property tracked? (Probably, if it was LoJacked.) If so, then the IP that it was sending from might NOT be considered private information at all, and a warrant would not be necessary! After all, it is the owner's equipment. He should be able to waive all the privacy he wants related to his property. An ISP's user account still does not tie an IP to a particular individual, as has been clarified many times in the courts just recently. Even so, if the equipment owner does not want his information private, I do not see how a thief could then claim that privacy rights prevent that information from being given over.
And so on. There are a number of circumstances that might form exceptions to the usual privacy rules. But that doesn't mean they apply to the general case.
so I tried to disappear.. planned everything out booked travel online paid by credit card at hotels kept my cellphone turned on and with me... SOMEHOW??? they found me...??? must have been the god damned cell?
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
Sign a place on your cell contract that either permits or denies permission to use your records in the event you go missing. Seems easy enough.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
I'm not sure I care, so long as they ask first. Specifically, call me up and ask me if it's ok for them to check where I am. If I answer, it makes both of our lives simple (well, assuming they follow my directions as to the checking part, who knows, I may not know where I am and be quite happy for them to tell me). If I don't answer, then likely I want to be found as the damned phone is pretty much attached to me. But, if I don't want to be found, the phone will be sitting at home, amusing my cat (or I do want to be found but my kidnapper read this post).
Realities just a bunch of bits.
The telcos could ask for who (family, work) reported the person in question missing (including contact information), go check the information (maybe a special independent organization needed to do the checking).
Now, the telcos should only be allowed to turn over that information if the information is correct and confirmed.
This should raise the bar for abuse by the police.
Let me give you a completely different perspective.
When I go somewhere and I don't want people to know where I am (or I don't want to be disturbed), I travel "light" - no mobile/cell phones. There's a catch: this is usually within the city limits.
When I'm out in the country side or at most other times, I travel with my mobile phone knowing full well that it is a "personal tracking device." It serves as a way for me to make an emergency phone call (if I'm able to) and as a way for people to have some idea of where I might be if I'm missing for longer than I should.
The point is, I don't know when I might go missing or where that will happen or where I'll be when I run into trouble. If I could plan it, I'd make sure it was outside a hospital or clinic - but I can't.
The police (in general) have better things to do than try and track where each of the millions of mobile phone subscribers are every second of the day, so I'm all for them using phone tower information to try and find someone if someone is reported as "missing." Maybe I'm putting too much faith in police, but I'm expecting that they will do the "are you family/empoler/relative" kind of filtering before they undertake trying to find me.
I suppose the real question about this is if there is a warrant out for your arrest, you've skipped bail or failed to show up at a police station on a "checkin day" as part of your bail, do they have the right to use this kind of information to check up on you?
And I think the answer to that is this goes back to being a criminal problem and that evidence needs to be gained by the police through lawful measures (ie warrants) to be accepted by the courts. Using mobile phone information to locate someone who is missing is qualatively different.
The interesting question would be if you've been kidnapped, mobile phone data leads the police to you and the kidnappers, can the kidnappers be arrested if the police didn't get a warrant for using the mobile phone tower data first?
Well, that's a bit of a false dichotomy there. There are about 6 billion shades of grey between 100% social, sharing every single moment with everyone, and 100% paranoid, affraid of everything that moves.
And even for a given person there are nuances in how much you trust them. It doesn't have to be all or nothing, either you broadcast every waking moment and detail of your life to them, or you fear them and hide from them.
E.g., I trust mom, but I wouldn't tell her my passwords. I don't "hide" from her, I don't "fear" her, and I certainly don't have any "delusions of grandeur", but it's just something that she doesn't need to know and accidentally end up telling everyone she knows. (For all her good intentions, she _is_ a terminal chatterbox and sometimes her mouth gets a whole lap ahead of her judgment.)
E.g., I trust grandma, but I wouldn't necessarily tell her each time I took a taxi to the railway station. She's seen a great depression as a child, and then a war, and still has certain... immutable ideas about money management, which would make the stereotypical Scotsman look positively spendthrift. So I'm just avoiding an unnecessary talk about how not only it's an abomination to blow a few euros on the taxi.
And from there it's even more shades of grey when it comes to who is entitled to know what. If you get far enough from there, some people don't need to know anything about me. A few people _are_ to be avoided.
And the implication is starting to somewhat bother me that, basically, if you want any privacy at all, then you're one of those guys that "live our lives in fear and have to hide from each other." It's just called being realistic enough, not being a paranoid hermit.
So let's lay that fallacy to rest already. So you have friends and talk to them. Even on the phone. Big deal. We all do. So you look out for each other. Big deal. Again, we all do. It still doesn't automatically overrule all and every privacy concerns. You don't need to be paranoid and afraid to not broadcast every moment of your life, you just need to be realistic enough.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
> it seems like a class-action lawsuit waiting to happen
Yeah.. all the people who's children are lost are really going to try and sue to the phone companies for giving out the last known location of their children without a judge's warrant. Very likely.
...drop off the grid and STAY OFF THE GRID. Don't use your SSN. Don't open or use a bank account. Don't take out medical insurance. Don't use a contract phone. Don't have a landline. Don't use email. Don't do anything other than hard cash. OK, this makes life insteresting, but to truly disappear into the crowd, you need to be just another anonymous face.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Sorry for trotting out that old cliche, it has very little to do with my opinion, but we must supply a subject so there you go.
... but then authority comes along and abuses that priviledge for whatever purpose THEY deem to be valid, and screw up the whole thing.
In my opinion, where a minor is involved, i.e. still the legal responsibility of a parent / guardian, the privacy rights of the minor are decided by that parent / guardian.
However if the missing person is not a minor, then they have every right to their privacy too.
Just as in a hospital, a consent form must be signed before an operation by either the person in question or parent / guardian in the case of minors, then this should ALSO apply before a cell company hands over the private records of an individual.
It's a double edged sword, balancing the privacy of the individual against the possible benefits to police / other authorities in tracking them down in emergency cases.
But given authorities appauling record when it comes to the rights of an individual, who defines WHAT is constituted as an "emergency"
They are missing ?
They are suspected of a crime ?
They didn't pay their taxes ?
They have a goatee and kneel down to pray on a mat ?
If only the bloody authorities could be trusted to behave in the manner we elected them to behave in, this wouldn't even be a topic for discussion. Common sense says that it might be useful to find someone by their cell records
Why can't we simply set up a special system by which a judge is able to issue some sort of special warrant on extremely short notice for cases that are extremely time-sensitive (eg. missing persons)?
At the very least, this would leave a paperwork trail, protect the rights of the person being searched, and hold the investigators accountable for their actions.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
belonged to AN ALLEGEDLY suicidal young man
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
It is not a crime to go missing. - yeah, ass, I'm pretty sure it _is_ a crime.
Also, it's damn expensive; both for your family, and for the rescue services trying to find you.
I've only been a firefighter for a couple of years, and have only had at max two missing persons cases - none of which involved any sort of cell phone or record search... (did involve an autistic child, however) - but I can tell you that as a rescue worker, if I was trying to find someone and the cell phone company didn't release records in time, I am sure someone would sue for the PTSD that would come from finding a child's corpse in the woods that probably would have lived if the phone company got its head out of its ass.
... consists of technology as the scalar and human mind as the vector.
You're missing the point. If an adult decides to drop contact with their family and friends, move to another town and start work as a waiter, they have committed precisely no crimes. Firefighters don't comb woods for that: it's a regular event. If there are dependent children then, depending on the law in the country you live in, it's possible you might be financially or criminally liable (oddly, the first parent to leave financially, the second criminally) and if you're married then, depending on your local divorce laws, you might be liable. But if a single man or woman over 18/21/whatever who doesn't have (or continues to pay) debts decides to break contact with their parents and friends, then that's nobody else's business. As an extension, cases in which couples and their children break contact with one or both sets of parents (ie the children's grandparents) are not uncommon, especially in mixed culture marriages.
OK, I know this is off topic, but if suicide is illegal in the state of Washington, can someone please tell me what the "punishment" for attempted suicide is (since successful suicide would appear to be too late)?
I'm genuinely curious; this is not meant to be a troll. Hopefully some meaningful intervention is mandated to help the victim.
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
The FIRST thing I'd get rid of is my cell phone, followed by my credit and debit cards. Then I'd buy (with cash) a bus ticket to Winnemucca, Nevada.
It's real easy to disappear when you're in the middle of nowhere.
What?
Even if the telephone companies can sell the information, that does not mean that "the authorities" have automatic access... as strange as that may seem.
Though they might be able to buy it. And that is fucked up enough.
Another worthless flamebait article on Slashdot this morning imagine that. Slashdot needs to add the Microsoft to their company name somewhere or pay them royalties or something. The have a MS bash every 5 minutes now. The first 1,000,000 that I read were entertaining. The last 500,000,000 are starting to get a little old.
Most people cannot turn their cell phones off.
In the movies, in the classroom, while paying at the cash register.
I read somewhere that youth craves constant companionship and hates being alone. Well, call me old. I value my solitude. I do not need to be talking to someone every minute of my drive to/from work. Mostly, when my cell phone rings, it is someone asking me to do something for them. So I have no problem turning the thing off for days at a time. Saves on the bill too.
If you do not want to be tracked, take the battery out of your cell phone, drive a car made before 1990 (or about then), obey all traffic laws, use only cash, be polite, but not memorable. (They said something like the last part to Matt Damon in Ocean 11.)
- I live the greatest adventure anyone could possibly desire. - Tosk the Hunted
I read a lot of the comments and nobody has mentioned that the police did have reason to believe it was an emergency. If you read the article, the fellow was distraught, hinting at suicide and didn't show up at a meeting with his mother as planned. Of course the police acted. A lot of people here are arguing from very abstract positions when the reality of the situation is a whole lot less intrusive.
The simple solution is to send all phone customers a form: ...."
"In the event of incapacity or that I am declared missing by the police, the following people have permission to request release of private phone data:
Then do a publicity effort to encourage people to send in the form.
Also, have a blanket policy that parents of minor children have this permission unless applicable law says otherwise.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Your post indicates that you think that a person does not have the right to take their own life (i.e, it is an emergency and they need to be saved them from themselves).
I don't think this forum is appropriate to debate whether or not a person does have such a right, but it would probably help to understand the other posts if you realize that many people consider suicide to be an inalienable right.
It's not a right in Oregon. In fact, it's specifically against the law there (and in many other States).
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
The critical question is not why the cell phone records are released, but what records exist and why they exist. News reports often state that, at the very beginning of an investigation, law enforcement had information such as "the last time this person's phone pinged a tower was in Bridgehampton three days ago at noon." Wireless carriers can't predict who might be investigated, so this may imply long-term storage of every person's location. Questions include: A. Can I compel my carrier to tell me what information it currently retains about my own previous locations? B. How about other people's locations, with a civil subpoena? C. Is my carrier using my historical location data for its own internal purposes (marketing, etc.)?
The cops shouldn't need a warrant (signed out by a judge), but they should definitely be signing an affadavit, the first part of the process. The cop is absolutely swearing that to the best of his knowledge the person being sought is likely in danger and the search is official business. There are too many real life incidents where people abuse searches for personal gain (hello UCLA medical). And cops are known to be just as jealous of their spouses as anyone else. A fake request could just be someone checking on a wayward soon-to-be-ex that didn't come home last night. Not exactly missing, just spending the night at a "friend's".
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
I can't believe I am typing this, but according to your logic if the law says that slavery is legal then it means that people don't have a basic human right to not be slaves.
In my country at least (Portugal) the police will track anyone missing, but they can't legally tell anybody else where that person is unless the person allows them. Unless it's a minor, of course...
The most they will tell the family by default is "we found it, and it's alive and well".
You cannot proceed from the informal to formal by formal means
The ethical dilemma is that, if a person goes missing they may or may not be in danger so if you violate their privacy by tracking them down with their cellphone you're only justified if they were in danger. If they just decided they wanted to leave their town without telling anyone, you've committed a huge breach of their personal privacy for nothing. I usually find it best to err on the side of privacy rather than safety.
First, your logic fails in that the desire for rescue is nearly always greater than the desire for privacy, especially given the fact that a cell phone may be turned off or the battery removed if true isolation and privacy is desired by the individual.
Second, your conclusion that it is best to err on privacy is ludicrous. If harm should befall an individual you will be sued by the family, a jury will be highly sympathetic and likely to award a large judgement against you. In contrast, a person who sues because their privacy was intruded upon will most likely fail to persuade a jury when you state that family and law enforcement told you that the customer was in immediate peril. Your decision to provide information would be most likely considered reasonable. More importantly, you probably anticipated something like this put a clause into the subscriber contract that you would assist in rescues, etc.
I pulled the description directly from the news article so you are really reaching trying to read my opinion on suicide. But you can read in what the authorities knew at the time they started searching for him which many people would consider serious if not emergency. It appears that the police are following a reasonable procedure when dealing with missing people. Could it be more formally and perhaps uniformly codified. Certainly. Could there be an abuse. Certainly. Could a third party nefariously trace someone? Obviously yes, by providing misleading and false information to authorities. All I'm saying is in this situation, the authorities don't seem out of line.
To me, he fact that their phone is on but they are not answering sounds like there is a good probability that they are in trouble and therefore are not able to answer. If they really didn't want to talk to anyone, why not just turn the phone off?
I'm pretty sure it's criminally negligent to fail to disclose your whereabouts to people who are likely to worry and file a missing persons' report.
Source, please? I've never heard of such a thing in the U.S.
From the article: "Missing persons cases present an unusual problem for police -- it's not a crime to disappear."
It may be thoughtless and even cruel, but it's not criminal, and probably not even civilly actionable.