911 Call Tracking Site Stirs Concern

Frosty Piss writes, "This story comes from the Seattle Post-Intellegencer. For the past year, John Eberly has operated Seattle911.com, a site that until this week took real-time feeds of 911 calls from the Seattle Fire Department and plotted them on Google Maps. But on learning of Eberly's site, officials cited 'security concerns' and altered the way they display 911 calls on their Web site, changing the format from text to graphical, preventing Eberly from acquiring the raw data. (Several programmers are quoted musing how trivial it would be to work around this evasion.) Fire officials worry that allowing others to display where fire crews are on an Internet map could make things easier if terrorists were planning an attack. That logic left Eberly and others scratching their heads, as the information continues to be publicly available on the Fire Department's site. 'We're not obligated to provide this information. It's something that we did for customer service in the first place,' a Fire Department spokesperson said. So is this public information? Should the data be available to the public in real time?" The Seattle P-I story ends with a quote from Bruce Schneier: "The government is not saying, 'Hey, this data needs to be secret,' they are saying, 'This data needs to be inconvenient to get to.'"

Beware of the Leopard

"But the plans were on display ..."

"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."

"That's the display department."

"With a torch."

"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."

"So had the stairs."

"But look, you found the notice didn't you?"

"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard."

Unsure what to make of this

They're afraid of terrorists attacking a fire?

Re:Unsure what to make of this

Terrorism risk my ass. My guess as to the real concern? The politicians are afraid that people might see how damned dangerous certain parts of town (read: slums) really are, sending property values into the crapper and perhaps launching a round of White Flight. You see, it's easier to deny a problem exists (or mask the extent) than to fix it.

All the typical poli behaviours are here on display -- denial, obfuscation, evasion and just plain old lying.

Re:Unsure what to make of this

Work in a downtown convenience store for about a year and you will learn how the city really works. And yes the number is tens of thousands. And yes the homeless do use ambulances for trivial reasons, many times including transportation from somewhere to the hospital.

But feel free to deny that the problem exists. After all, downtown Seattle certainly does look pretty cosmopolitan. Obviously we've solved or are solving all of our issues. But if that were true why are all business types afraid to be downtown at roughly 8:00 PM when the 'youths' come out?

There are tens of thousands of meth junkies alone in downtown Seattle. That is why petty theft, car thefts, and car breakins in Seattle are among the highest in the country. But we wouldn't want to let anyone know about them in case it damaged real estate values would we? Nor would we want people to know that the homeless go from downtown Seattle in the day to the U-district at night to search through trash. If you want to get a better count of the homeless population feel free to check the I-5 underpasses at night (if you are brave enough). Check out Green Lake. Have fun.

Re:Unsure what to make of this

I don't about the USA, but in the UK we've got problems with neds (non-educated delinquents) setting up bonfires to lure firefighters to their neighbourhood, then throwing stones at the firecrews and vehicles, all just for fun.

Re:Unsure what to make of this

Why is it still on the 911 site then?
I fail to see what purpose it serves to remove the googlemaps of the same data
I doubt that terrorists are that much less technical than the people of the seattle911.com site.
The only reason I can see with keeping the data public(on the 911 web site, not the seattle911.com one) might be public access to information laws or some other regulatory issue. If the information is public, let seattle911.com do whatever it wants with it. If the goal is to prevent terrorism, don't MASK the information, take it off the 911 web site too.
We aren't talking about an intranet here.
The public servants are alrady at risk, since it's PUBLIC information.
The only reason I can see to keep the info public, but not let seattle911.com use it, is that if seattle911.com is ad-based, and they don't want the seattle911.com to benefit for free, from this information. But in that case, that's what a cease and desist letter is for.
If it really is that risky for the public servants, why isn't the information better protected? How is publicising the info on only one site that much less safe than on two?

Re:Unsure what to make of this

I didn't have any ads on seattle911.com. I lost money on the site, I just published it for others benefit.

Re:Unsure what to make of this

Fortunately, most cities have planned for this by having *several* fire trucks.

OMGZ!!! Teh terrorists are taking Seattle!

Well, I don't know...as we are aware that Seattle is such a hotbed of terrorist activity.
That's why we haven't got Bin L. yet in the mountains of over Middle East way- he's operating out of the Cascades!
OMG! I'm crawling into my shelter here in Oklahoma right now! *sarcasm off*

WTF? Terrorists responding to fires?- give 'em a hose and let them help fight the fires!
We know that they would not be smart enough to use a scanner, use their ears and follow the sirens, watch the frikken news- but heaven help us if they have access to Google Earth!

Damn, the insanity in this country is starting to drive me crazy.

Re:Unsure what to make of this

"It might be possible to wait for many of the emergency vehicles to be on one side of the city and then start a fire on the other side of the city."

Funny, that can be done _without_ computers _or_ 911 tracking.

These guys are just worried that someone might point to poor performance. That's all. It's entirely _cya_.

--
BMO

Re:Unsure what to make of this

And from TFA, this is still trivially possible. The data source is plainly available, just not easily parsed (which is a total non-issue for the short-term opportunist you describe).

Secondly, there's no need to wait for such placement; it'd be trivial to simply engineer that situation with a few 911 calls / events of your own.

Personally, I'd say they're offended that their "cool tool" got one-upped.

Re:Unsure what to make of this

It might be possible to wait for many of the emergency vehicles to be on one side of the city and then start a fire on the other side of the city.

In Seattle? In any large city with widely dispersed fire and police resources? That better be one Hell of a fire if everyone in the whole fuckin' city is there...

Anyway, many people are asking WHY someone would need this info, but that's the wrong question. The question should be "why shouldn't they have it"? And from the story, clearly they still do have it, just not from this guy's site. The city still has this info up on their site.

And why do most people who are interested in this stuff want access to it? The same reason people buy scanners, because it's interesting to follow what's going on.

Re:Unsure what to make of this

Except that they're not going to sit and wait for a bunch of fires to spontaneously sprout at the other side of the city, then run into another building with a match. If they really wanted to do that, they would *set* several fires at the other side of the city. And you don't need to track firetrucks to know that that's where they're going to be.

Re:Not terrorism--just simple opportunistic crime

I actually contacted the SFD about my site when I first put it together and they liked it. They had no problem with it, but were unwilling to link directly to seattle911.com because they could not ensure the integrity of the data. I responded that I totally understund their viewpoint. I grabbed their data every X minutes and some people visited my site. So, every visitor to my site used my bandwidth that I paid for, not the governments. (It makes you wonder why I wasted money on this). Now, the city would like to prevent sites like mine and the visually impaired by providing a jpeg instead of text. Well, this doesn't prevent me from using the data (curl/gocr, etc) and it requires 8 times more bandwidth to serve the jpegs. Not to mention the time for the developers and the software expense (I sure hope they didn't buy software to convert jpeg to text, but I wouldn't be surprised). All of which, must be paid by the taxpayers of Seattle. I personally wish they would spend more money on firemen salary and equipment and less of paper-pushers.

Inconvienient?

Come on, does anyone really think that making the information a tiny bit harder to get is going to discourage real terrorists? Why do so many people persist in the idea that if we make the world hard to use that bad people won't be able to use it, bad people are the ones who will invest the time to learn how to work the system. A change like this does one thing, inconvieniences those people who may have found some use for this program. It doesn't stop terrorist, it doesn't help the public, it doesn't even make a good public relations story. How long before someone rebuilds the site to grab the graphics and translate them do you think? And how long after that before the govenment makes the data in those funny letters on forums at which point they may as well not even publish it. Every time I think I've grasped the limit of stupidity it moves further and further away...

Re:Inconvienient?

"Why do so many people persist in the idea that if we make the world hard to use that bad people won't be able to use it, bad people are the ones who will invest the time to learn how to work the system."

If this were true, then almost everything that the US govt has done to prevent terrorism would be a mistake. Oh, wait....

Re:Inconvienient?

No, but it gives the naive masses the impression that the government is doing something to stop the bad guys.

It really does not matter if it works or not.

Why do we need it?

Is it important to know, in real-time, where emergency crews are? Why? So you can chase the ambulance that much easier? To gawk as crews try to rescue people, and possibly get in the way?

Re:Why do we need it?

EMS heckling is a big thing here. Lots of fun.

You call that a tracheotomy?

Maybe I'm spending too much time w/med students, though.

Re:Why do we need it?

If we're not a first responder, why do we need the info in real time? I'd agree with letting the information out, but delaying it for, say an hour or so. Not to make it inconvenient to get to, just not immediate info.

Re:Why do we need it?

This is the most sensible solution - delay. The FAA does this with radar info, its all delayed 15 minutes. 15 minutes might be too soon for this info, but an hour seems reasonable.

Its a shame that the people running the system are too worried about public perception and politics instead of thinking about the problem.

Re:Why do we need it?

>Re:Why do we need it?

So the GPS tranceivers in emergency vehicles can provide data so that alternate routes for other road users can be made to permit safer emergency travel, and less stops and inconveniences for the remainder of road users.

Eventually, when cars are automatic, such a feedback loop will be a natural part of the road navigation process. This will increase efficiency, decrease traffic congestions and decrease travel times for all concerned.

911 feeds?

If this was just for fires, I don't think it is incredibly bad, but my first thought on seeing the headline was, "why are they releasing 911 data in the first place?" I mean, were they posting medical emergencies, too? That is kind of creepy.

But on the other hand, if they were releasing the information, I don't see anything wrong with someone actually using the data. The shock to me is that they were releasing it publicly...in real time to begin with.

Transporter_ii

I don't get get it.

I don't quite get it. I can't read the article as the link ends up at a non-existant blog post.

I'll have to start out by saying I'm amazed such information was ever available. I'm just surprised anyone would think to post that for people.

I have to say I'm with the government on this one. Why does anyone need to know exactly where all the 911 calls are coming from in real time? I can understand why such data should be available, but why not give it a 24 hour delay? There are just SO many uses for this data for evil (where you can torch a house, when you can steal something with few cops nearby, where you can go to ambulance chase the most successfully, etc.).

If you have a good reason for needing the data in real time, I see no problem with using a simple free registration to get to it.

I just don't see why this needs to be available to the public in real time.

Frankly, I'd be more worried about other people having it. Not just for the stuff listed above, but for neighbors watching to see if I were to call and other uses like that which I wouldn't be big on. A particularly savvy criminal (or group) could rob houses and track local 911 calls to see when the cops have been tipped off about them so they know when to split.

Or, if you have a restraining order against you, you could watch when the police get called to the house then go in after they leave.

I can't think of any good reason why most people need this live. I can't think of a single one. Businesses, I can think of a few, but private citizens?

explanation

Just last week. Chemical explosion and nasty fire in north carolina.Not the first, not the last. I guess you could wait 24 hours to tell people about it, as the clouds of shit that could kill them drifted over them. How about brush fires, you ever been in one? I used to fight them as a volunteer, sometimes people have minutes to evac- minutes, tops-so they shouldn't have a way to find out until it's too late? How about armed standoffs or bad car crashes that block whole roads for hours? Would it be nice to know about them in a timely manner? How about if you are a newsie, nice to get to where the news is going down? I can think of a LOT of reasons why this restriction is misguided, lame, stupid and fairly unconstitutional once you get down to it.

Really, this is government public business, the public has every right in the world to be informed of it, absolutely no different from any joe citizen can go sit in on court to any case you want if there's room in the pews.. no different at all, really.

  This is allegedly a government by and for the people, not by and for the 1% connected elite and their hired on order taking and following drones. We had a revolution over that bit, remember?

  Government is supposed to hold only a few cards with our express permission, everything else IS our business and THEY work at our suffrance, as our employees. I, for one, am SICK AND TIRED of government-as-masters and overlords who assume everything is theirs by default and you must grovel before them. As the expression goes, F dat shyte! They have just usurped all the powers and now make you beg for it, and whenever they find out you are using your born with rights they get all bent out of shape and want to take it away or sell you "permission" or something. Screw that! We tell them what to do, not the other way around! This ain't a massah/slave deal, none of that plantation action, no thanks!

Giving into this "everything revolves around terrorism" stuff is pure grade-A brainwashed crapola. You are a smart guy, you *really* don't believe all this hysteria crap they have whipped up to control the mouth breathers, do you? I understand the 'tards swallowing it because they think pro rasslin' is real, but not anyone normal who is reasonably intelligent. You can see through it for the extreme power grab and consolidation it really is? The Heglian Dialectic angle? Think about it, really think, imagine you are joe terrorist.. Anyone with a room temp IQ and above, with "tools" available at any qucikstore starting with a cig ligter, working completely alone, could go around the country and commit "acts of terrorism" on a daily schedule. And get away with it. Assymetrical warfare, pretty easy stuff really. So--where's the beef, where are all the attacks from the "OMG fundy islamofascist tarists sleeper cells all over gonna steal our freedom fries and rape the cattle!". Well??? Where are all the attacks?? There aren't any except for over were THEIR nations are being invaded, which is more or less understanable given the context of them..being invaded.

    Maybe we have had one or two-maybe-I am still not convinced yet, to me it looks a lot more like a government reichstagg fire inside job.. the evidence we can see points way more to it being an inside job, using some stupid patsies at best.

    Anyway, this "terrorism" jazz is primarily pushed for and by the coup plotters and those who profit from this coup takeover, and it really *is* a coup that has happened. They use "terrorist" as this generations buzzword to induce and perpetuate fear, uncertainty and doubt.

It's a scam, man, really, a freakin' scam...

Re:I don't get get it.

Well, let me give a little firefighter's instinct on this -

> I'll have to start out by saying I'm amazed such information was ever available. I'm just surprised anyone would think to post that for people.

> I have to say I'm with the government on this one. Why does anyone need to know exactly where all the 911 calls are coming from in real time?

You forget that this data is provided BY the government; the government is NOT saying they don't want this public, nor realtime; they are saying that they do not want a 3rd party to one-up their text-based webpage with a google map on a different site. Note well that the government response was NOT taking down the data; the response was to thwart the parsing of it.

So, you are not "with the government" on this one! (and, right or wrong isn't relevent; you simply do NOT agree with them.)

> I can understand why such data should be available, but why not give it a 24 hour delay? There are just SO many uses for this data for evil (where you can torch a house, when you can steal something with few cops nearby, where you can go to ambulance chase the most successfully, etc.)

Again, this isn't relevent to TFA, which discusses someone's use of the data; that the data is "realtime" has no bearing, and this "someone" is merely re-posting data that is publicly provided by the 911 center. The "use for evil" isn't even limited to a realtime feed, either. To ban any data on realtime emergency response means that there must also be a corresponding "news blackout" - after all, as an evil supervillan, I can wait for the fire dept to be stretched with 5 structure fires that drains the district (as you suggest)... or I can wait for a 5 alarm fire, a single large event that drains the district. Oddly, the 5 distinct fires won't make the news. But the big mega-fire will - with live coverage, helicopter-cams, the works, and the whole universe is going to know about it. And I can tell you... the 5 alarmer is a LOT more dangerous (from a complexity standpoint) than 5 distinct calls... if our supervillan wishes to "sneak under the radar", odds are much better during the chaos of the single, large, harder-to-manage event.

So, if this realtime data should be hidden... we likewise need a press blackout. No "live coverage" during fires, no reports of traffic accidents during our treks to work and home. Otherwise, we flatly contradict our reason for "no realtime data", I'm afraid.

A lot of people question why realtime data would be relevent in the first place... and I can tell from the tone of your post, your gut is crawling with the potential for abuse.

But, the data already readily available. It goes across the radio as a dispatch, and for $20 you can listen in. And as mentioned earlier, larger events are on the TV and radio. Of your examples (which are good)... putting this data on the internet enables *nothing*, any more than removing it from the internet *prevents* anything. You can't think of a single reason someone would need this data... I must ask, can you think of one action that removing this data is going to thwart? Just one? Don't feel bad if you can't... I can't, either.

For a 911 center, posting the data would be wonderful. It enables all of the value-adds with no labor on your part - radio station traffic reports, news agencies, even TomTom updates. You can facilitate all that crap, and even have some control over the wording of the information (which is huge, believe me). Or, you can force these same parties to scrape radio traffic for audio snippets, and then deal with the Absolute Joy of them paraphrasing 2nd-hand information that is completely without context. As a 911 center, you can choose one or the other. And, it doesn't seem to be a tough choice. Banning such data to "businesses" is downright silly... since all that does is create an artificial barrier to entry for the hobbiest / amateur-developer-who-wants-to-start-something. And believe me, the bulk of the GOOD fire-service software comes from such pe

The general rational

While I think this specific case is somewhat asinine, the general rational has always been that enough public information, when compiled, can be considered "sensitive" or "classified".

Like that one kid's thesis detailing the layout of internet backbone cables, or back in the day when basic nuclear theory was available in public texts, but was still considered a gov't secret.

Paranoid Seattle Buses

I was in a metro [metrokc.gov] bus and wanted to take a picture of some trees outside. The bus driver told me, "Hey, you can't take pictures in here."

I asked, "Why not?!"

He said, "I'm actually supposed to report you to the police, if you do. Terrorism."

"What are they going to do, reverse engineer the bus timetables from photographic evidence? This can't possibly make us any safer."

He replied, "Well, who's to say."

Who's to say indeed.

Absolutely absurd.

Note that busview [busview.org] will give you the location of all Metro busses in real time.

Re:Paranoid Seattle Buses

At least in Canada you can take pictures of crap. Yes, you can take pictures *from* a plane! A regular, passanger jet plane!

Not being allowed to take pics used to be part of the "evil" communist russia. Now, it is part of the paranoid america. Congratulations americans, you are slowly turning into the same totalitarian regime like soviet union. All under the umbrela of fear and "security". And the sad part is no one is ready to stand up against this cancerous mutation of your constitution.

Yes, anything can be turned into an argument...

...about the Second Amendment.

"The government is not saying, 'Hey, this data needs to be secret,' they are saying, 'This data needs to be inconvenient to get to.'"

Now they just need to apply the same logic to their lists of gun owners.

make it available delayed then

I don't know seattle911.com, so I don't know if it's absolutely critical to have the data in real-time. But if not, just make the data available in the convenient format, but an hour or so later. As far-fetched as the terrorist scenario may sound, with this solution everybody could be happy, no? Or is this just another subtle reminder of the never-ending War on Terrer?

Awesome Info!

So the educated Pyro can wait until everyone is else where, hop on the motorbike, and start five, ten fires and really tie up the fire department. Great.

You could do that to begin with, but now you can plot your course to string everyone out better and more efficently.

911 calls are public record

In many places 911 calls are public record. Also, when the police are called (even if it's not 911), those reports are often public record.

I'm not sure if it applies to this Seattle or not, but it should be easy enough to find out. Here there are several public web sites where you can look at current fire/ems/traffic activity [lancaster.pa.us] or city police incident reports [lancasterpolice.com]. Both sites contain information available to the public by other means, and providing it on a web site helps to cut down on paper information requests.

There is no way it should be real-time.

There is no way that 911 call information should be available at anything approaching real-time data.

They want to make the information available for customer service purposes then good, put it on a 24hr delay.

Was that really Bruce?

'This data needs to be inconvenient to get to.'

Isn't that exactly what 'secret' data is meant to be. From what I understand of basic information theory is that you cannot completely secure data, there will always - eventually - be a path to it, information security's job is to make it so inconvenient for an unauthorised person to get to, that by the time they reach it, it will be worthless. They only to permanently stop someone from learning a piece of data is to totally destroy it. (this is why encryption keys and passwords should expire at regular intervals).
I think that Schnieder must have been mis-quoted there, as data that has been purposefully made inconvenient to get to is, by it's nature, secret. Data that has been simply obfuscated and published is not secret or has been dealt with incorrectly.
If this data can cause national (or even local) security issue, then it should be classified and secret whilst that info is useful (i.e. publish it immediately when the crews get back to their base from the call).

used to be "due to liability" its now "terrorist"

The standard big bad wolf that was used anytime someome wanted to stop you from doing something completely reasonable in the US used to be "Sorry, but due to liability, you cant...".

That implied some kind of financial damage if you did not listen.

Now the standard has changed to "terrorist threat". Imagine being sent to GitBay, shipped to Syria and tortured, and imprisoned forever. That is a hell of a lot more efficient.

I have noticed that in the US nobody dear to
1. Cross the line into the garage to look at the guys changing tires on their car anymore.
2. Allow thir children to ride in the shopping carts
3. Use opposite sex bathrooms
4. Engage in significan physical activity
5. Any other activity that looks like terrorist planning or execution.

Ban the internet

It's a tool that terrorists can use to coordinate an attack.

is it really the terrorists

Or is it just that it's no ones business who was in an accident other than the parties envolved? If I wrecked on I-81 (that's the closest highway in PA for me) who needs to know that? And don't say it's for traffic either, most radio stations do traffic on the hour.

uhh

It either needs to be secret & kept secret or available. On the internet, once something's known, it's not hard to get at, at all. What are you going to do? Have it so people have to click through 20 different links before they get to a randomly changing URL of where the data is at? Shit.

Bypassing idiots

If you look at their current webpage [cityofseattle.net] it shows the dispatch list in jpg format.
1. use ocr software to convert to text
2. parse text
3. fuck them
4. pay your taxes for those ignorant bastards

"Security Reasons"

I was just at Heathrow over the weekend- waiting for my wife to get back from the duty free in Terminal 3. It's one of the world's crappiest terminals- not even chairs at the gate. SO there I am waiting, sitting on the only space available, the floor. Here comes some guard saying I can't sit there- "security reasons". So WTF am I supposed to do, call to my genie wife to bring me back into her bottle with her? "Security Reasons" is the catch phrase of power-hungry bureaucrats everywhere, it means, "I'd like to push you around and you'd don't dare even question me when I give you even an unreasonable command on a whim". I got a headache when I read about the RFID tags at the Hungarian airport. Security is used by all the worlds' despots as the rationale for their staying in power. No kidding Capt Obvious you say? Well, what's the best way to push aside this reason without being labeled treasonous?

HIPAA

This has nothing to do with terrorism and just a small bit with security. I'm a Firefighter/Paramedic in Northern Florida. Most large incidents are picked up by local news agencies within hours and the information widely broadcast.

Publically disseminating private emergency call information in realtime can compromise a fire scene investigation and open medical responders up to HIPAA http://http//www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa/ [http] violation lawsuits. A patient's PHI (Personal/Private Health Information) includes anything that connects their name/address/whatever to their medical condition. This is also the reason EMTs and Paramedics in our EMS company are not allowed to take photos of motor vehicle crashes because that photo then becomes part of the patients medical record and must be protected under HIPAA regulation. We know that anyone with a radio scanner can listen to live dispatches and that's why we never give names over the radio. Briefly looking at Seattles dispatch page I don't see any PHI.

My opinion is that Seattle is overreacting a bit.

Florida Highway Patrol put incidents up on their website with a delay...http://www.1stresponder.com/ [1stresponder.com]First Responder News delays their "live" dispatch stories about 30 minutes. As long as no personal information is given the public has a right to know what emergencies are going on in their neighborhood. Many fire departments and EMS services are struggling to keep up with these information issues but it ultimately comes down to patient privacy. Would you want the world to know that you called an ambulance because you tripped over a garden hose and did a face-plant on your patio?

Terrorists, huh

By the same logic, websites that show traffic conditions [wa.gov] should be shut down too. Well, ya, terrorists can make sure they don't get stuck in parking lot on the I-5.

Oz

Some information *SHOULD* be hard to get

How much "public" information should be easily accessible from any keyboard in the world? I find that it is hard to argue for privacy-laws that protect one's private information when we simultaneously demand that every piece of government data be available from any keyboard with internet access. The problem is not whether or not a "terrorist" is going to get ahold of this information, the problem is that maybe the person who's house is burning down feels like his misfortune is a personal, private, or community-affair rather than an international circus-show for the amusement of anyone who has a computer. Why is any of this "public" information on the internet to begin with is beyond me. Just because data is technically public, it does not mean the term "public" should be defined, via the internet, to extend to everyone outside the precinct, beyond the city-limits, over state lines, beyond the timezones, and to everyone in the world with a computer. In my state, I can type in a URL and within seconds pop-up the detailed divorce records, claims, counter-claims, child-custody fights, of anyone in my state. Although a couple is certainly aware that their situation is on some level "public", why does the state feel that public should involve the entire world with internet-access? What's wrong with making someone, who is really interested, walk down to the courthouse and ask for a copy of the documents? At the least, it is likely to ensure that people who are viewing the information come from the same community, at the most it prevents employers-creditors-coworkers-jealous schoolmates of their children-and anyone else in the world from leasurely sitting on their ass behind a keyboard and poking their nose around where it doesn't belong. What business is it of everyone in seattle to know who's house is burning down at any given time? If the goal is to measure the effectiveness of the fire-department, then that can be done without doing it in real-time. But, I fail to see how this information that often involves tradgedy for the people involved should be turned into google-meshup for anyone with internet access to gawk over. If someone has a legitimate or illigitmate interest in knowing who's house burned, they should at least be required to get off their ass and go ask for a copy of the report at the county-clerk's office. The same goes for those prying around in someone's divorce case, or curious to know how fast someone was going when they got their last speeding ticket. Public information doesn't mean the entire world qualifies as public, and public doesn't mean it has to be convenient.

Why?

I can see the obvious reasons for doing this, but why were they done? In my experience, things like this almost never happen in a vaccume. Politicians don't just wake up one day and think "OH MY JESUS CHRIST WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THAT 911 DATA".

I don't live anywhere near Seattle (about as far away as you can get, actually, in Central Florida), so I don't know what the political climate over there is. So maybe someone from there can enlighten me. Is this the work of some activist/watchdog group? Was there a recent issue over there that had to do with 911 records or this site? Is it some politician who was low in the polls and did this so they could play the "Look how awesome I am on National Security" card come election time? I really would like to know.

Knowing programming in 'governmental' institutions

Would be really funny if they just put some code in to generate images from it like this (I've seen captcha's done like this): /gen_image.php?street=1_infinite_loop&zip=95014&ca ll=police

It's fire season already in Victoria, Australia

Country Fire Authority [vic.gov.au] and Department of Sustainability and Environment [vic.gov.au] are two pages I have constantly open

Could it be...

Does the Fire Department have Google Adsense?

Bandwidth

Maybe they're sick of having this bot program relentlessly DOS them?

Perhaps this Website that uses this service should make some kind of compensation. The 911 dispatch is afterall creating the content. This issue is no different than Napster.

I'm telling you this AJAX stuff is no good. It's all these people grabbing data that ain't theirs.

Re:Bandwidth

First of all, I am John Eberly (I read slashdot, but have never posted) and I hosted this site for free with no advertisements. I grabbed their data every 2 minutes via cron/perl and posted it on my site. I am sure I "saved" them bandwith. Real time police and fire data is nothing new, NYC has both Police and Fire data here... http://gothamist.com/labs/map [gothamist.com]. Where do they get their data you ask? They subsribe to a server for a $100/year over the internet. I am sure glad the terrorist can't figure that out. Once I had figured out they switched their data feed to a jpeg, I did a quick 30 second google search, apt-get install gocr, etc. and I had the feed again... It was actually even slightly easier than before, not tags and extra junk to strip, just fixed width text. I am a little tired of government crying "terrorism" and implementing worthless security measures. You don't need a "fancy software program" to get the Police/Fire resources tied up, just place about 3-4 bogus phone calls. By the way, my blog has been up/down today, because have some "runaway process on a separate node" according to my VPS. My server easily withstood the 20,000 hits in 12 hours from reddit.

I am John Eberly

Just for everyone information, my server was down earlier due to a rogue node on my VPS server (great timing by my host), not slashdotting. Here is my blog post on this issue that started some of this http://blog.eberly.org/2006/10/12/worlds-worst-use -of-a-jpeg [eberly.org] Here are the comments at Reddit. http://reddit.com/info/lxbt/comments [reddit.com] Reddit sent over 30k hits in a short period to my server and it handled it fine, it just seems every Saturday somebody on my server gobbles up all the resources. I really will never recommend VPS from this host to anyone.

Getting tired...

[rant]

I suspect that I'm not the only one whose getting tired of hearing about taking this or taking that away because we're concerned about Terrorists. Terrorism is real, it sucks rocks, but we're living in those times where conventional wars apparently are a thing of the past. We have to get over it and get on with life.

How long are we going to let FUD hang over us and control us? If there's a non-terrorism reason, like you've got alot of people using the data to follow the emergency services and get in the way while gawking at what's going on, then yes, change the policy. Don't throw up a nebulous excuse that 'terrorists will use it!' Then we all go duck and cover and hope we don't get blown up.

Too many people have fought and died for our freedoms. Are we so frightened now, that those lives are meaningless, and we should give up our hard-won freedoms for the illusion of safety?

[/rant]

Sorry. I'm just getting tired of it.

stupid

anyone else reminded of when facebook made the news feed, and everyone complained about their information being too accessible. Simple answer to both problems: If you don't want people to see it, you shouldn't put it on the internet.

What a crock

One of the first lesson anyone planning "operations" learns is: leave nothing to chance. (chance has a way of sneaking up on you all on its own anyway) So if you were a terrorist planner... Would you just keep your team waiting around, waiting for someone to stumble across them, or put two and two together? Would you operate on someone elses timetable, or one left to chance? No, if you were planning something, you wouldn't wait until some conditions (eg. fire/emergency vehicles responding in some area you want/need) just happened to occur. No, you would plan and execute the necessary diversion. You wouldn't wait for some (possibly flakey) public website to confirm your action - you'd have your operatives in positive communications with you.

This smells like one of those "feel good" alleged security measures that in reality has zero net effect.

The worst part is if your house is burning down

You can't pop down the street to the cafe and surf the net to see how many hours it will be before the fire truck you paid for with your Seattle taxes actually shows up.

Especially if you're blind or vision-disabled, as graphics won't work properly with their new system.

So, if you're a blind Seattleite, it's NOT an "improvement".

what about kidnapping?

I definitely don't see any good uses for the public in having this information real-time. Just because some people somewhere might have nothing better to do with their time than to see where in their city emergencies are happening doesn't outweigh the potential negative uses. Even for something like kidnapping - someone is kidnapped, locked into the basement of some house or whatever and left alone while his or her captors go upstairs. Somehow this person gets a hand free and is able to dial 911, but the savvy kidnappers have one of their dudes upstairs monitoring where 911 calls are coming from in real-time. They see a 911 call for their exact location, go downstairs and find their hostage has gotten a hand free. Grab him/her and split before the police can arrive. Or even if they don't have time to leave, they are well aware a SWAT team might be sneaking up on the house to try and break into the basement and free the 911-caller, thereby preventing any swift recovery of the hostage. Really, the same could be applied for any crime. Robbery - someone malicious finds out there's a family in a neighborhood thats gone away for the week so they break in. A neighbor who the robbers haven't seen in real life spots them and calls 911. Luckily for the robbers, one of their man is back in the getaway car monitoring 911 calls in real time, sees that a neighbor has called, calls his buddies and they leave long before the police can arrive. If someone could give a good, reasonable use for this information provided real-time to the general public, I'd be open to listening. But merely the fact that some number of people find it "interesting" doesn't mean it wouldn't be just as interesting being offset by 1 hour.

Blind? Move along nothing to read here...

While state government websites are not required to conform to Section 508, Section 504 applies to all Federal grantees and contractors as well as to as the Federal government itself. If John Eberly wants, or any Seattle resident can file a complaint to the Seattle Office for Civil Rights.

ADA/City Service Complaint Section 504 [seattle.gov]
The Office for Civil Rights works to ensure that members of the public who have disabilities can use City services and facilities. The Disability Compliance Specialist coordinates accessibility evaluation of City programs and services, offers training to City departments on disability awareness and compliance with laws, staffs the City's 504/ADA Advisory Committee (TBA) and handles 504/ADA grievances alleging discrimination in City programs and facilities.

"It shouldn't be available"?

The kind of thinking on display here frightens the hell out of me.
"If we're not a first responder, why do we need the info in real time? "
"'ll have to start out by saying I'm amazed such information was ever available"
"Is it important to know, in real-time, where emergency crews are? "
"There is no way that 911 call information should be available at anything approaching real-time data"

This is completely ass-backwards.
There should be no need for me to prove that data, _any_ government data, should be available to me.
The government needs to prove there is a compelling reason for them not to make it available.

This sort of data serves some useful purposes and some not so useful purposes, in terms of tracking allocation of resources, seeing where hotspots are, knowing where that firetruck that just roared past you is going, and yes, pure entertainment.

The governments "counter-argument" consists of bogeymen in a closet.

The idea that anyone could come down on side of the government in this case is, to me, a sad commentary on the willingness of the populace to accept any old excuse that limits their access to the workings of their government.

-ajb

Idiots!

They generate a 940x940 pixel image, but then scale it down to 900x900 using an img with attribute, ensuring that the image is difficult to read for humans too!

What the fuck...

Uses for this info?

It'd be cool to have the site email you to your phone if there's a call in one of your previously-listed addresses. So you know realtime wether [your house | your parents' house | your kid's school] is burning or not.

Terror fear (again) used for CYA

The real reason government entities don't want data collected is that it might be compared. Performance in answering emergency calls probably varies widely, and is probably poorly correlated to how much is spent. If cites were compared in their performance, people would demand better. Since it is difficult to falsify objective measures like location and response time, this data gets the "if everyone knew how long it takes to get an ambulance, the terrorists win" treatment.

Why do we need know?

This is a genuine question, and I haven't been able to figure out a logical answer.
Why is it "important" or "useful" or whatever, to know where the Fire trucks are responding at any one time? Maybe a weekly report or even daily, is enough for people to see the big picture, but real time?
This is really a case of "because we can, we should" even if the outcome is useless.

Anyone care to enlighten me?

Those who say to deny the information...

...Please look up RCW 42.56.030 and read it. You can look it up at http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/ [wa.gov]

Its been Washington State law since 1977.

JPEG's vs TEXT data

There was little reason for them to discontune the service. Turning
http://www2.cityofseattle.net/fire/realTime911/sho wIncidents.htm [cityofseattle.net] Live feed that is now in JPEG form back into text is easy.

  It's on a minor inconvience from having to parse relivant text from the HTML, now they need some OCR.
  The font's are clean and sould be very easy to set up some automated OCR.

  seattle911.com is just making too big of a deal out of in, instead of following the hackers way to just Decode the JPEGS and just keep on going!!!!

  John L. Sokol