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Why Uber Can Find You but 911 Can't (wsj.com) 200

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Accurate location data is on smartphones, so why don't more wireless carriers use it to locate emergency callers? From a report, shared by a reader: Software on Apple's iPhones and Google's Android smartphones help mobile apps like Uber and Facebook to pinpoint a user's location, making it possible to order a car, check in at a local restaurant or receive targeted advertising. But 911, with a far more pressing purpose, is stuck in the past. U.S. regulators estimate as many as 10,000 lives could be saved each year if the 911 emergency dispatching system were able to get to callers one minute faster. Better technology would be especially helpful, regulators say, when a caller can't speak or identify his or her location. After years of pressure, wireless carriers and Silicon Valley companies are finally starting to work together to solve the problem. But progress has been slow. Roughly 80% of the 240 million calls to 911 each year are made using cellphones, according to a trade group that represents first responders. For landlines, the system shows a telephone's exact address. But it can register only an estimated location, sometimes hundreds of yards wide, from a cellphone call. That frustration is now a frequent source of tension during 911 calls, said Colleen Eyman, who oversees 911 services in Arvada, Colo., just outside Denver.
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Why Uber Can Find You but 911 Can't More

Why Uber Can Find You but 911 Can't

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  • Because gubbermint! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by asylumx ( 881307 ) on Monday January 15, 2018 @10:38AM (#55931667)
    Admittedly posting this having only read the headline, but the answer is obvious:
    Because people apparently trust corporations like Uber, Facebook, etc. with all kinds of sensitive data, but for God's sake don't trust the government with the time of day!

    • No, it's because people don't want to pay taxes. And taxes pay for such improvements. Other countries have had this for years.

    • Re:Because gubbermint! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dAzED1 ( 33635 ) on Monday January 15, 2018 @11:38AM (#55932085) Journal

      Or, and just stick with me a sec, this will be complicated - it's because you contact UBER VIA A DATA STREAM THAT CAN SEND LOCATION INFORMATION and regular telco systems were not orignally designed to have a data carrier signal. Caller ID was strapped on at some point, but EVERY SWITCH ALONG THE WAY has to be updated, and the entire 911 center changed from being a telephone line, to a data endpoint on the internet.

      It boggles my mind that anyone, anywhere, with any degree of a tech background, could ever ask "why can Uber find me but 911 can't?" Walk over to a payphone and call Uber. Can they find you then? Is there even a number to call? 911 mapped your number to your address via info from the phone companies. Mobile phones are mobile. They move around. They can't be just mapped via a simple lookup. And unless you can send a datastream to the person you're calling and give them your gps info...why in the holy hell would you think they can just know here you are? ALSO, think hard before you give the police the ability to always track your location, independently of the phone company. Whatever solution you do, might be best as one that only works for the 911 call itself, not just in general (some solutions suggest the former, for "simplicity," since it would require less infrastructure changes on the local gov).

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Rob Y. ( 110975 )

        Well, yeah. But the assumption was that the mobile company does know your location - or at least the location of the tower you're connected to. And if it knows your distance from two separate towers, then bingo. But they don't have a standard way to let the 911 system know that. Presumably, the mobile operator knows you dialed 911, and so could forward what location info it has to the 911 operator. But that's a big system upgrade.

        And yeah, Uber has a much easier job - since it's app on your phone send

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dAzED1 ( 33635 )
          "mobile company does know your location" - I already addressed this. The issue isn't you, it's the place you're calling. THEY are just a phone bank. So there are 2 options, as I mentioned. First, let the police always know where you are at all times, so that they can then do a simple lookup of your number to your address, OR somehow change ALL the infrastructure along the way to handle data streams all along the way that can send data (you know, the GPS info). And keep in mind that's not going to be ne

          • Pretty sure that GPS also contains altitude information. It's just most people don't care about it, and most applications don't show it.

        • And if it knows your distance from two separate towers, then bingo.

          Actually, not quite. There's always a little bit of uncertainty in the distance measurements so what you get from two towers is a little blob containing your location. Using three towers cuts the size of the blob down to almost nothing for all practical purposes, such as having paramedics find you. That's why they call the process "triangulation."

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Sloppy ( 14984 )

        It boggles my mind that anyone, anywhere, with any degree of a tech background, could ever ask "why can Uber find me but 911 can't?"

        It's not a technical question. It's a rhetorical question about the requirements. Nobody gives the slightest fuck about the technical answer, because it's irrelevant. The question is obviously intended to criticize how we've approached the problems, our values, etc.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dAzED1 ( 33635 )
          It absolutely is a technical question. There are a lot of people who sincerely wonder why Uber can find them and 911 can't, and don't understand it's because the communication channels are entirely different. I do love the idea that you think the unwashed masses sit around pontificating on rhetorical questions, though.

      • Re:Because gubbermint! (Score:4, Funny)

        by R3d M3rcury ( 871886 ) on Monday January 15, 2018 @03:40PM (#55933775) Journal

        Walk over to a payphone and call Uber.

        What is this "payphone" of which you speak?

      • It boggles my mind that anyone, anywhere, with any degree of a tech background

        e911 says "Hi". And it would like to remind you that the upgrades you are ranting about have already been installed. Something someone with a tech background might look into before claiming 911 calls are handled the same as POTS traffic.

        Walk over to a payphone and call Uber. Can they find you then?

        Yep. The payphone has a physical address associated with it, and assuming Uber bought the directory from the phone company, they can look it up.

        ALSO, think hard before you give the police the ability to always track your location, independently of the phone company.

        I would think someone with a tech background would know that the police already have the ability to always track your location.

      • It boggles my mind that anyone, anywhere, with any degree of a tech background, could ever ask "why can Uber find me but 911 can't?"

        Indeed. Mobile phones and services haven't changed since the early 90s. .... wait... actually even in the early 90s there was a way to get a Short Message to someone. We could have called it a Short Message Service of sorts and have a phone automatically send GPS to responders via a Short Message Service to pre-defined number. That's to say nothing of modern phone systems which allow simultaneous data streams.

        But we don't need to say anything of modern systems. The systems in place in the UK (AML for variou

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by Macdude ( 23507 )

      Uber, Facebook, etc. don't send armed men to your home to kill you when someone pranks them and sends them to your home.

      en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Wichita,_Kansas_swatting

    • I wonder if you'd be okay with the government using tracking data to deport illegal immigrants.

        - Tracking guns. GOOD
        - Tracking data in general. GOOD.
        - Government in general. GOOD.

        - Enforcing laws related to immigration. OMFGLKEWRNGALKDSNDASLGKNG!~@!$!!@#!%!@#%!@#K%!@L%@LKBFDLlafd---eRRRORORRRRRRRRR

  • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Yeah but who gets the money? I had Vonage for a long time and then they started cramming all the bogus fees on there. At the time both of us had mobile phones so the decision was made to kick Vonage to the curb.

      But the thing is, telecoms have been famous for putting charges on bills that never went to the state agencies etc. but only allowed them to recover taxes they paid to the state.

    • That fee is actually decades older than you claim.

      Federal law mandates that every phone line in the country can call 9/11, whether or not there is a customer paying for service on that line. The fee (nominally) pays for that for phone lines that are not in service.

      The fee also doesn't go to state governments, so they can't "redirect" the money anywhere. It goes to 1) the phone companies, and 2) the Feds, who can then issue grants to state and local governments to maintain/upgrade their equipment. The onl

  • even if you don't know you did. It's there in the EULA.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Dog-Cow ( 21281 )

      If you used a phone with a proper permission system, you'd know you were giving permission for location data, or you're willfully ignorant (didn't read the prompt), and who the fuck cares what happens to willfully-ignorant people?

      • Laws are there to protect stupid, weak, willfully-ignorant people. This is why a pickpocket is prosecuted for theft, when the victim could possibly have prevented the theft in the first place.

  • Funding (Score:3)

    by Bigbutt ( 65939 ) on Monday January 15, 2018 @10:45AM (#55931741) Homepage Journal

    The technology is out there but if the government doesn't want to buy it or can't due to funding, then it isn't going to be available. I work in the industry and there's quite a bit of new tech being created but it still costs money to implement (not to mention infrastructure upgrades by the towns, etc).

    [John]

  • Solution (Score:3)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Monday January 15, 2018 @10:49AM (#55931777)

    Write an app that transmits your location when 911 is being called. Advertise it to people to install it on their phone for the times when they need it. Watch people not install it because they are afraid their government might track them, but they're more than happy to hand the very same information to Uber, Facebook and everyone else giving them ... well, basically nothing.

    If I was your government, I'd probably shit on you, too.

    • To build on yours:
      1) Just create a new fake advertising agency and have it buy it's way into full access to facebook, twitter, and other social media.
      2) Get access via whichever 3-letter agency has full open access, just use the usual "for the children" and all that.

    • Does it even need to be this hard?

      Develop an e911 system and mandate (or even suggest) that mobile software makers have an option to turn it on. The mobile software makers can decide whether it defaults to on or off and the end user can switch the switch as often as they like.

    • Write an app that transmits your location when 911 is being called. Advertise it to people to install it on their phone for the times when they need it. Watch people not install it because they are afraid their government might track them, but they're more than happy to hand the very same information to Uber, Facebook and everyone else giving them ... well, basically nothing.

      That's because there is one purpose Government can misuse information for that even the most nefarious Corporation can't.

      Lock you away in a 6x8 prison cell

      .

      If I was your government, I'd probably shit on you, too.

      They have and continue to do so on many innocent people

      • The other difference is that your government is supposed to work for you, something a corporation only does if you're a shareholder.

        If your government doesn't do that, get rid of it and get a new one. That's their job. That's what they're there for. If my employee doesn't do his job, I kick him out and hire someone who does.

    • When you call 911 or the equivalent, your phone should have the ability to respond using voice synthesis to queries from emergency services, sent using two or three digit touch-tone signals. The queries could include your GPS location and other information you supply, such as the floor you are usually on, apartment or office number, car make and model, chronic diseases, meds, allergies, and real time info, if available, from FitBits and the like. Maybe even a query for number and types of pets (that would b

  • 911 in a sad state of affairs (Score:5, Informative)

    by quetwo ( 1203948 ) on Monday January 15, 2018 @11:03AM (#55931887) Homepage

    I used to install 911 systems. The biggest problem is the RBOCs (phone companies). They've refused to upgrade their systems to allow any meaningful data to directly reach their systems. Many 911 systems out there today rely on old analog connections that can't carry enhanced data except for caller-id. The 911 systems simply use the caller-id to match a location.

    Want to know how cell phones work when you call 911?

    The user dials the number associated with emergency services on their phone. The phone gets handed to the cell company. At the same time, the GPS unit is activated on the phone and the phone attempts to get a lock. GPS information is sent to the cell company emergency services "smart router".

    Meanwhile, the call gets routed to the PSAP. It uses the address of the closest tower to find out which correct PSAP is supposed to answer. The PSAP answers and gets connected to an operator. There, they are given the location of the antenna/tower that the user called through. SOME cell providers offer a link (depending on the software they are using) to get additional information about the call, which often requires pulling up seperate software and/or a website to get the location from the smart router. The location /may/ be updating in real time, or it may not be. I've seen many cases where the GPS didn't get a lock at first and the location pulled up in the smart router never gets updated beyond that. Oh, and if you use a cell company that hasn't directly partnered with your local PSAP, the operator may only get the street address of the closest tower.

    The phone companies have the technology to make this work, and make it work well. It would require the RBOCs to upgrade their networks a bit and provide advanced services to the 911 centers. It would also require the police, phone companies and 911 centers to want to work together and do things the right way. Right now there are a lot of people who think their technology is right and that everybody else should just simply use it. What ends up is that we have a bunch of different software, all cobbled together in ways that make the system really, really bad.

    Consumers tend to like apps as the solution to get to 911 services. Sure, they can get advanced services (like a real GPS location), and other nice things, but it relies on a bunch of technologies that are designed to work "at best effort". If you don't have data service and you launch the app, it won't work. If you call 911 and don't have phone service, your phone will actually roam to anybody and everybody's network you have a radio for and place the call.

    • Re:911 in a sad state of affairs (Score:5, Interesting)

      by infolation ( 840436 ) on Monday January 15, 2018 @11:15AM (#55931959)
      Forcing mobile handsets to use GPS for 911 calls was supposed to have been enshrined in US law since 1996 (The E911 program). But...

      In 1996, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued an order requiring wireless carriers to determine and transmit the location of callers who dial 9-1-1. The FCC set up a phased program: Phase I involved sending the location of the receiving antenna for 9-1-1 calls, while Phase II sends the location of the calling telephone. Carriers were allowed to choose to implement 'handset based' location by Global Positioning System (GPS) or similar technology in each phone, or 'network based' location by means of triangulation between cell towers. The order set technical and accuracy requirements: carriers using 'handset based' technology must report handset location within 50 meters for 67% of calls, and within 150 meters for 90% of calls; carriers using 'network based' technology must report location within 100 meters for 67% of calls and 300 meters for 90% of calls.

      The order also laid out milestones for implementing wireless location services. Many carriers requested waivers of the milestones, and the FCC granted many of them. By mid-2005, implementation of Phase II was generally underway, limited by the complexity of coordination required from wireless and wireline carriers, PSAPs, and other affected government agencies; and by the limited funding available to local agencies which needed to convert PSAP equipment to display location data (usually on computerized maps).

      In July 2011, the FCC announced a proposed rule requiring that after an eight-year implementation period, at some yet-to-be-determined date in 2019, wireless carriers will be required to meet more stringent location accuracy requirements. If enacted, this rule would require both "handset based" and "network based" location techniques to meet the same accuracy standard, regardless of the underlying technology used. The rule is likely to have no effect as all major carriers will have already achieved over 85% GPS chipset penetration, and are thus able to meet the standard regardless of their 'network based' location capabilities.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by jonwil ( 467024 )

        It seems like the wireless carriers have got it right in terms of collecting E911 information (assuming phones have the E911 GPS capability in them) and moving it through their network and the big problems are with fixed line carriers who are unwilling to spend the money needed to upgrade their networks so they can get that E911 data through to the 911 call centres.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shess ( 31691 )

      Consumers tend to like apps as the solution to get to 911 services. Sure, they can get advanced services (like a real GPS location), and other nice things, but it relies on a bunch of technologies that are designed to work "at best effort". If you don't have data service and you launch the app, it won't work. If you call 911 and don't have phone service, your phone will actually roam to anybody and everybody's network you have a radio for and place the call.

      The app could whistle like a modem over the voice channel. Or use morse code. Or some clever steganographic solution to weave the data into the audio stream, interleaved to pass the highest bits first.

    • Re:911 in a sad state of affairs (Score:5, Interesting)

      by McFortner ( 881162 ) on Monday January 15, 2018 @12:51PM (#55932623)

      Meanwhile, the call gets routed to the PSAP. It uses the address of the closest tower to find out which correct PSAP is supposed to answer.

      Having worked 911 for 8 years, I can vouch for this. And you have no idea how PISSED people get when they get connected to the wrong 911 center and have to be transferred to another one. I worked for a county 911 center here in the Atlanta Metropolitan area and the centers here (when I worked there) were only connected to the surrounding centers. I actually had to relay through THREE centers to get them to the correct PSAP, either through a really long distance connection or the cell phone tower misrouting the call.

      I am so glad I don't have to put up with that anymore. It was hell enough a lot of times when it was had to be transferred to the next county over. And if there was a major accident on the Interstate the phone lines would go crazy.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • There are reasons for this (Score:5, Informative)

    by wonkavader ( 605434 ) on Monday January 15, 2018 @11:06AM (#55931903)

    Telco equipment can be very modern (imagine a single rack of DC-powered commodity blade computers with OC3's coming in the back, taking just 30 inches of rack space to handle thousands of lines) or very old (imagine rows of racks, mostly empty with each line handles by four twisted wires going to a large, sparsely populated board featuring, I am not making this up, Zilog Z-80 SIO chips -- depending on the age other the boards they may feature other SIO chips -- remember your phone call is just a stream of 64kbps 8 bit data at the switch level). A technical change which requires anything different from how things currently work is easy on the new stuff, but impossible on the old stuff and obsoleting the old stuff would put some smaller telcos out of business.

    The current 911 model (at least in the midwest) is a database with the phone number as the index key. This doesn't get seen/used at all from the person-to-switch level. There's NO meta-information. The rows and rows of ancient equipment do feed into one rack of slightly more modern stuff which can actually use a DB to look up info when the call is to the number 911. That looks in the DB to figure out what call center to send the call to. The call center can then look up that same record when the call comes to them based on caller-id.

    That's why you don't get magical data-passing about location. It would be trivial to do, but everything would have to be modern.

    Now, let's just talk about that database for a moment. I haven't looked at it in five years, but last I checked, it was a colossal pile of crap, filled with misspellings, illogical data, non-contained overlaps, etc. This has been the case since day one, and has never been improved. This means you need to have humans make a judgement call on where an address should actually be whenever a new person gets a land-line. If you get someone else's old phone number, it could be bound to the wrong address. A more likely situation would be that your 911 call would be routed to the wrong emergency call center, which either causes a scramble to reroute your call or a long drive from the wrong firestation. There's automatic checking to make sure someone signs off on your 911 info, but no checking to make sure it's right.

  • If they have e-911, phase II on the PSAP, it's easier to locate.
    • Yes. Any phone supporting VoLTE (voice over LTE) MUST support e-911. The location is sent when establishing an emergency call, typically using A-GPS (but there are fallbacks like OTDOA, which is pure cellular). Verifying that a phone properly supports this is part of the required cellular certification, you simply can't sell a phone that wouldn't support this. So I guess the issue is more in the interfacing between the telcos and the 911 infrastructure.
  • Wasn't Uber recently taken to court for tracking its users even after they closed the app? Maybe 9/11 needs an app that people can optionally download to be tracked 24/7. They'd have less trouble locating you that way.

  • Because Americans won't spend (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Monday January 15, 2018 @11:29AM (#55932047)
    On infrastructure. We just took on $1.5 trillion in debt to do a bunch of tax cuts. If we want these things we have to pay for them.

    • The Federal government also just (yet again!) took in record levels of revenue [usgovernmentrevenue.com]. Of course, it also still spends more than ever. [usgovernmentspending.com] You may notice from those charts the tremendous increase in government revenue per person over time... and the even larger increase in government spending per person over the same time period.

      "If we want these things, we have to be willing to spend less on other stuff we don't need."

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jbengt ( 874751 )
        Try looking at those government revenue and spending charts in percent of GDP rather than dollars per capita. They've been relatively flat since WW2.
      • they're spending that money on people. It's mostly wars. 7 wars actually (Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya and Syria). After that it's keeping old people alive. See here [politifact.com]. 70% of our budget is wars and keeping old folks alive. Now, I'm not opposed to the old folks (I am to the wars).

  • Because the FCC screwed up the requirements (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The underlying problem is https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_pub... [fcc.gov] . As best I can tell, those were the new standards for E911 location precision from 2015, which completely screwed up the working E911 system by requiring more precision than was physically possible with the existing, stable system from TruePosition, in use by most cell phone vendors. That system involved bolting hardware onto the cell phone towers, hardware that worked pretty well. They had a nice display of the system that survived the 9/11 bombi

  • remebmer when... (Score:5, Funny)

    by dAzED1 ( 33635 ) on Monday January 15, 2018 @11:49AM (#55932139) Journal
    Remember when Slashdot was a place for people slightly more tech saavy than the average? Bloody hell, my elderly relatives understand the answer to this question - it's pretty simple really. The answer is "because Uber and 911 don't communicate the same way." Another fun question to ask is why is it possible for me to mail a feather to someone via USPS, but there's no place to put a feather on my cell phone to sext it to my wife for kinky-time. The possibilities are endless, when you compare completely different things that work in completely different ways! Why can my stove cook food, but my iphone can't? Why does my dog bark, instead of doing my taxes? The second biggest reason is 911 isn't consistent...I'd say "standardized" but there is a standard available, it's just not overwhelmingly used. Check out John Oliver's segment on this like 2 years ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
    • Love the John Oliver segment, but it would be child's play to put an app on everybody's phones that relayed GPS coords during and after a 911 call. I know folks scared of gov't tracking (which is funny, since the gov't has plenty of post 9/11 laws that let them track you as much as they want). But I'm a techy and this looks like a pretty easily solvable problem. The real hold up is money. You'd have to pay for it and that means taxes. And to be blunt, the rich neighborhoods have better systems for tracking

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by quetwo ( 1203948 )

        You might thing that it's trivial to put an app on everybody's phones, and that may be the easiest part of this entire problem.... By the way, only about 60% of the cell phones in the USA, in use, run Android 4.0 or later OR iOS 5.0 or later. 40% either don't run either operating system or are that old. Yes, that is a problem when you start to talk to develop an app that everybody has. And, the app would need to work on all models, even flip phones and the 6 phones left out there that run that Microsof

  • The 911 system was put in place before cell phones included GPS locators, and to retrofit the system with a new capability would be quite expensive. Any idea how many 911 call centers there are across America? 5,783

    According to a 911 industry group [nena.org]:

    99.4% of PSAPs have some Phase I
    99.0% of PSAPs have some Phase II

    Phase I - Cellphone carrier provides caller's number and cell tower calculated location
    Phase II - Cellphone carrier provides caller's number and cellphone calculated location

    Shockingly, this isn't n

  • See here [nena.org] to learn that 99% of 911 call centers are capable of handling cellphone-generated GPS locations, but it relies on carrier upgrades outside their direct control.

    Or, you know, take the bait, assume the 911 system has remained stagnant for the last two decades, and feign false outrage over this non-issue.

  • From my experience in San Diego:

    Usually, if you call 911, youâ(TM)ll sit on hold for three or four minutes.

    When you do get through, if youâ(TM)re calling for something as trivial as thieves returning to your house while your wife is there alone, donâ(TM)t be so inconsiderate as to call while itâ(TM)s raining or theyâ(TM)ll tell you theyâ(TM)re not going to dispatch someone until after the rain stops and your wife should just leave the house. No. Seriously. SDPD pulled that shit

  • How do you know they can't locate you? I listen to our local police investigations units on my scanner. And they can track a suspect ('s phone) to a particular location in a parking lot in real time. I suspect that they are letting a few innocent people die so as not to reveal their capabilities to the general public and criminals.

    If this was 1945, Churchill would be complaining to the Nazis about how their uncrackable Enigma was a security threat.

  • You should have smartphones sending gps (or other positioning data) to police everytime you dial 911 or whatever number you use for emergency calls.

  • "After years of pressure, wireless carriers and Silicon Valley companies are finally starting to work together to solve the problem. " - woohoo, multimillion grants all around. Or they could just use AML which is already implemented in every android phone and supported in several EU countries (with others in process of implementing it).

  • It's not just that the apps have geolocation, that alone is not sufficient at all.

    What happens with Uber (and I think Lyft) apps, is that it uses your location to show an approximation of where you are on the map - but then you make the final choice about where exactly the pickup point is, by moving the point around the map. So there's a lot more active feedback from Uber app users than there is in a 911 scenario.

    I wouldn't mind seeing systems updated somehow so calling 911 also activated the most powerful

  • Such app does exist in Czech: Zachranka (Score:3)

    by short ( 66530 ) on Monday January 15, 2018 @02:31PM (#55933347) Homepage
    Zachranka app [zachrankaapp.cz] is successfully cooperating with emergency services. But it works only in Czech Republic now, reportedly they are deploying it in some other EU countries.

  • In every wireless 911 call I've ever seen*, GPS data is transmitted along with the calling number.
    ( * I've seen quite a lot considering what I do for a living )

    In addition, the GPS data transmitted is accurate to SIX digits past the decimal point.

    Example, here is PSAP data output ( sanitized for obvious reasons ) from a call that came in today:

    Of interest to this discussion, is the final line of data, which is the callers location. I had to wait for a few calls to come across
    as the first few were centered

  • http://www.mbie.govt.nz/info-s... [mbie.govt.nz]

    America is just slow.

  • It's no secret that everything Americans do on any electronic device is scooped up in full-take surveillance. Cyberspace has no expectation of privacy. When we take steps to create a small amount of privacy, our letter agency cry foul with the power words TERRORISTS, CHILDREN, and WAR on X.

    We all need to remember that American security services are actively working against EVERYBODY when it comes to personal privacy. When things like this hit the headlines, its hard to not make the connection.

    FBI says it n

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