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FCC May Stop 911 Access For NSI Phones
An anonymous reader writes: It's generally known that if you call 911 from a cell phone in the USA, you will be connected to the nearest Public Safety Access Point, whether or not the phone has an active account. This is the basis for programs that distribute donated phones for emergency-only use. However, the FCC has proposed a rule change that would eliminate the requirement for telephone companies to connect 911 calls made by NSI (non-service-initialized) phones. The main reason for the proposed rule change are the problems caused by fraudulent 911 calls made through NSI phones. Yet respondents cited by the FCC show that as many as 30% of 911 calls from NSI phones are for legitimate emergencies. The comment period for the proposed rule change ends on June 6th, 2015.
I would imagine they are much lower, since all those other devices are traceable back to an account holder. Even on prepaids you need to jump through some hoops to get a true "burner" phone that can't be traced back to you.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Except, troll, 70% are not hoaxes. RTFA. Less than 10% are hoaxes, most calls are non-emergency calls, which plenty of people with non-NSI phones make as well.
They're given out free to people in abuse shelters and the homeless which is probably the source of almost all of the legitimate traffic and the majority of the non-legitimate traffic as well (homeless folks tend to have mental problems as the root cause of their homelessness).
As to pranks, we've had E911 as a requirement for over a decade now, shouldn't be too hard to locate the perps if they keep doing it.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
70% are hoaxes.
The number is actually more likely in the range of 90-99%, if the official source is anything to go by. That "30% legitimate" number used in the summary was in regards to one county in Maryland in 2008 that was monitored for just one month, and it stands as an outlier that's an order of magnitude greater than some of the other numbers in the report. Why it was cherry-picked for the summary, I don't know, but here are all of the ones I found in the report (including the outlier):
in late 2006 from jurisdictions in four states, [an earlier report showed] that between 3.5% and less than 1% of 911 calls placed by NSI devices were legitimate calls relating to actual emergencies
Indiana estimated that over 90% of all NSI calls received were not legitimate
North Carolina similarly reported that between May 15, 2008 and June 15, 2008, PSAPs [Public Safety Answering Points, i.e. emergency call centers] across the state received 159,129 calls from NSI devices, of which 132,885, or 83.51%, were non-emergency calls, and an additional 11,395, or 7.16%, were “malicious” non-emergency calls
Tennessee states that during a three-month period in 2008, of over 10,000 NSI calls only 188 were valid emergencies.
Sonoma County, California indicates that between April 2011 and April 2013 only approximately 8% of calls from NSI devices were to report an emergency or crime
California, for example, stated that between October 1, 2007 and May 15, 2008, PSAPs across the state reported 266 active repetitive callers who placed over 77,000 calls to 911, mainly using NSI devices. Of the 266 callers identified, 85 had placed 200 or more calls, and eight callers had made more than 1,000 calls.
Peoria, Illinois similarly asserts that it got numerous calls from NSI phones that were used to harass the 9-1-1 telecommunicators and pump as many as 25 calls per day into Peoria's system, while few if any actual 9-1-1 calls came from these types of phones
Maryland indicated that 30% of calls to 911 from NSI handsets were legitimate in Montgomery County during the one-month period studied in 2008
There were a number of additional statements from various jurisdictions recounting their experiences with NSI E911 calls that used vague terms such as "vast majority", "biggest problem", "totally inundated", "inundated with phone calls from these phones with the only purpose being to harass the call takers/dispatchers", and "fraudulent calls to 911 from NSI devices constitute a large and continuing drain on public safety resources". There were also a number of statements describing the sorts of problems these calls are causing, such as "calls from a single child in one night nearly immobilized the call center's ability to receive actual emergency calls" and "receiving 911 calls from a non-initialized cellular phone [...] tied up one of our 911 trunks and made it unavailable for emergency calls", so it's clear that it's a major drain on their limited resources, since these calls account for a disproportionate amount of the total call volume, yet account for a disproportionately low amount of the legitimate calls.
Here's the other side of the coin you aren't thinking about. This coming from someone who works at a PSAP and answers those emergency lines. First, in my experiences, the number of legit 911 calls from NSI phones is no where close to the 30% cited. It's probably closer to 5-10%. Most are butt dials or kids playing with a deactivated old iphone their parents gave them. The real problem is the amount of time we have to spend dealing with these fraudulent or illegitimate calls from NSI phones. It's time that could be spent, oh I don't know, answering a legitimate call. Instead, I have to rebid the phone to try to get phase 2 location information which is sometimes quick, but other times can take significant time. Not to mention place a call for service which takes time, but also ties up resources that could be better spent, oh, I don't know responding to a legitimate call. Or, its someone who knows they can only dial 911 and abuse that...use your imagination to how that could be used. Although your "what if" is plausible, it's highly improbable. And leaving NSI phones the way they are could cause a delayed response to a legitimate emergency, which could kill someone.
And keep in mind, what I consider a legitimate call isn't necessarily an emergency call either. It's pretty damn rare to get a legitimate emergency call from an NSI phone. Usually it's someone reporting a stolen phone or some other low priority. This isn't about cost effectiveness, it's about efficient use of limited resources. It sucks watching officers do the 911 hangup/open line wild goose chase when there's legit emergencies to respond to.
35% of 911 calls are for non-emergencies, in some areas it's as high as 75%. People call asking for directions and such too. I've called my local police direct number and it gets routed to 911 automatically.
Coming from someone who works at a LE Comm center and has taken a "SWATing call..." the simplest versions are someone using Skype or similar service to dial into a LE non-emergency number. That's how the one call I took worked. We didn't activate SWAT either, it was apparent when officers were on scene nothing was going on. As other have said, the more sophisticated methods involve ANI/ALI spoofing. Not easy, but not impossible. Haven't seen this method used, but heard about it.
We cannot normally get subscriber information on wireless phones. The information we get is the phone number, the tower it's pinging off of, and sometimes location information gained either by triangulation from nearby cell towers or the phones internal GPS. It works this way whether its an activated phone or an NSI phone. So regardless of which, I can get at least some degree of location information off of ANY wireless phone. (The scene in the movie The Call where they say we can't get location information because it's a prepaid is complete bullshit, fabricated for the sake of the plot).
The real issue is having to use finite resources to respond to fraudulent or illegitimate calls. When you consider most police departments and 911 call centers are short staffed as it is, it makes this an even bigger problem.