That’s not a good excuse for mass privacy violation.
“A mentally ill person called 911 and said they were going to kill themselves” is a much better justification for pulling GPS data off a phone than any of the rationales I’ve heard from US companies or the government.
What about the other 329,999,999 Americans who aren’t trying to kill themselves at that time?
It’s a cost vs benefit analysis and the cost is pretty damn high.
They’re not calling 911, so their phones wouldn’t respond with a gps location.
I’m not arguing all locations should be collected, just that “during a 911 call” is a really reasonable time to do it by default.
But the question is - does the functionality just open the door for everyone else?
If it could be adequately controlled so that it couldn’t, I would agree
“A mentally ill person called 911 and said they were going to kill themselves” is a much better justification for pulling GPS data off a phone than any of the rationales I’ve heard from US companies or the government.
What about the other 329,999,999 Americans who aren’t trying to kill themselves at that time?
It’s a cost vs benefit analysis and the cost is pretty damn high.
They’re not calling 911, so their phones wouldn’t respond with a gps location.
I’m not arguing all locations should be collected, just that “during a 911 call” is a really reasonable time to do it by default.
But the question is - does the functionality just open the door for everyone else?
If it could be adequately controlled so that it couldn’t, I would agree