India Makes It Compulsory For Phones To Have a 'Panic Button' (cio.com) 96
Reader itwbennett writes: Starting in January 2017, all feature phones sold in India will need to have a panic button that will alert "police, designated friends and relatives, for immediate response in case of distress or security related issues," said Minister of Communications, Ravi Shankar Prasad, on Twitter late Tuesday. The measure is one of many responses by the Indian government to the growing women safety issues in the country. Furthermore, starting in January 2018, mobile phones will also be required to have GPS systems to help pinpoint the location of the affected person in the event of harassment or distress, said Prasad.Mashable has more details.
False alarms? (Score:2, Interesting)
How many butt-dialed panics will that generate per day per square mile?
Re:False alarms? (Score:5, Funny)
I have an idea, to avoid false alarms, we could require 2 more buttons instead of just one. The user would need to press once on a button and twice on the other.
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... From the article.
"Under the new rules that come into effect in January 2017, all feature phones will need to have a panic button configured to the numeric key 5 or 9 and all smartphones will have the panic button linked to three short presses of the on-off button, according to the country's Department of Communications."
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So if each person in India only accidentally activates it once, that's a billion false alarms. I'd imagine that has costs.
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My phone has a 12 letters unlock code ... ... had to nock put the attacker with my iPhone 4 first. Has a perfect size and fits perfectly into the hand for that.
I think you can call police without unlocking it, don't have it at hand yet.
But last time I called the police, I simply forgot that
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I have an idea, to avoid false alarms, we could require 2 more buttons instead of just one.
Years of doing end-user support has taught me that pressing two buttons at the same time is difficult for some people to do. And that's not even people in an emergency situation.
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Not at the same time, in sequence.
Yeah, how did so many not get the reference? (Score:2)
Except for people in other countries where their emergency code is 999 or something else.
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0118999881999119725........ 3
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867-4309?
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I just re-read your comment. Well done, mate!
Totally flew over my head what you were saying.
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Years of doing end-user support has taught me that pressing two buttons at the same time is difficult for some people to do. And that's not even people in an emergency situation.
Years of being a sysadmin has taught me that some people should not be saved.
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"I have an idea, to avoid false alarms, we could require 2 more buttons instead of just one."
And we could make the code reminiscent of a well-known enemy attack. I'm headed to East Texas right now to patent this.
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With a name like that, you should be careful in Texas!
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Are all the guys over there just publicly all feeling up the women as they walk by them or something?
Re:False alarms? (Score:5, Interesting)
Most of India lives in very tight quarters, if you think cities like New York and Tokyo are cramped then Dehli would shock you. Also they select children with a preference for boys over girls (not to Chinese degree, but it still is certainly a 'thing'), with boys in a often superior cultural role over girls. Combine these two and it's no surprise some boys can't keep their hands to themselves. I bet many feel safely anonymous most of the time. They also have a culture social class structure to make this all the worse.
So I'm not terribly surprised that this combination has lead to severe issues.
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Actually if you look at the numbers on that wiki page, it shows the CIA figures the rate to be about the same. However, the rate under 15 is lower in India as is the WDB estimate. On the other hand India didn't have the purges China did during the last century or a one child per family policy, so the Indian trend is more static until the age when people tend to start dying off. This line sup pretty well from what I've heard form both Indians and Chinese people I've known.
India, at least in the bigger cities
Hardware or software? (Score:2, Informative)
If they are allowed to use software it's no different from the US requirements which require access to 911 without an unlock code and the E911 requirement (which is such incredible BS, even last year when calling 911 from my phone the operator still asked me my location and city, I was calling in to report black ice on a state route in a city I'm not familiar with, I wasn't sure exactly which jurisdiction I was in, the freaking phone is REQUIRED to give them lat and longitude, it should have come up on thei
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Yes, when there are three cars in the ditch in the stretch of 2 miles and people are sliding into oncoming traffic you need the authorities to close down the road until it can be properly treated.
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You don't understand E911 - the PSAP operator will see the phase one information tower - location and sector - when you call. The phone originated GPS location may not even be available until 30 seconds after you START the call (or never depending on a number of factors) To call it BS is ignorant and unhelpful.
mod parent up please / Phones will be taken first. (Score:5, Insightful)
He's informative and he's correct.
Emergency calls in the NANPA areas are handled by PSAPs (public service answering points). Most are consolidated centers, like the one servicing all 12 of CenturyLink states.
The operator is trained to take the call as soon as possible, and say "911; what is the emergency". *
At that point the only thing they have for sure is your CLID and if there's a LIDB CNAM entry for it, that entry (Colloquially "Caller ID number and a name").
It takes time for the system to also display any other information. Your cellular telephone's GPS is actually not used -- instead tower information is used. However, if you're out on a rural highway with sequential towers, you're likely only hitting one tower so all the operator can know is you're within an X-mile radius of some location. Note that "X miles" is approximated by using the round-trip-delay in the cellphone-to-tower communication and dividing by the speed of light.
So that's E911. This new suggestion that Indian phones send out their coordinates supposes that the GPS/GLONASS is on all the time. If it isn't, it may need to acquire ephemeris data and that can take 30s-5m if the GPS has been recently used, and up to an hour if not. (These times vary depending on various factors too complex to get into here and not entirely relevant). The point being is that if you push the "PANIC" button and someone is attacking you, it is extremely likely they can take your phone and render it inoperative prior to it getting a GPS fix. (GLONASS ephemeris time to live is a one-byte field that counts how many 900-second intervals the data is valid. This allows their users more flexibility in not needing always-on devices.)
That leaves the simple issue that if someone wants to perpetrate a crime in India then the FIRST THING they are going to do is take the phone away from the victim. So much for a panic button.
Ehud
* There was talk at some point of having the automated system say it and then put the operator on the line (thus saving on personnel costs) but they decided that oftentimes what the operator hears in the background while saying that is actually useful intel. Also in the event of a delay in putting an operator on the call, the caller hasn't already started talking.
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When I call 911 from the freeway it goes straight to the California Highway Patrol. They say "CHP, what are you reporting?"
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If it isn't, it may need to acquire ephemeris data and that can take 30s-5m if the GPS has been recently used, and up to an hour if not.
Cell phones use assisted-GPS [wikipedia.org] to improve the position acquisition speed. From the Wikipedia article:
Standalone GPS provides first position in approximately 30–40 seconds. A standalone GPS needs orbital information of the satellites to calculate the current position. The data rate of the satellite signal is only 50 bit/s, so downloading orbital information like ephemerides and the almanac directly from satellites typically takes a long time, and if the satellite signals are lost during the acquisition of this information, it is discarded and the standalone system has to start from scratch. In A-GPS, the network operator deploys an A-GPS server. These A-GPS servers download the orbital information from the satellite and store it in the database. An A-GPS capable device can connect to these servers and download this information using mobile network radio bearers such as GSM, CDMA, WCDMA, LTE or even using other wireless radio bearers such as Wi-Fi. Usually the data rate of these bearers is high, hence downloading orbital information takes less time.
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all smartphones will have the panic button linked to three short presses of the on-off button
Heh. My phone (and I think all phones with Android Marshmallow or later?) opens the camera app with a double-press of the on-off button. I guess Indian manufacturers will need to remove that shortcut.
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Well that's odd. When I call the California Highway Patrol to report hazards on the freeway, they always seem to know which freeway I'm on before I tell them.
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Tech ain't magic. (Score:2)
when calling 911 from my phone the operator still asked me my location and city, I was calling in to report black ice on a state route in a city I'm not familiar with, I wasn't sure exactly which jurisdiction I was in, the freaking phone is REQUIRED to give them lat and longitude, it should have come up on their screen before they even picked up my call
In the real world, the dispatcher doesn't always get the information instantaneously and it isn't always that accurate. That is why she has to ask.
Wireless network operators must provide the latitude and longitude of callers within 300 meters, within six minutes of a request by a PSAP
Enhanced 9-1-1 [wikipedia.org] [The law since 2012 in the US]
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when calling 911 from my phone the operator still asked me my location and city, I was calling in to report black ice on a state route in a city I'm not familiar with
You called 911 to report black ice? Is that a thing in the USA?
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When there are 3 cars in the ditch in a few miles and many cars sliding into the oncoming lane and the state route needs to be closed for safety, yes.
Phone GPS is not necessarily reliable (Score:2)
...the US requirements which require access to 911 without an unlock code and the E911 requirement (which is such incredible BS, even last year when calling 911 from my phone the operator still asked me my location and city, I was calling in to report black ice on a state route in a city I'm not familiar with, I wasn't sure exactly which jurisdiction I was in, the freaking phone is REQUIRED to give them lat and longitude, it should have come up on their screen before they even picked up my call ffs)
The phone I have has an especially wonky GPS, since they combined the GPS and NFC antennas and put them on the removable back. If the pins on the phone don't make absolutely perfect contact with the antenna, it will get a poor signal or no signal at all, and the location guesses tend to be downright laughable. Sometimes, its location data even gets "stuck" and my weather widget keeps reporting a faraway location I had been earlier. Indeed, after avoiding flagship phones for a long time, I'm ready to go ahea
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Only men are allowed to have phones:
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/02/india-banning-women-owning-mobile-phones-160226120014162.html
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And this is just one symptom of their problems. Their federal gov't recognizes the problems and takes measures (well thought out or not) to solve them. But the backward locals just block progress.
It's time for the feds to take the local officials who thought up this ban, demote them to Dalits, hand them buckets and shovels and put them in charge of cleaning out the outhouses.
growing women safety issues ... (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no growing women safety issues.
There is growing international (and national) awareness to the general un safety/danger for women.
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Yes. In fact, it might be argued that the actual safety issues are reducing or set to reduce because of the growing awareness and measures like this panic button thing.
Larger red button (Score:1)
And it must say "Don't Panic"
Quick! Change the subject! (Score:1)
Market Protection (Score:2)
India has been trying to support it's nascent cell phone manufacturing industry. They just told Apple no on selling Used phones there.
A cynic would see this as a ploy to help the local industry, making a hardware button specific for a single market. For a local producers who only sell to India, the single market requirement isn't much of a handicap. To international companies this is more of an issue for supply chains and all.
Of course this is not the reason, it's really to protect the women. Which is w
Moral agency of women (Score:1)
Growing women safety issues (Score:2, Interesting)
Buy every woman a gun. A panic button isn't going to do them any good because many police there empathize with social conservatives who are doing most of the harassment. Cops either show up late or not at all. Prosecutors reflect the same attitudes and value the life of a male aggressor more than a female victim. So turn the tables on them. Either drag the scumbag men off the street and put them in 'protective custody' or bring the coroners wagon to the scene after a failed attack.
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If every woman has a gun, every mugger and/or rapist has a gun, too.
Problem solved. O R'elly?
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every mugger and/or rapist has a gun, too.
India maintains firearms ban for (non law enforcement) men. Get caught with a gun as a man and risk being arrested and/or shot on sight.
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Oh, and woman are not "men" and may carry a gun?
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That would be my suggestion. But in reality it would never happen. Because men are 'worth' more than women and are protected by police and prosecutors.
And not just men, but members of conservative groups. You don't hear about many instances where a woman is attacked and her male relatives go after, beat and/or kill her attacker. Because they are a protected elite in that country.
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Yes, because everybody will be dead.
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I don't get how anybody can think guns are answer to any problem. Look at how fucked up the US is if you have any doubt about this.
Why a button? (Score:1)
They should make it a panic switch instead. Women can toggle it on when they're in India and off if they visit civilization.
What does that mean in English? (Score:2)
phones will also be required to have GPS systems
What does that mean? Are they requiring that the GPS always be on (and draining the battery)? Or will the required GPS be turned off to save power and thus no more useful than a phone without one? Perhaps what would be really nice is require the panic button to power on the GPS, but it takes time to get a GPS lock and even then is wasn't stated that this would be put in place.