While you’ve been able to identify a person’s location via their cell phone for awhile now, it’s been impossible to discern their altitude. Practically speaking, if someone is in an apartment building, you couldn’t tell if they were on the second floor or the seventh.
Until now.
Using a smartphone’s built-in technologies that measure barometric pressure, a user’s altitude can be calculated within just a few feet, according to the Washington Post. And since cell phone users are always updating their devices, this technology is already in the hands of more than 100 million people.
The benefits of this technology are numerous. One such usage could help 911 operators obtain much more precise readings of where a caller is within a building. GPS technology requires a direct line of sight to satellites, rendering it ineffective indoors and creating issues for dispatchers and paramedics, especially when the caller is unable or unwilling to provide the specifics of their location. With this new technology, however, a caller’s exact location (i.e. what floor they’re on) will be available.
This has caused much concern to public-safety groups, who state there is no restrictions keeping intelligence agencies like the CIA and FBI from commandeering the technology for their own uses.
“This puts those of use in the civil-liberties community in a difficult position of opposing the creation of location services for emergency services, because we know the FBI will ask for it later, and we don’t have the power to stop them when they ask for it,” says Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist for American Civil Liberties Union to the Washington Post.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is in the process of updating its requirements for the ways wireless carriers handle 911 calls, demanding the construction of an alternative, precise location pinpointing system capable of finding callers even in buildings. This proposal has triggered a battle amongst lobbyists, with some public safety groups supporting strict FCC rules, and wireless carriers pushing for slower implementation of different technology.
“We are committed to both improving public safety and protecting consumer privacy,” says David Simpson, chief of FCC’s public-safety and homeland-security bureau.
Though this stagnation is causing concern in those in public service. “The [wireless] industry is basically trying to slow the train down,” says Harold Schaitberger, general president of International Association of Firefighters. “That’s very troubling to us.”
Tag: FCC
Community-Owned Internet Access: How These Neighborhoods are Redesigning the Traditional Provider Model
As the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) edges towards a decision that could give Internet service providers permission to charge websites for bandwidth, some communities across the country are rallying together to create a different type of solution.
The high-profile debate between FCC members and broadcasters centers on a proposal allowing broadband companies like Comcast or Verizon to charge websites for special “fast lanes” in the final stage, or “last mile,” of service transmission. In other words, these mega-media conglomerates would be able to determine which sites loader faster or slower based on how much each content provider pays them.
Coupled with the timing of the Time Warner-Comcast merger, critics are concerned the FCC proposal would eliminate net neutrality — a set of rules that enables a free and open internet — altogether, as well as infringe on free press. Companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft have decried the proposal as “a grave threat to the Internet.”
MORE: Every Kid Needs an Internet Connection to Thrive in School. This District Has a Plan to Make It Happen
But the convoluted issue is even more complex for consumers, who can feel beholden to these Internet companies in order to remain plugged in. But that doesn’t have to be the case, as communities like Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood, Kansas City, and St. Louis have illustrated.
Rather than joining the national protest, these three areas have separately launched community-supported broadband initiatives by educating themselves and creating local co-ops to sidestep the traditional Internet service providers, Slate reports. The model is based on community supported agriculture (CSA), or farm shares.
With CSAs, members of the community invest in advance to cover costs of an operation and receive shares of the farm’s profits throughout the crop season. As Slate points out, communities could adopt a similar blueprint in the case of broadband services and leverage purchasing-power to decide who is in control of delivering “last mile” service.
In Brooklyn, the youth nonprofit Red Hook Initiative has created a Digital Stewards program to operate and maintain a community wireless network. The group purchases its bandwidth from high speed Internet service company BKFiber, supporting a local business while training community members to sustain the project.
Kansas City’s Free Network Foundation launched a co-op that owns and operates a community wireless network through purchasing “middle-mile” bulk bandwidth. Meanwhile in St. Louis, WasabiNet has created a wireless mesh network comprised of interconnected wireless routers. Users have different levels of access depending on how much they pay.
Regardless of how the FCC decision pans out, the debate is a chance for communities to redefine the way we are connected by taking charge of their share of the Internet. As Slate smartly points out, Americans should seize this opportunity to create an online sense of their local community instead of relying on big broadband retailers to do the work for them.