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Recode Daily

911 is getting better but less private

Recode Daily

Recode

Science, Technology, Society & Culture

4.61.3K Ratings

🗓️ 7 June 2022

⏱️ 10 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

As the government and cellphone companies work to improve emergency response, concerns arise around the collection and sharing of sensitive personal information. Recode’s Rebecca Heilweil (@rebheilweil) explains. Read Rebecca’s story: https://www.vox.com/recode/23126057/911-apple-google-att-mobile-phones-emergency Today’s episode was produced and engineered by Jon Ehrens and hosted by Adam Clark Estes. Support Recode Daily by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

When you can't quite get the angle, take hands-free selfies with the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5,

0:05.2

stand it up, step back, and your photos are also synced to your Chromebook, ready to edit.

0:10.8

The new Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Chromebook, available on Vodafone.

0:23.6

911, where's your emergency?

0:25.7

It's typically the first question 911 operators ask, but someone going through a crisis might not be

0:37.9

able to give first responders all the information they need. It's also surprisingly hard to use

0:43.6

existing technology to figure out the exact location of a 911 call.

0:48.2

So now, the federal government, wireless carriers, and big tech companies are all working together

0:56.0

to make 911 better. But, as with many things involving tech companies,

1:01.6

they're moved to collect personal data is raising some privacy concerns.

1:07.7

Rico's Rebecca Hyowile has written about the future of 911. She joins us now to tell us about

1:13.3

the pros and cons. This has been an ongoing process. Part of the transition here is moving 911 from

1:22.8

a system that was built to respond to landline calls, to cell phone calls. But now we have companies

1:29.2

like Apple and Google and T-Mobile and AT&T all sort of saying, we're going to update our tech so

1:36.4

that we can make 911 calls, which are not really the most high tech calls that are being made,

1:42.8

more efficient and a better able to share more information about an emergency that might be unfolding.

1:48.7

At the same time, this also has to do with the FCC, which, you know, oversees these companies and

1:54.0

is saying it's important for these companies to meet certain standards about the quality of 911

1:59.9

calls and the quality of the tech that's actually being used when they're being made. So it's part

2:04.8

of a very, very broad transition throughout the country. We've had cell phones for a long time,

2:12.1

and we've had smartphones for well over a decade, but it sounds like it's a pretty complicated

2:18.4

process. What's the latest? AT&T announced that by the end of this month, it's going to be transitioning

...

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