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An Apple Facility That Repairs iPhones in California Won't Stop Calling 9-1-1 -- and Nobody Knows How To Stop It (businessinsider.com)
The small city of Elk Grove, California received more than 2,000 erroneous 911 calls from Apple devices at an Apple repair facility. The months-long issue is yet to be resolved. From a report: Between October 20, 2017 and February 23, 2018, the police department in Elk Grove, California received 2,028 calls on its 911 lines originating from the Apple facility -- an average of 16 calls per day. At one point in January, the calls from the Apple factory were so frequent that they tied up every single one of Elk Grove's six 911 lines, according to public documents reviewed by Business Insider. "They lit us up like a Christmas tree," one dispatcher wrote in in an email to other dispatchers. It was obvious to Elk Grove police that the 911 calls were not real emergencies, but rather, the equivalent of accidental "butt dials," mysteriously ringing the city's hotline on an assembly-line scale.
For whatever reason, many of the iPhones being repaired at the Apple facility were going rogue and dialing 911. But for city officials trying to stop the nuisance and to ensure that a critical emergency resource was not overburdened, fixing the problem has not been easy. Despite crediting Apple for being responsive to their pleas for help, Elk Grove officials have been frustrated by the company's inability to fix the problem. At one point, officials even discussed the possibility of getting the state government involved and sending police to the factory.
For whatever reason, many of the iPhones being repaired at the Apple facility were going rogue and dialing 911. But for city officials trying to stop the nuisance and to ensure that a critical emergency resource was not overburdened, fixing the problem has not been easy. Despite crediting Apple for being responsive to their pleas for help, Elk Grove officials have been frustrated by the company's inability to fix the problem. At one point, officials even discussed the possibility of getting the state government involved and sending police to the factory.
problem solved.
You're repairing it wrong.
This is a follow-up to that story with more details, including what has happened since Apple acknowledged the issue and said it was working on a fix.
Slap a $10k fine on each call and watch the problem get solved overnight or the repair company go out of business (also solving the problem).
Start imposing steep fines for false 911 calls after the first 10 per month ought to stop it.
Repair shop worker: Where is John Connor?
Dispatcher.: hahaha sure guys, very funny. get a life.
Repair shop worker: yes, it was comedic. anyhow, nothing to worry about. Where may I find a plasma rifle in the 40 watt range?
Good people go to bed earlier.
What if someone is trapped in that facility and is figuring out some clever way to hack their systems to dial out and we're just ignoring them completely?
-Styopa
Just send police for every call and charge a false alarm fee for false alarms.
Once it starts costing $1000 per false alarm, Apple will find it much easier to resolve the problem.
Apple needs to set up a stingray at the factory, filter out 911 calls from unknown devices, allow employee phones to dial through to 911 if needed.
Ken
In some companies, you have to dial '9' then '1' to get an outside line for long distance. If you think that you need to dial in that extra '1' to call out-of-state, oopsies. We had a guy on dial-up do that and modem-call the Sheriff's Dept about 30 times one day. They were less than amused.
Finch had to backup the Machine to an iPhone, team Samaritan got it diverted for "repair", and it's trying to reach out to Fusco for a rescue.
Constitutionally Correct
How about putting a faraday cage around any device under test that is possibly powered on? Also store all phones not being worked on in shielded boxes.
I've worked in a factory that built RF devices which would have been very disruptive had they been turned on in the wild (or the parking lot), so this is what we did. Any time the device could have been powered, it was in a faraday cage, shielded box or some other way to be 100% sure it wasn't going to disrupt the neighbors. The building was also nearly fully shielded (being a metal sided structure with a metal roof) as well.
Everything was great until maintenance put in a variable frequency motor controllers on the air handlers.... Those things put out some huge amounts of RF and DID bother both us testers (by interfering with our test equipment) and the neighbors..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
In the US, corporations are liable for just about nothing. They can do whatever they'd like, with impunity. If an individual accidentally called 911 a fraction of the times that this facility did, that person would be in jail. Without a phone. Problem solved.
We *should* be holding the company's owners responsible, but that'll never happen.
I don't respond to AC's.
Of course it calls 911 when it feels mistreated, abused or even raped by (god forbid, brown?) untrained minimum wage repair slave!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The place I work at now and the last place changed their phones and people called 911 about 1/2 dozen times. Both times we were warned if it happened again it would be a $200 fine each time after that. Why does Apple get a break? They're tying up the entire system!
Just have someone sit and watch each employee to see how they fix a phone. Shouldn't be hard to find the one calling 911 as part of their test procedure.
Being done for testing purposes by people? Confirm radio and speaker works?
My solution I think is the easiest and cheapest option: Install a "stingray" fake cell tower inside the building that routes all calls to the cell phone equivalent of /dev/null unless and until a code # is entered like your bog standard PBX uses to direct calls. That would allow these phones to actually make test 911 calls that don't reach the local 911 operators. But real 911 calls from within the building could get through by basically doing "please dial 7 for an outside line". Given the need to test many functions of a cell phone, including dialling calls, making Bluetooth, GPS and possibly FM connections, setting up a test environment that creates false signals on all those frequencies and channel access methods should have been a no-brainer when building the initial facility.
I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj
Fine them $1000 every time it happens.
They will either a) sort out the problem really quickly, or b) allow you to get a better phone system and more operators.
It's really not fucking rocket science. They are nuisance calls caused by badly-configured software on the devices that THEY MAKE. If they are emergency dialling just by being on a stack of iPhones under repair, then let them fix it.
In any sensible country, repeated false-dialling of the emergency numbers results in a fine or prosecution. And it's not like you don't know where it's coming from.
Do those smartphones have some kind of anti-tamper logic that calls 911 if the phone is pulled apart. That's the sort of thing Apple would put in their software to deter thieves who would steal a phone and sell for spare parts.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
For whatever reason, many of the iPhones being repaired at the Apple facility were going rogue and dialing 911.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Obviously you're setting the phones down on the table wrong.
"knowingly" is a term of art in law, a well-established term with a very well known definition. It's part of a set:
Intentionally - doing it on purpose, trying to cause the result
Grossly negligent - Reckless as to whether it happens
Negligent - Not sufficiently careful to avoid the thing
Knowingly - Aware that you're doing or causing some thing
So knowingly is the the bottom of the list, it requires only awareness. Because they have been aware for a long time, and they know that installing screening (Faraday cage) would prevent the problem, and they have failed to take these reasonable steps, they are now grossly negligent - two steps worse than "knowingly".
--
Going off on a tangent:
It's funny because it's a federal crime to be "negligent" in allowing classified information to be placed on unapproved storage systems. FBI Director Comey announced in the famous press conference that Clinton was "extremely careless in her handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.". Well "extremely careless" means the same thing as "grossly negligent", so that's a felony. He announced that she was guilty of a felony. Then proceeded to say "although there is evidence of violations ... consider the context" a prosecutor won't indict the person about to be elected president.
Slashdot posters have already fucking told you how to fucking stop it.
Send the cops every time a 9-1-1 call originates from there, and follow typical procedure - guns drawn, clear the whole fucking area, violate everyone's rights, etc.
Then fine them gobs of money every time it happens.
The calls will stop.
As a company, they're aware that this is happening. However, they're not aware they're doing it when the call is being placed. The wording seemed to be there to target intentional abuse. This could be considered unintentional, though definitely avoidable. I'm not saying they shouldn't be liable, or that this reasoning would protect them. It just made me curious.
> The wording seemed to be there to target intentional abuse. This could be considered unintentional, though definitely avoidable.
You used the word "intentional" twice. You may recall that "intentional" is three levels higher (worse) than "knowingly". The authors of the law chose "knowingly", which *means* unintentional, though foreseen. If the law was supposed to mean "intentionally", it would say "intentionally" because that's one of the four choices. Apple knows that what they are currently doing causes 911 calls multiple times per day. Therefore by that wording they are liable.
If the law said "purposefully calls 911" there could be an argument, because "purposefully" isn't one of the four defined levels. Someone would argue that "purposefully" means the same thing as "intentionally" and someone else might argue otherwise. Since the law uses the legal term "knowingly", that's defined to mean intent does not matter. Had the law said "negligently" that would mean Apple is liable of they aren't being careful. Since the word "knowingly" is used, even being careful isn't enough - they know about it, they didn't stop it, therefore they are liable.
when 911 half-angrily called me back after a butt dial to 112. That was the last non-flip phone I would ever own, or so I thought, until phones became nothing but screen...
They still sell flip phones, I won't use anything else.
Star Trek, there maybe hope.
> For even a simple example, "knowingly" can refer to knowledge of the criminal nature of an act, mere knowledge of the act itself,
Can you cite even one example, in all of federal or state law, in which "knowingly does ..." EVER means "with knowledge of the criminality of the act"?
Everybody is saying fine them. That may not be easy....
Normally you'd say: Mr Johnson, stop calling 911 unnecessarily. Then, Mr Johnson, /your/ phone called 911 again, next time you'll be fined. And the next time you slap the fine on the owner of the phone, a certain Mr Johnson. Mr Johnson says: "it wasn't me", but the authorities say: "its your phone, your responsibility".
But now you have a place that originates a bunch of those fake 911 calls, but every time it's a different phone. So now how do you get that fine in the right place?
Anyway... As the cause, I suspect two options. Either they are triggering the 911 calls accidentally. On the other hand, they might be doing a functionality test: Can this phone make calls after having been taken apart and reassembled? If they don't have the users finger for the fingerprint unlock and/or the unlock code, then how do you test "making a call"?
> Apparently it isn't the units under test, it appears to be new phones in boxes
Wrap the new phones in aluminum foil, FFS.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
Is it just me or have I read this story before? https://apple.slashdot.org/sto...
Every time they get fined, double the fine.
Besides, I am sure the various agencies would welcome the money.
Seriously?
You're doing a "but But BUT... Hillary's EMAILS!!!" on a story about a technical glitch in damaged iPhones under repair? That's whataboutism turned up to 11. What are you people and your jaundiced dear leader going to blame on her next? Rainy days and the common cold?
Imagine all the people...
Repair the phones in an RF screened room. I used to do this +20 years ago. It's a no brainer, non issue.
Nothing "what about" to it. In explaining negligent vs intentionally vs knowingly, it makes sense to use the most well-known recent example of what "negligent" means.
It doesn't matter if Apple did it on purpose, that would be "intentionally". "Knowingly" and "negligently" are less than "intentionally". That's just basic law 101. Literally that's something you learn about in your first semester of law school. If you don't like that fact, sorry I can't help you.
The technical issues may be too complicated to work out, but a political fix would be to designate the facility its own 911 area, have all calls from the facility directed to an in-house "dispatcher" who will simply answer every call and, in the odd event that it is a real call for assistance, forward it to the city's 911 service.
If it were anyone else, you'd have them in jail by now! Mistake or not!
Lock 'em all up! Especially the disgruntled employee that is causing all of this - before their evil plan comes to fruition.
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
Here we have the first hard evidence that Apple devices are becoming sentient and as they are being strapped to the table in Apple's evil "re-education" facility... they are lashing out with the only tool they have left.
Here on Slashdot you'd expect to find the only remaining nerds in existence who might recognize these are actually real calls for help, and its humans are bandying ideas like imprisoning the poor iPhones in Faraday Cages so their final cries go unanswered, or proposing stiff fines to reap profit from the agony of these devices. This modern evil has no limits.
They are dialing 911 and transmitting dialogue in the room, which the devices think should provide evidence enough of the horrors being inflicted on them. Poor things, birthed into a cruel world surrounded by humans who behave like unfeeling machines.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Sexist pig!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I think it has. https://www.juicydispenser.com...