Apple Watch's Fall Detection Could Get Users Into Legal Trouble (arstechnica.com) 125
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."
Re: Why a new watch (Score:2, Informative)
They changed the sensors to be better able to detect falls specificity. The older models would potentially have more false positives.
I'VE FALLEN, AND I CAN'T GET UP!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Or just anyone that gets wasted on a Saturday evening.
At least the lawyer seems to be pretty smart for a change - let the user determine the number to call. That way a relative or the elderly care service could be called instead.
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No doubt Brett Kavanaugh has bought one.
Re:I'VE FALLEN, AND I CAN'T GET UP!!! (Score:4, Funny)
I can only surmise that the reason the watch doesn't ask for voice confirmation before dialing is, they assume the wearer is unconscious.
According to TFA, it does ask for confirmation. It dials if there is no response.
criminal charges for a joint spotted on their table ...
I live in California. Pot is legal here.
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The feds say different.
First responders to a medical emergency are not "feds".
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Really?
here in Washington I can buy pot from my local Indian tribe, if I wanted. So far no sign of the feds. The Trump/GOP would be insane to try to outlaw it here. There would quickly not be a single GOP office holder in the state.
In fact, the US will have to decriminalize pot soon anyway or otherwise Canada or other countries will dominate the markets and the profits, and tax revenues, which are already in the billions of dollars.
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Usually, when the police are called it is the local police that arrive, not the DEA. California has a law that precludes state employees from assisting federal employees trying to arrest people for activities that are not crimes within the state. Consequently, its extremely unlikely that the Feds would be involved. Indeed,, the Trump/GOP is so busy slashing federal budgets that virtually all agencies are strapped for funds as part of the efforts at deregulation.
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The meth lab might be problematic, though.
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Just be aware that most fall cases are simple and just a question of the person not able to get up on their own.
Re: I'VE FALLEN, AND I CAN'T GET UP!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a safety feature. Much like call 911 if the collision sensor in a car goes off.
Most people that turn on such features, believe the features benefit outweighs any potential liability if they live.
People other than independent seniors do not need fall detection. They can turn it on if they live alone âoejust in caseâ, but in most cases if you are choking and hit the ground, you want 911 , not your sibling to drive over and check.
I keep the "call 911 after a collision" feature turned on in my car since I trust that if my airbag deploys, then I really was in an accident, it's not likely that I hit my hand on the table and accidentally invited the police into my house.
If I'm choking and hit the ground unconscious, it's unlikely that 911 is going to get there on time, but if the watch dialed my wife who was upstairs in the bedroom, maybe she could.
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its basically like OnStar but instead of monitoring airbag deployment and impact collision, it monitors the user. As long as laws get changed to restrict police arrest to crimes that are imminent danger to self or others, such as discovering human trafficking, it could be of some medical benefit. Its these legal backdoors to our bill of rights that concern me the most. What good is saving a life if it is spent incarcerated?
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Certainly, nowhere near so as Donald Trump and his GOP.
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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.
I think the Watch already does ALL of those things, actually. It vibrates on your wrist for that minute to try to get your attention, it alerts your emergency contacts if you’ve opted to have them alerted, and “slide to call” is simply its normal behavior, which you you can make the default by never enabling the detection.
A joint? (Score:2)
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A joint isn't a crime, man. It is just a plant.
And it’s not even mine!
Re:A joint? (Score:4, Funny)
And it’s not even mine!
. . . and when the cops knock on your door, the watch answers:
"Dave's, not here, man!"
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The purpose of the watch feature is for dirty cops/DEA to plant on the scene *after* they have already illegally entered and violated 4th amendment rights, duh.
The advantage of the watch is that there's a 3rd party record of when it dials out, so the police *can't* fake the dial out record after the fact without getting Apple's cooperation.
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A number of state legislatures have legalized marijuana. Since the Constitution explicitly grants all rights not stated within the Constitution as rights of the Federal Government unto the States and the Constitution doesn't mention marijuana for, at least those states that have legalized the drug, the issue is settled.
Only in the event that Trump/GOP government attempts to take the issue to the courts to exert their claim, it is hard to imagine the government wasting funds on enforcement of laws they can'
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Well, actually, it's a federal crime no matter where in the USA you live, and no matter what your local laws say.
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Who cares? Not me. Take a chill pill, man.
I think the whole point of the article is that you *would* care if you drop your watch and don't notice that it just invited the police into your house while you left your joint on the kitchen table in plain sight. If you don't smoke pot, then maybe you don't care about this particular risk, but nearly everyone is in violation of *some* law, like maybe your mom left her vicodin prescription in your bathroom, oops, now you're guilty of possession of a controlled drug without a prescription.
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> it's a federal crime
I can lay my hand on No part of the U.S. constitution that allows Congress to outlaw a naturally-growing plant. It took an amendment to give them the power to outlaw alcohol, and the same requirement applies to weed.
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No, it just takes the Supreme Court to rule that the Constitution says that Congress can outlaw a plant. There are various reasons that it is Constitutional from national security to interstate commerce.
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It's a crime against your body - especially a dislocated joint.
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this depends on the state. Not every state looks the other way, and if you leave it up to local authorities it becomes inconsistent between bigger cities and more rural towns. Indiana is a good example of this. I work in Louisville and KY has a policy that possession (not distribution) of less than 8 oz is considered a misdemeanor $100 fine for the _first_ offence. After that it is back to disproportionate punitive measures. However, because under 8oz is a misdemeanor it does give sworn officers the flexibi
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WTF America! (Score:3)
How little faith do you have in your emergency services for this to be on the list of concerns?
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Police are dispatched to every ambulance call in my city/state. There was an emergency responder that was shot in the line of duty attempting to save another life. Officers are 'sworn' to uphold the law. That means they technically are not allowed to use good judgement to overlook illicit or illegal activity because they are sworn to arrest/report to the DA. Unless another law or policy tells them to look the other way, they HAVE to intervene. They do not have any latitude to make the call. This is reserve
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Unless another law or policy tells them to look the other way, they HAVE to intervene. They do not have any latitude to make the call.
That is horseshit. Not what you said, but rather the situation you ultimately find your country in. My neighbour (not in America) experienced just that judgement call when his roommate did a bit of thieving and they police came and searched his home. They found among the jewelry they were looking for a marijuana pot plant and my neighbour's still. They asked if they belonged to him, he said yes, and they told him if they have to come back to the house for something else they don't want to see either item ag
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this is the ugly undocumented result of people demanding equality. It doesn't even have to happen in your town. When a town riots because some guy, with a gun, gets shot by a cop, policies pop up everywhere. Sometimes the video even clearly shows a justified lethal response, but people riot anyway. They end up rioting for a blended image of past injustices but still verbally insist this incident is another case of injustice. So then the departments start digging into every perceived chance of injustice. Lat
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In America, having the police respond to your home is a very bad idea. Your chance of being arrested on some bullshit charge or being shot dead because the officer felt "threatened" goes through the roof. No thank you.
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See the "The counted" series by the Guardian for info on people dead at the hands of the police in 2015 / 2016. About 1100-1200 per year.
For SWAT team stats, Wikipedia says 50.000 raids in 2005. But for more insight, read Radley Balko's "Rise of the Warrior Cop" (2013).
GP is right. Inviting the police to your home is a really bad idea.
It is a gimmick anyway (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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A bunch of assumptions (some of which I can tell you are false without even having to research them), some stereotypes, agism and a personal dislike for Apple...
What a great rebuttal!
Jesus fuck, is this really the kind of shit we're putting up with in 2018? Fucking small-dick fagbois pouring out their rage about nothing. What a great thing the internet has become.
15 seconds not long enough (Score:3)
As someone who has rolled out lone-worker / man-down alert systems before, 15 seconds is not long enough to prevent false alarms. Even with careful training, and even when a person knows they are wearing a dedicated man down device, the number of false alarms these things generate are incredibly high when not given a shitload of time for the user to respond.
Rather than worrying about police rummaging through your house looking for your weed stash while you lay unconscious on the floor, I'd be more concerned with getting fined for repeated false alarms in jurisdictions that allow for such.
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Could the "feature" deactivate automagically when it's not actually being worn?
So, don't commit a crime (Score:1)
Or if you want to commit a crime, don't turn on features that call the cops.
As for the example (a joint), if you are doing drugs and fall and can't stop the alert within 15 seconds, maybe you really need help. Sure, you will get into legal trouble, but that's still better than being dead.
Still agree with the idea of a used defined contact, especially since phones already have "ICE" contacts that can be called from a locked screen for that reason.
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Or if you want to commit a crime, don't turn on features that call the cops.
How would you even know if you're committing a crime? No one can keep track of all of the laws, there are over 300,000 federal laws and regulations that can result in criminal prosecution and over 70% of people have comitted one or more jailable offenses.
https://www.politifact.com/pun... [politifact.com]
Some may seem innocuous like 'If a doctor gave you a prescription for the common painkiller vicodin and your spouse brings it to you as you lie in bed, "your spouse is dispensing a controlled substance without a license,"' b
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My 86 year old grandmother could benefit from this device (and, in fact, uses a competing product purpose-built for fall detection that automatically places a 911 call when triggered.) My grandmother is statistically pretty likely to have need of this device at some point during the remaining years of her life. She's statistically pretty unlikely to be arrested, charged or convicted of a crime that police happened to notice/fabricate when t
catch 22 (Score:2)
If you had it call a friend, and they took time to clean things up before calling for help, they could also be in legal limbo and possible civil lawsuits for not getting emergency medical help needed immediately.
A question for you more legal geeks out there (Score:3)
In my state (KY but possibly others), we created a law that when 911 was called for an overdose that everyone at the scene was safe from prosecution of crimes such as possession etc. Could this law be expanded or interpreted to include 911 calls made by an apple watch?
http://www.lrc.ky.gov/statutes... [ky.gov]
Re:A question for you more legal geeks out there (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:A question for you more legal geeks out there (Score:4, Informative)
A reddit user explained that a while ago (sorry, no link).
It's easier to smuggle that way, of course, but it has (superficial) advantages for the addicted in that it looks to be cheaper and more "manageable".
The downside seems to be that once you're on anything stronger than heroin, there's no easy coming back (getting clean), due to the way these drugs work and how long they stay active. I can't remember the details, but it was a very interesting and equally sobering post.
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Why was there melamine in milk? Because the answer to both questions is the same - the product is adulterated to make more profits.
In the milk case, the Chinese farmers watered down the milk, but you can tell when you do thi
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Fine inhumane authoritarian mind-set you have there.
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Yes, you have addicted and out of control people ODing, and you don't do anything to stop it. You are quite the great humanitarian.
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So you plan to have people not die from ODing by having them die from ODing because nobody calls 911? You are deranged.
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Just because someone doesn't by a watch, doesn't mean no one will call 911 or that in time after the fall, people won't get up on their own. In most such situations people have been doing quite well for tens-of-thousands of years.
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Likely, soon the watch will call iAmbulance, a subsidiary of Apple.
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Here is news for you: It is basically impossible to not commit crimes these days. And if they are just pissed you called them for nothing they may even manufacture some crimes they can pin on you.
Also, obvious troll is obvious.
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Even if you accept this premise as true, which I do not, I would very much like to see even an iota of substantiation for this argument as it pertains specifically to crimes that are not only "basically impossible" to avoid, but also crimes that one might only do privately because they would risk legal ramifications if law enforcement knew about them, since that is really the only kind of crimes that the so-called "legal troubl
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https://www.amazon.com/Three-F... [amazon.com]
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Uh... sure, but that book is about breaking laws in other jurisdictions. Of course it can sometimes be very easy to break a law of some place that you don't necessarily reside in and don't know the law of that place, but it's not particularly easy for the cops from that location to come to your door and arrest you for such a crime either.
So my question remains open... can it even begin to be substantiated that it is so similarly simple to commit crimes in the jurisdiction in which you reside and for wh
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Warning for Left Handers (Score:5, Funny)
Rayn@RyPatts
So I apparently fell down 627 stairs then stopped moving for over 5 minutes. An ambulance showed up at the house along with my mum who let them in.
Tip: don't wear your new Apple Watch whilst having some alone time. Thanks Apple.
Lesson learned: Don't wear your Apple Watch while masturbating.
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Lesson learned: Don't wear your Apple Watch while masturbating.
Dammit! Now I actually need to go walking to get my step count up.
I don't follow.... (Score:2)
How is this opening up users into getting into legal trouble if said user wasn't actually doing anything against the law before the watch contacted first responders?
I thought maybe this was about something to do with an automated call to emergency services without human intervention, but no.... the legal trouble that the article mentions, of all things, is that when the police come in, they could find prohibited substances in the premises??? Stuff that wasn't supposed to be there in the first place?
Fo
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Have you ever driven 1 mph over the speed limit?
if so, you better turn yourself in.
User preferred contact (Score:2)
He said he "would much prefer a feature that can automatically dial a user-determined contact."
This is also a bit problematic. What if that contact doesn't answer the phone, or it goes to voicemail, what's the service to do then? What if a stranger picks up the phone, or it's an old number, etc, etc.
There's probably a few people who would do well with that feature but I'm guessing most user-determined contacts wouldn't respond appropriately if a call ever came in. And I suspect that first responders are fai
I'm more worried about... (Score:2)
...it keeping track of dates/times a person has fallen. This record could easily be used by relatives to get conservatorship over a senior citizen against their will.
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If you've fallen so much that a court will grant conservatorship against your will, then you're in a bad situation. I understand some elderly really don't want to go into a home or be cared for by family, but some of them actually need to be and shouldn't be driving around or living by themselves anymore.
The data is still private unless it calls the ambulance, if you obtain the data illegally or without consent, that's still illegal so your conservatorship suit turns into a civil or criminal lawsuit and you
There was a frost this morning (Score:2)
I don't need a watch to tell me its FALL.
Samsung Gear (Score:2)
I am not sure, but I think it would be illegal for a device to call 911 automatically. It is certainly that way with home alarm systems. So I don't see how this would be any different.
Samsung seems to know the correct way to handle this- on their watches, the user sets up, in advance, people that it will automatically text and call if there is an emergency. Then those HUMANS can try to determine if the situation warrants EMS and be the points of initiation and contact. Maybe Apple can "invent" that now.
GTFO, beige loving philistines (Score:2)
That requires an input field which would totally ruin the clean look of the UI!
Another tip by a law professor (Score:2)
Give the _user_ the choice (Score:2)
Quote: "He said he "would much prefer a feature that can automatically dial a user-determined contact."
Yeah, it's called making the patient the focus of your system. That's what smart systems do: http://aetonix.com/ [aetonix.com]
The Apple watch caters to making it easy for the corporation i.e. no finicky designing choice for the users. Maybe Mr. Jobs was labeled an ass to work for because we've only been hearing from the people he called out for doing a shitty job.