The death of the landline

I'm really not sure how I feel about this:

MADISON, Wis. -- The dormitories on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus will soon be following the trend of other college campuses around the state in ditching their landline phones.

After an extensive two years of surveying students on their phone usage habits, university officials said that the $400,000 a year to operate the phones isn't necessary. They said that about 98 percent of students rely on their cell phone instead of their free dorm phone.

Paul Evans, director of UW Student Housing, said that the decision was a common-sense choice given students' behavior."It really wasn't a way that we were able to get a hold of students," he said. "We would have to look up their number and half the time, the phone wasn't plugged in. So it became very obvious that it wasn't the phone that students were using."

The school will provide one landline phone per floor for free. Students wishing to have their own private landline may request one to be installed, but they'll have to pay for it themselves.

With all of the recent conflicting information that's been coming out about the reliability of cell phones when it comes to 911 calls, I'm not so sure this is the best idea ever. I do understand the need to cut costs (especially with a legislature that's so unfriendly to funding the universities), but this particular move makes me really uncomfortable.

On an almost completely unrelated note, tomorrow morning I will have the distinct pleasure (and near debilitating nervousness) of chatting with Lee Rayburn over at the Mic, 92.1 FM in Madison for a bit that, I assume, will be aired Thursday morning on his show. I'll know for sure tomorrow and post the definite airtime for anyone who's morbidly curious as to what, exactly, I have to contribute to an otherwise perfectly good radio program.

GPS, 9-1-1, and you

Kids, don't prank call 9-1-1. Seriously. We have enough trouble making sure the people who really need emergency services get them, and the dispatchers are already working hard enough that extra calls really are harmful to the community.

That said, this recent Dane County press release certainly grabbed my attention:

At approximately 2:30 am, Dane County Sheriff's Deputies were dispatched to an area east of 2349 Williams Point Drive, in the Town of Pleasant Springs, for a 9-1-1 hang up call from an unsubscribed cellular telephone. Unsubscribed cellular telephones can still dial 9-1-1, but can not be called back. Because the location of the 9-1-1 hang up could not be pinpointed, an extensive search of the area was conducted by deputies, with the assistance of the Stoughton Police Department.

With the help of the 9-1-1 Center providing latitude and longitude coordinates, the on-scene Sheriff's Office Sergeant was able to input the coordinates into the GPS program on his squad computer and narrow the search to 300 feet. Deputies were then able to locate two prank callers who were staying in the group campground at Lake Kegonsa State Park. A chaperone with the group discovered the students misusing the cellular telephone and placed a call to the 9-1-1 Center as the deputies were arriving in the campground.

The two pranksters, ages 12 and 13, were part of a group of Madison School District students participating in a camping trip at the park. Charges of False Reports to the 911 System were referred on the two juveniles, who were then released to the chaperone. The two also admitted to making an earlier prank call at 7:25 pm, on Tuesday, June 3, 2008. Deputies, who do not have the GPS capabilities in their individual squads, were dispatched to this earlier call, but were unable to locate the caller, or anyone in need of assistance.

So, the 9-1-1 Center was able to provide latitude and longitude, and the Sergeant was able to punch them into his on -oard computer's GPS system to pinpoint the location of the call to within 300 feet?

Interesting.

It's also worth noting that, apparently, deputies don't have GPS capabilities in their squad cars, only, if I'm reading this right, the Sergeant. Might this be something that could be easily corrected? As far as I'm aware, all squad cars are equipped with a police-specific laptop. I'm sure getting GPS installed wouldn't be a huge hassle, and even if it was, wouldn't it be worth it?

I'm also curious as to exactly how long this ability to track coordinates between the 9-1-1 Center and police has existed. Might that not have been useful in the case of the Brittany Zimmermann call? While we're at it, I'm still waiting to find out how police were able to use a cell phone to locate the body of Kelly Nolan.

Unfortunately, even after everything that's happened, nobody's talking.

Meanwhile, the Dane County Board's Executive Committee just approved the second audit in five years of the 9-1-1 Center. This despite the fact that recommendations from the last audit have not been fully implemented, and a $450,000 data collection system installed two years ago to monitor how well the center is functioning is only just now being used.

How any of this makes sense is beyond me.


(photo from PNLH)

Improvements in 911 equipment, but what about cell phones?

The Capital Times is reporting that County Board Supervisor Brett Hulsey claims that the Dane County 911 Center "has added one communicator and one communications supervisor, so the center is now fully staffed with 12 people. More equipment is planned as part of a $30 million investment the county is making in the public safety communications system."

That's good news.

What Hulsey doesn't indicate is whether or not these additions and improvements yet meet the guidelines set forth in the '04 report of the center by an outside consultant. Perhaps even more importantly, the public still hasn't gotten a straight, honest answer when it comes to the center's ability to track cell phone calls.

Apparently, the federal mandate is that they should be able to "find a caller's location within an area 200 feet by 100 feet from the actual location." What we've heard from various Dane County officials, however, varies wildly enough that anyone paying attention would be disinclined to ever again use a cell phone for emergency purposes.

This is all made even more interesting by the recent attention being paid to privacy issues with regards to cell phones. Service providers are required to provide real-time tracking data to any Public Safety Answering Point (or PSAP) within 6 months of the request being made. This same information has often been sought by federal authorities wishing to get the real-time location of alleged drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminals, sometimes without demonstrating probable cause. That's a whole other issue, and one worthy of much scrutiny and skepticism, but it also brings up some issues relevant to the Zimmermann case. If such pinpointing technology exists and its use is federally mandated in the case of emergency services, why isn't it being used to guarantee follow-up calls and police dispatching to the origin of the call (as is currently the case with calls made from landlines)?

An entity called "Dane County Public Safety Communications" is officially registered with the federal government as one such PSAP. That would suggest their compliance with federal E911 regulations, and the ability to pinpoint the location of a cell phone (as was done in the Kelly Nolan case, with a cell phone that wasn't even making a call, which also has not yet been explained).

So what's the truth? Do we have the ability to locate cell phones in a reasonably accurate fashion, but just fucked up in this case? Or are we lying about our emergency service's capabilities, something that might well put us in violation of federal regulations? Neither option is particularly appealing, and I'd love for both to be wrong. But until we're given a straight answer, there's only speculation and a creeping feeling that we're not being as well-taken care of as we ought to be.