Slashdot Mirror
Apple Watch's Fall Detection Could Get Users Into Legal Trouble (arstechnica.com)
AmiMoJo writes: Apple has released more details about how the Watch 4 will contact emergency services if the watch detects that you've had a hard fall. If the watch detects that the wearer is "immobile for about a minute," it begins a 15-second countdown. After that, the Watch will contact emergency services.
Elizabeth Joh, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, was quick to point out that, by inviting the police into your home, Apple Watch wearers may be opening themselves up to criminal liability. If police are alerted by an Apple Watch of a possible injury, they do not need a warrant to enter a home under the "community caretaking" exception to the Fourth Amendment.
Any evidence of a crime in plain view (e.g. a joint) could land the owner in trouble.
The article notes the "(mostly) opt-in nature" of the service, though one New York-based criminal defense attorney had an even better idea.
He said he "would much prefer a feature that can automatically dial a user-determined contact."
Elizabeth Joh, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, was quick to point out that, by inviting the police into your home, Apple Watch wearers may be opening themselves up to criminal liability. If police are alerted by an Apple Watch of a possible injury, they do not need a warrant to enter a home under the "community caretaking" exception to the Fourth Amendment.
Any evidence of a crime in plain view (e.g. a joint) could land the owner in trouble.
The article notes the "(mostly) opt-in nature" of the service, though one New York-based criminal defense attorney had an even better idea.
He said he "would much prefer a feature that can automatically dial a user-determined contact."
These issues are not newly raised by the watch.
I can only surmise that the reason the watch doesn't ask for voice confirmation before dialing is, they assume the wearer is unconscious. If the wearer wakes up later in the hospital and is enraged about criminal charges for a joint spotted on their table, they have their priorities out of whack.
Likewise if the wearer experiences some head injury or loss of blood pressure and is too delirious to notice and abort the countdown. Probably better off summoning medical personnel.
Of course there is plenty of room for improvement. There's no reason the watch couldn't make a unique beeping sound as it counts down to remind the wearer to disable it. There's no reason it couldn't alert emergency services AND text/email/call a list of contacts. There's no reason not to allow customizations like "slide to call" rather than "slide to cancel", at the wearer's own risk.
In general the fall detection of the iPhone is a gimmick - Apple seems to be running out of ideas for things that can set them apart. The obvious issue is that it is marketed as mainly for older people, but older people susceptible to falls are usually not the target demographic of a device that needs to go on the charger every 2 days! What's more, I don't know the stats, but I would assume going to the bathroom in the middle of the night must account for a respectable percentage of falls, but your watch would probably be on the charger. Unless you have 2 Apple watches?
That would not be enough to condemn it as a gimmick perhaps if there did not exist dedicated fall alert devices that had none of the disadvantages of an Apple watch. I suspect with those devices you also don't invite the police to your house (assuming the article is correct and the Apple watch might do so), they usually alert a specialized EMT service.
At least it is opt-in, so a less annoying feature than what the iPhone X brought. Yes, while Face ID seems to work well and some people like it (I am not a fan myself), the decision to put it in a "notch" was very bad. Now every phone maker out there just copies the "notch" without actually any hardware or functionality similar to Face ID, and pretends to be an iPhoneX-equivalent, or one of the "cool kids'. I'll have to wait until this notch idiocy dies out before upgrading my phone.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
technically yes. Because otherwise the people in the room would scatter and NOT call 911, leaving the other person do die. It was decided that saving a life outweighed the other scenarios. But thanks to Carfintanil and something out of China called 'Pink', not even Narcan (Noloxone) is effective from saving the patient. I have no idea why someone decided heroin wasnt strong enough and had to come up with something 100x stronger and 10,000 times stronger. Does it matter that you had to take 2cc of a substance instead of 0.2cc? IMO the mad scientist that made _that_ stuff should bear some responsibility.