How would that work?

yetihehe 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Phone detects that you call emergency service and enables gps.

Last time I called 911 (well, it's 112 in my country) my android phone asked if I want to provide gps coordinates. I did, but they still asked for address, so probably this is not integrated/used everywhere.

	▲	nkrisc 13 hours ago \| parent [-]
		They may also ask simply to confirm the location is correct and to help responders more quickly locate you in the vicinity.

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roywiggins 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The phone could literally pop up a consent alert asking whether to respond to a GPS ping request from the carrier. Or just not honor the pings at all unless you dialed 911 within the last hour.

This is a specific service inside the phone that looks for messages from the carrier requesting a GPS position, it could just refuse, or lie. It's not the same as cell tower triangulation.

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_flux 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I can imagine situations where the emergency is noticed by other people that might not be near the location itself, and the person whose location would need to be determined is not able to use the mobile phone, such as could be the case in many accidents.

I think it would be sufficient to just have a log of this information being queried, and cases where the information has been pinged without a legitimate use case would the be investigated.

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winstonwinston 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The article does not explain in detail how all this works. But educated guess is that if a baseband SoC provides this information, that's it. The phone operating system (iOS, Android) does not get a chance to decide what to do, since baseband soc is a sort of autonomous computer, it has its own firmware, cpu and ram.

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roywiggins 13 hours ago | parent [-]

You might not be able to fix this in the OS alone, but phone manufacturers are responsible for the whole phone. The baseband doesn't need to behave that way.

	▲	winstonwinston 13 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Well, yes. But autonomous is acting in accordance with one's duty (a law) rather than one's desires.

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hammock 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That’s not happening today. I meant how is it happening today, such that it can only ever happen when you dial 911?

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cenamus 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Send the GPS location only when dialling a 3-digit number? Phones probably know which numbers are emergency numbers

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kortilla 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A phone knows if it’s dialing 911. It can activate features on this criteria

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cosmicgadget 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It already exists. Emergency call is spec-defined.

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kotaKat 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Carrier* Android and iOS both integrate with RapidSOS UNITE. RapidSOS then processes the rich emergency information from the user's device (enhanced location, videos and photos, etc), and is available to the 911 dispatcher in their dispatch software. 99.99% of Americans are covered by RapidSOS integrations in their municipalities.

https://rapidsos.com/public-safety/unite/

When the call comes in they can click a button and query RapidSOS for current 911 calls for that number and pull the information inwards.

https://www.baycominc.com/hubfs/2025%20Website%20Update/Prod...