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Apple Refuses To Enable iPhone Emergency Settings that Could Save Countless Lives (thenextweb.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Despite being relatively easy, Apple keeps ignoring requests to enable a feature called Advanced Mobile Location (AML) in iOS. Enabling AML would give emergency services extremely accurate locations of emergency calls made from iPhones, dramatically decreasing response time. As we have covered before, Google's successful implementation of AML for Android is already saving lives. But where Android users have become safer, iPhone owners have been left behind. The European Emergency Number Association (EENA), the organization behind implementing AML for emergency services, released a statement today that pleads Apple to consider the safety of its customers and participate in the program: "As AML is being deployed in more and more countries, iPhone users are put at a disadvantage compared to Android users in the scenario that matters most: An emergency. EENA calls on Apple to integrate Advanced Mobile Location in their smartphones for the safety of their customers." Why is AML so important? Majority of emergency calls today are made from cellphones, which has made location pinging increasingly more important for emergency services. There are many emergency apps and features in development, but AML's strength is that it doesn't require anything from the user -- no downloads and no forethought: The process is completely automated. With AML, smartphones running supporting operating systems will recognize when emergency calls are being made and turn on GNSS (global navigation satellite system) and Wi-Fi. The phone then automatically sends an SMS to emergency services, detailing the location of the caller. AML is up to 4,000 times more accurate than the current systems -- pinpointing phones down from an entire city to a room in an apartment. "In the past months, EENA has been travelling around Europe to raise awareness of AML in as many countries as possible. All these meetings brought up a recurring question that EENA had to reply to: 'So, what about Apple?'" reads EENA's statement.
It's called re-gu-la-ti-on...
Specifically, European regulation. Any smartphone sold in Europe should integrate AML, or be banned outright. Period. No exceptions. You have 6 months to comply and communicate with the European regulators a detailed timetable for your compliance.
72 hours after that regulation is passed by the European Parliament, I bet you Apple will come out with an announcement supporting AML and a couple of months later, with the latest iOS updates, all iPhones would be AML-Compliant.
Sure, a lot of imbeciles will scream bloody murder, Big Brother and governmental interference with the free market, but seriously, this is what works with these companies. Apple makes tons of money in the EU, and it won't take the risk to lose that market.
Also, it's pretty rich from Apple to refuse AML, when it deleted all VPN apps from its Chinese store. Fsck that company. Support AML or eat dung.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
E911 and AML are different.
Basically, what happens is E911 embeds the location information in the control plane when you make a call, so it's the responsibility of the carriers and everyone to forward the data onwards to the emergency center.
AML is completely data and user plane. Basically, if you make an emergency call, your phone turns on GPS and location services (WiFi or other high-precision source). It also turns on data services (even if you have data roaming OFF, or do not have a data plan), and performs an NTP request to get the current date and time. It then takes that information and sends an SMS to emergency services.
E911 requires whole stack integration - mostly to get GPS data to the cellular modem so it can forward it on transparently to the user. AML is completely high level OS based - if you make an emergency call, the OS turns on cellular data and wifi, makes contact with NTP servers to set the local clock, then sends off an SMS.
Basically it's done because in Europe, E911 would be hard to implement because it requires upgrading the entire infrastructure to support it, while AML requires no upgrades since it uses existing infrastructure.
This is probably the reason why Europe has moved towards making roaming basically obsolete - because AML has the possibility for incurring charges on your bill which you cannot control. I mean, it would suck if you got into an emergency and then got hit with extra charges for the data use and the SMS. Especially if you do not have a data or texting plan where the per-use charges can be exorbitant. If you're a tourist, even more so - you witness something, call emergency services and now your phone bill is jacked up without you knowing. At $1/kb or more for per-use data, I'm sure people would be furious about it knowing they did NOT use any data at all except on WiFi. And likely same for SMS as well - foreign texting is expensive, and even more so when it's roaming.
So in the EU, because roaming is basically eliminated, it would get rid of the excess roaming charges from such data use and SMS use - you'd pay your normal rates regardless of where you are. (Of course, it's having issues because people would want to buy plans from cheaper countries since you can use it anywhere).
I would guess that they'd also waive the data charges too during an emergency call, but I won't know. I would also guess it could be subject to hijacking since it's just a normal SMS that is sent and we know of the SMS hijacks available with SS7. So it's possible for a bad actor to trigger the AML code in the OS and then trap the SMS that is sent to get a user's exact location.
It's not so much about who, but if the feature is enabled to get accurate detection, someone will seek to use it, whether it's law enforcement, political regimes or other.
And quite frankly, it's not like emergency services are going to wait for SMS with location details - that would slow down dispatch for everyone, and cost more lives than it saves.
I'm not particularly worried. Usually you only really need to worry when both sides are getting in on it as then you know its a real screw-job. I'll make sure to keep an eye out for arguments about the safety of terrorists. Then we'll know we're in trouble.