911 Call Tracking Site Stirs Concern

Frosty Piss writes, "This story comes from the Seattle Post-Intellegencer. For the past year, John Eberly has operated Seattle911.com, a site that until this week took real-time feeds of 911 calls from the Seattle Fire Department and plotted them on Google Maps. But on learning of Eberly's site, officials cited 'security concerns' and altered the way they display 911 calls on their Web site, changing the format from text to graphical, preventing Eberly from acquiring the raw data. (Several programmers are quoted musing how trivial it would be to work around this evasion.) Fire officials worry that allowing others to display where fire crews are on an Internet map could make things easier if terrorists were planning an attack. That logic left Eberly and others scratching their heads, as the information continues to be publicly available on the Fire Department's site. 'We're not obligated to provide this information. It's something that we did for customer service in the first place,' a Fire Department spokesperson said. So is this public information? Should the data be available to the public in real time?" The Seattle P-I story ends with a quote from Bruce Schneier: "The government is not saying, 'Hey, this data needs to be secret,' they are saying, 'This data needs to be inconvenient to get to.'"

Beware of the Leopard

[LiquidCoooled (634315)]

"But the plans were on display ..."

"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."

"That's the display department."

"With a torch."

"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."

"So had the stairs."

"But look, you found the notice didn't you?"

"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard."

Unsure what to make of this

[skrew (111096)]

They're afraid of terrorists attacking a fire?

Re:Unsure what to make of this

[by Anonymous Coward]

Terrorism risk my ass. My guess as to the real concern? The politicians are afraid that people might see how damned dangerous certain parts of town (read: slums) really are, sending property values into the crapper and perhaps launching a round of White Flight. You see, it's easier to deny a problem exists (or mask the extent) than to fix it.

All the typical poli behaviours are here on display -- denial, obfuscation, evasion and just plain old lying.

Re:Unsure what to make of this

[by Anonymous Coward]

Work in a downtown convenience store for about a year and you will learn how the city really works. And yes the number is tens of thousands. And yes the homeless do use ambulances for trivial reasons, many times including transportation from somewhere to the hospital.

But feel free to deny that the problem exists. After all, downtown Seattle certainly does look pretty cosmopolitan. Obviously we've solved or are solving all of our issues. But if that were true why are all business types afraid to be downtown at roughly 8:00 PM when the 'youths' come out?

There are tens of thousands of meth junkies alone in downtown Seattle. That is why petty theft, car thefts, and car breakins in Seattle are among the highest in the country. But we wouldn't want to let anyone know about them in case it damaged real estate values would we? Nor would we want people to know that the homeless go from downtown Seattle in the day to the U-district at night to search through trash. If you want to get a better count of the homeless population feel free to check the I-5 underpasses at night (if you are brave enough). Check out Green Lake. Have fun.

Re:Unsure what to make of this

[mikael (484)]

I don't about the USA, but in the UK we've got problems with neds (non-educated delinquents) setting up bonfires to lure firefighters to their neighbourhood, then throwing stones at the firecrews and vehicles, all just for fun.

Re:Unsure what to make of this

[perlchild (582235)]

Why is it still on the 911 site then?
I fail to see what purpose it serves to remove the googlemaps of the same data
I doubt that terrorists are that much less technical than the people of the seattle911.com site.
The only reason I can see with keeping the data public(on the 911 web site, not the seattle911.com one) might be public access to information laws or some other regulatory issue. If the information is public, let seattle911.com do whatever it wants with it. If the goal is to prevent terrorism, don't MASK the information, take it off the 911 web site too.
We aren't talking about an intranet here.
The public servants are alrady at risk, since it's PUBLIC information.
The only reason I can see to keep the info public, but not let seattle911.com use it, is that if seattle911.com is ad-based, and they don't want the seattle911.com to benefit for free, from this information. But in that case, that's what a cease and desist letter is for.
If it really is that risky for the public servants, why isn't the information better protected? How is publicising the info on only one site that much less safe than on two?

Re:Unsure what to make of this

[seattle911 (1013733)]

I didn't have any ads on seattle911.com. I lost money on the site, I just published it for others benefit.

Re:Unsure what to make of this

[by Anonymous Coward]

Fortunately, most cities have planned for this by having *several* fire trucks.

OMGZ!!! Teh terrorists are taking Seattle!

[rts008 (812749)]

Well, I don't know...as we are aware that Seattle is such a hotbed of terrorist activity.
That's why we haven't got Bin L. yet in the mountains of over Middle East way- he's operating out of the Cascades!
OMG! I'm crawling into my shelter here in Oklahoma right now! *sarcasm off*

WTF? Terrorists responding to fires?- give 'em a hose and let them help fight the fires!
We know that they would not be smart enough to use a scanner, use their ears and follow the sirens, watch the frikken news- but heaven help us if they have access to Google Earth!

Damn, the insanity in this country is starting to drive me crazy.

Re:Unsure what to make of this

[bmo (77928)]

"It might be possible to wait for many of the emergency vehicles to be on one side of the city and then start a fire on the other side of the city."

Funny, that can be done _without_ computers _or_ 911 tracking.

These guys are just worried that someone might point to poor performance. That's all. It's entirely _cya_.

--
BMO

Re:

[ScrewMaster (602015)]

That's all. It's entirely _cya_.

I'm sure that's part of it, but it's more a matter of Control Your Ass, meaning they want to control our asses insofar as we are accessing what they consider to be "their" information. It's not ... it's ours. We paid for it, and if one of us wants to present a view of that data that is more useful than the view they chose to present ... that's tough.

Re:Unsure what to make of this

[SmurfButcher Bob (313810)]

And from TFA, this is still trivially possible. The data source is plainly available, just not easily parsed (which is a total non-issue for the short-term opportunist you describe).

Secondly, there's no need to wait for such placement; it'd be trivial to simply engineer that situation with a few 911 calls / events of your own.

Personally, I'd say they're offended that their "cool tool" got one-upped.

Re:Unsure what to make of this

[Frosty Piss (770223)]

It might be possible to wait for many of the emergency vehicles to be on one side of the city and then start a fire on the other side of the city.

In Seattle? In any large city with widely dispersed fire and police resources? That better be one Hell of a fire if everyone in the whole fuckin' city is there...

Anyway, many people are asking WHY someone would need this info, but that's the wrong question. The question should be "why shouldn't they have it"? And from the story, clearly they still do have it, just not from this guy's site. The city still has this info up on their site.

And why do most people who are interested in this stuff want access to it? The same reason people buy scanners, because it's interesting to follow what's going on.

Re:

[TapeCutter (624760)]

"The question should be "why shouldn't they have it"?

The have a default answer nowadays: Terroists.

The question is now, how is it a usefull tool to terrorists? The answer is "it's not". Terrorists are attempting to orchestrate the mayhem, this tool mearly allows them to watch the response.

A common statergy with terrorists (eg: AQ, Isreal) is to attck twice in the same spot. Once to get the target, the second time to get the responders. AFAIK, "wait 20-30min" is not a fucking secret!

Re:

[seattle911 (1013733)]

I use it to stay away from the seen. I heard a lot of sirens in my area 3 months ago, checked my site and saw that is was a major gas leak (12" natural gas line ruptured). I called my girlfriend and sister who were on their way home and told them to stay at work/school. Seattle911.com guy, John Eberly by the way here is the one line way to get the data. curl "www2.cityofseattle.net/fire/realTime911/sfdIncide ntList.jpg" | djpeg -pnm -gray | gocr -

Re:

[seattle911 (1013733)]

Good question.

I want to give the City of Seattle time to react since most of the press about this was published over the weekend. If I implement the "work around" on my site right away, it doesn't help the majority of people who go directly to the source, and don't use my site.

I hope that the city will reverse their original knee-jerk decision and put up the text feed again. We all need to get practical with our security concerns.

Re:Unsure what to make of this

[Matilda the Hun (861460)]

Except that they're not going to sit and wait for a bunch of fires to spontaneously sprout at the other side of the city, then run into another building with a match. If they really wanted to do that, they would *set* several fires at the other side of the city. And you don't need to track firetrucks to know that that's where they're going to be.

Re:Not terrorism--just simple opportunistic crime

[seattle911 (1013733)]

I actually contacted the SFD about my site when I first put it together and they liked it. They had no problem with it, but were unwilling to link directly to seattle911.com because they could not ensure the integrity of the data. I responded that I totally understund their viewpoint. I grabbed their data every X minutes and some people visited my site. So, every visitor to my site used my bandwidth that I paid for, not the governments. (It makes you wonder why I wasted money on this). Now, the city would like to prevent sites like mine and the visually impaired by providing a jpeg instead of text. Well, this doesn't prevent me from using the data (curl/gocr, etc) and it requires 8 times more bandwidth to serve the jpegs. Not to mention the time for the developers and the software expense (I sure hope they didn't buy software to convert jpeg to text, but I wouldn't be surprised). All of which, must be paid by the taxpayers of Seattle. I personally wish they would spend more money on firemen salary and equipment and less of paper-pushers.

Inconvienient?

[Jarjarthejedi (996957)]

Come on, does anyone really think that making the information a tiny bit harder to get is going to discourage real terrorists? Why do so many people persist in the idea that if we make the world hard to use that bad people won't be able to use it, bad people are the ones who will invest the time to learn how to work the system. A change like this does one thing, inconvieniences those people who may have found some use for this program. It doesn't stop terrorist, it doesn't help the public, it doesn't even make a good public relations story. How long before someone rebuilds the site to grab the graphics and translate them do you think? And how long after that before the govenment makes the data in those funny letters on forums at which point they may as well not even publish it. Every time I think I've grasped the limit of stupidity it moves further and further away...

Re:Inconvienient?

[Harmonious Botch (921977)]

"Why do so many people persist in the idea that if we make the world hard to use that bad people won't be able to use it, bad people are the ones who will invest the time to learn how to work the system."

If this were true, then almost everything that the US govt has done to prevent terrorism would be a mistake. Oh, wait....

Re:

[MichaelSmith (789609)]

Come on, does anyone really think that making the information a tiny bit harder to get is going to discourage real terrorists?

My ex girlfriend had this side gate on her house which was hard to open but not locked. He housemate insisted that I put a lock on it so I did. Didn't bother me because I always just stepped over the gate rather than trying to open the bloody thing. She sees a potential thief as being like herself but I think the thief is going to be more like me, ie, able to step over a 1 metre hig

Re:Inconvienient?

[49152 (690909)]

No, but it gives the naive masses the impression that the government is doing something to stop the bad guys.

It really does not matter if it works or not.

Why do we need it?

[aridhol (112307)]

Is it important to know, in real-time, where emergency crews are? Why? So you can chase the ambulance that much easier? To gawk as crews try to rescue people, and possibly get in the way?

Re:Why do we need it?

[Free_Meson (706323)]

EMS heckling is a big thing here. Lots of fun.

You call that a tracheotomy?

Maybe I'm spending too much time w/med students, though.

Re:Why do we need it?

[Yehooti (816574)]

If we're not a first responder, why do we need the info in real time? I'd agree with letting the information out, but delaying it for, say an hour or so. Not to make it inconvenient to get to, just not immediate info.

Re:Why do we need it?

[doormat (63648)]

This is the most sensible solution - delay. The FAA does this with radar info, its all delayed 15 minutes. 15 minutes might be too soon for this info, but an hour seems reasonable.

Its a shame that the people running the system are too worried about public perception and politics instead of thinking about the problem.

Re:

[loneconspirator (1013705)]

From my experience, people often use this service to answer the question "what the heck are all those sirens???" For this purpose, a real time service is essential. In addition, it is a good public service to let the population know if that volley of emergency vehicles that careened past their homes are getting a cat out of a tree or chasing down an axe wielding maniac.

The data isn't normalized so response dispatchments to the same place can be peppered throuh the data. Mapping the data greatly simplifies

Re:

[troll -1 (956834)]

Rule of thumb in the US seems to be that information cannot be secret unless the government has a "compelling interest" to make it so. It's not up to the public to make the case that they need the information, it's up to the government to show they have a compelling interest in keeping it from them.

Re:Why do we need it?

[M0b1u5 (569472)]

>Re:Why do we need it?

So the GPS tranceivers in emergency vehicles can provide data so that alternate routes for other road users can be made to permit safer emergency travel, and less stops and inconveniences for the remainder of road users.

Eventually, when cars are automatic, such a feedback loop will be a natural part of the road navigation process. This will increase efficiency, decrease traffic congestions and decrease travel times for all concerned.

Re:

[Wilson_6500 (896824)]

So your travel-aide computer can automatically alert you to the fact that your planned route is blocked by a huge accident very soon after the acciden occurs?

911 feeds?

[transporter_ii (986545)]

If this was just for fires, I don't think it is incredibly bad, but my first thought on seeing the headline was, "why are they releasing 911 data in the first place?" I mean, were they posting medical emergencies, too? That is kind of creepy.

But on the other hand, if they were releasing the information, I don't see anything wrong with someone actually using the data. The shock to me is that they were releasing it publicly...in real time to begin with.

Transporter_ii

Re:

[Dun Malg (230075)]

Unless your grandmother has agreed otherwise, they *are* legally required to keep the nature of her medical emergency bottled up.

The nature, yes. The simple fact that she called 911 for medical assistance? No. If you want gandma's trip to the hospital to be secret, don't call publicly funded emergency services, stupid.

The general rational

[TubeSteak (669689)]

While I think this specific case is somewhat asinine, the general rational has always been that enough public information, when compiled, can be considered "sensitive" or "classified".

Like that one kid's thesis detailing the layout of internet backbone cables, or back in the day when basic nuclear theory was available in public texts, but was still considered a gov't secret.

Paranoid Seattle Buses

[LionKimbro (200000)]

I was in a metro [metrokc.gov] bus and wanted to take a picture of some trees outside. The bus driver told me, "Hey, you can't take pictures in here."

I asked, "Why not?!"

He said, "I'm actually supposed to report you to the police, if you do. Terrorism."

"What are they going to do, reverse engineer the bus timetables from photographic evidence? This can't possibly make us any safer."

He replied, "Well, who's to say."

Who's to say indeed.

Absolutely absurd.

Note that busview [busview.org] will give you the location of all Metro busses in real time.

Re:

[wish bot (265150)]

I travelled around Serbia about 10 years ago while they were still 'Communist'. There were often signs around roads, bridges, towns, etc, with 'No Photography' symbols. At the time I really appreciated that we were free from that kind of paranoia and ridiculous restriction in the 'west'.

Re:Paranoid Seattle Buses

[by Anonymous Coward]

At least in Canada you can take pictures of crap. Yes, you can take pictures *from* a plane! A regular, passanger jet plane!

Not being allowed to take pics used to be part of the "evil" communist russia. Now, it is part of the paranoid america. Congratulations americans, you are slowly turning into the same totalitarian regime like soviet union. All under the umbrela of fear and "security". And the sad part is no one is ready to stand up against this cancerous mutation of your constitution.

Yes, anything can be turned into an argument...

[Max Threshold (540114)]

...about the Second Amendment.

"The government is not saying, 'Hey, this data needs to be secret,' they are saying, 'This data needs to be inconvenient to get to.'"

Now they just need to apply the same logic to their lists of gun owners.

make it available delayed then

[GroeFaZ (850443)]

I don't know seattle911.com, so I don't know if it's absolutely critical to have the data in real-time. But if not, just make the data available in the convenient format, but an hour or so later. As far-fetched as the terrorist scenario may sound, with this solution everybody could be happy, no? Or is this just another subtle reminder of the never-ending War on Terrer?

Awesome Info!

[Kid Zero (4866)]

So the educated Pyro can wait until everyone is else where, hop on the motorbike, and start five, ten fires and really tie up the fire department. Great.

You could do that to begin with, but now you can plot your course to string everyone out better and more efficently.

"Security Reasons"

[guisar (69737)]

I was just at Heathrow over the weekend- waiting for my wife to get back from the duty free in Terminal 3. It's one of the world's crappiest terminals- not even chairs at the gate. SO there I am waiting, sitting on the only space available, the floor. Here comes some guard saying I can't sit there- "security reasons". So WTF am I supposed to do, call to my genie wife to bring me back into her bottle with her? "Security Reasons" is the catch phrase of power-hungry bureaucrats everywhere, it means, "I'd like to push you around and you'd don't dare even question me when I give you even an unreasonable command on a whim". I got a headache when I read about the RFID tags at the Hungarian airport. Security is used by all the worlds' despots as the rationale for their staying in power. No kidding Capt Obvious you say? Well, what's the best way to push aside this reason without being labeled treasonous?

Terrorists, huh

[Ozwald (83516)]

By the same logic, websites that show traffic conditions [wa.gov] should be shut down too. Well, ya, terrorists can make sure they don't get stuck in parking lot on the I-5.

Oz

I am John Eberly

[seattle911 (1013733)]

Just for everyone information, my server was down earlier due to a rogue node on my VPS server (great timing by my host), not slashdotting. Here is my blog post on this issue that started some of this http://blog.eberly.org/2006/10/12/worlds-worst-use -of-a-jpeg [eberly.org] Here are the comments at Reddit. http://reddit.com/info/lxbt/comments [reddit.com] Reddit sent over 30k hits in a short period to my server and it handled it fine, it just seems every Saturday somebody on my server gobbles up all the resources. I really will never recommend VPS from this host to anyone.

Getting tired...

[lionchild (581331)]

[rant]

I suspect that I'm not the only one whose getting tired of hearing about taking this or taking that away because we're concerned about Terrorists. Terrorism is real, it sucks rocks, but we're living in those times where conventional wars apparently are a thing of the past. We have to get over it and get on with life.

How long are we going to let FUD hang over us and control us? If there's a non-terrorism reason, like you've got alot of people using the data to follow the emergency services and get in the way while gawking at what's going on, then yes, change the policy. Don't throw up a nebulous excuse that 'terrorists will use it!' Then we all go duck and cover and hope we don't get blown up.

Too many people have fought and died for our freedoms. Are we so frightened now, that those lives are meaningless, and we should give up our hard-won freedoms for the illusion of safety?

[/rant]

Sorry. I'm just getting tired of it.

The worst part is if your house is burning down

[WillAffleckUW (858324)]

You can't pop down the street to the cafe and surf the net to see how many hours it will be before the fire truck you paid for with your Seattle taxes actually shows up.

Especially if you're blind or vision-disabled, as graphics won't work properly with their new system.

So, if you're a blind Seattleite, it's NOT an "improvement".

"It shouldn't be available"?

[madajb (89253)]

The kind of thinking on display here frightens the hell out of me.
"If we're not a first responder, why do we need the info in real time? "
"'ll have to start out by saying I'm amazed such information was ever available"
"Is it important to know, in real-time, where emergency crews are? "
"There is no way that 911 call information should be available at anything approaching real-time data"

This is completely ass-backwards.
There should be no need for me to prove that data, _any_ government data, should be available to me.
The government needs to prove there is a compelling reason for them not to make it available.

This sort of data serves some useful purposes and some not so useful purposes, in terms of tracking allocation of resources, seeing where hotspots are, knowing where that firetruck that just roared past you is going, and yes, pure entertainment.

The governments "counter-argument" consists of bogeymen in a closet.

The idea that anyone could come down on side of the government in this case is, to me, a sad commentary on the willingness of the populace to accept any old excuse that limits their access to the workings of their government.

-ajb

explanation

[by Anonymous Coward]

Just last week. Chemical explosion and nasty fire in north carolina.Not the first, not the last. I guess you could wait 24 hours to tell people about it, as the clouds of shit that could kill them drifted over them. How about brush fires, you ever been in one? I used to fight them as a volunteer, sometimes people have minutes to evac- minutes, tops-so they shouldn't have a way to find out until it's too late? How about armed standoffs or bad car crashes that block whole roads for hours? Would it be nice to know about them in a timely manner? How about if you are a newsie, nice to get to where the news is going down? I can think of a LOT of reasons why this restriction is misguided, lame, stupid and fairly unconstitutional once you get down to it.

Really, this is government public business, the public has every right in the world to be informed of it, absolutely no different from any joe citizen can go sit in on court to any case you want if there's room in the pews.. no different at all, really.

  This is allegedly a government by and for the people, not by and for the 1% connected elite and their hired on order taking and following drones. We had a revolution over that bit, remember?

  Government is supposed to hold only a few cards with our express permission, everything else IS our business and THEY work at our suffrance, as our employees. I, for one, am SICK AND TIRED of government-as-masters and overlords who assume everything is theirs by default and you must grovel before them. As the expression goes, F dat shyte! They have just usurped all the powers and now make you beg for it, and whenever they find out you are using your born with rights they get all bent out of shape and want to take it away or sell you "permission" or something. Screw that! We tell them what to do, not the other way around! This ain't a massah/slave deal, none of that plantation action, no thanks!

Giving into this "everything revolves around terrorism" stuff is pure grade-A brainwashed crapola. You are a smart guy, you *really* don't believe all this hysteria crap they have whipped up to control the mouth breathers, do you? I understand the 'tards swallowing it because they think pro rasslin' is real, but not anyone normal who is reasonably intelligent. You can see through it for the extreme power grab and consolidation it really is? The Heglian Dialectic angle? Think about it, really think, imagine you are joe terrorist.. Anyone with a room temp IQ and above, with "tools" available at any qucikstore starting with a cig ligter, working completely alone, could go around the country and commit "acts of terrorism" on a daily schedule. And get away with it. Assymetrical warfare, pretty easy stuff really. So--where's the beef, where are all the attacks from the "OMG fundy islamofascist tarists sleeper cells all over gonna steal our freedom fries and rape the cattle!". Well??? Where are all the attacks?? There aren't any except for over were THEIR nations are being invaded, which is more or less understanable given the context of them..being invaded.

    Maybe we have had one or two-maybe-I am still not convinced yet, to me it looks a lot more like a government reichstagg fire inside job.. the evidence we can see points way more to it being an inside job, using some stupid patsies at best.

    Anyway, this "terrorism" jazz is primarily pushed for and by the coup plotters and those who profit from this coup takeover, and it really *is* a coup that has happened. They use "terrorist" as this generations buzzword to induce and perpetuate fear, uncertainty and doubt.

It's a scam, man, really, a freakin' scam...

Re:I don't get get it.

[SmurfButcher Bob (313810)]

Well, let me give a little firefighter's instinct on this -

> I'll have to start out by saying I'm amazed such information was ever available. I'm just surprised anyone would think to post that for people.

> I have to say I'm with the government on this one. Why does anyone need to know exactly where all the 911 calls are coming from in real time?

You forget that this data is provided BY the government; the government is NOT saying they don't want this public, nor realtime; they are saying that they do not want a 3rd party to one-up their text-based webpage with a google map on a different site. Note well that the government response was NOT taking down the data; the response was to thwart the parsing of it.

So, you are not "with the government" on this one! (and, right or wrong isn't relevent; you simply do NOT agree with them.)

> I can understand why such data should be available, but why not give it a 24 hour delay? There are just SO many uses for this data for evil (where you can torch a house, when you can steal something with few cops nearby, where you can go to ambulance chase the most successfully, etc.)

Again, this isn't relevent to TFA, which discusses someone's use of the data; that the data is "realtime" has no bearing, and this "someone" is merely re-posting data that is publicly provided by the 911 center. The "use for evil" isn't even limited to a realtime feed, either. To ban any data on realtime emergency response means that there must also be a corresponding "news blackout" - after all, as an evil supervillan, I can wait for the fire dept to be stretched with 5 structure fires that drains the district (as you suggest)... or I can wait for a 5 alarm fire, a single large event that drains the district. Oddly, the 5 distinct fires won't make the news. But the big mega-fire will - with live coverage, helicopter-cams, the works, and the whole universe is going to know about it. And I can tell you... the 5 alarmer is a LOT more dangerous (from a complexity standpoint) than 5 distinct calls... if our supervillan wishes to "sneak under the radar", odds are much better during the chaos of the single, large, harder-to-manage event.

So, if this realtime data should be hidden... we likewise need a press blackout. No "live coverage" during fires, no reports of traffic accidents during our treks to work and home. Otherwise, we flatly contradict our reason for "no realtime data", I'm afraid.

A lot of people question why realtime data would be relevent in the first place... and I can tell from the tone of your post, your gut is crawling with the potential for abuse.

But, the data already readily available. It goes across the radio as a dispatch, and for $20 you can listen in. And as mentioned earlier, larger events are on the TV and radio. Of your examples (which are good)... putting this data on the internet enables *nothing*, any more than removing it from the internet *prevents* anything. You can't think of a single reason someone would need this data... I must ask, can you think of one action that removing this data is going to thwart? Just one? Don't feel bad if you can't... I can't, either.

For a 911 center, posting the data would be wonderful. It enables all of the value-adds with no labor on your part - radio station traffic reports, news agencies, even TomTom updates. You can facilitate all that crap, and even have some control over the wording of the information (which is huge, believe me). Or, you can force these same parties to scrape radio traffic for audio snippets, and then deal with the Absolute Joy of them paraphrasing 2nd-hand information that is completely without context. As a 911 center, you can choose one or the other. And, it doesn't seem to be a tough choice. Banning such data to "businesses" is downright silly... since all that does is create an artificial barrier to entry for the hobbiest / amateur-developer-who-wants-to-start-something. And believe me, the bulk of the GOOD fire-service software comes from such pe

Re:

[Nataku564 (668188)]

So, if there is a fire downtown you don't think it will possibly make traffic just a tiny bit more congested?

Re:

[Cheapy (809643)]

Why shouldn't it be?

Re:Bandwidth

[seattle911 (1013733)]

First of all, I am John Eberly (I read slashdot, but have never posted) and I hosted this site for free with no advertisements. I grabbed their data every 2 minutes via cron/perl and posted it on my site. I am sure I "saved" them bandwith. Real time police and fire data is nothing new, NYC has both Police and Fire data here... http://gothamist.com/labs/map [gothamist.com]. Where do they get their data you ask? They subsribe to a server for a $100/year over the internet. I am sure glad the terrorist can't figure that out. Once I had figured out they switched their data feed to a jpeg, I did a quick 30 second google search, apt-get install gocr, etc. and I had the feed again... It was actually even slightly easier than before, not tags and extra junk to strip, just fixed width text. I am a little tired of government crying "terrorism" and implementing worthless security measures. You don't need a "fancy software program" to get the Police/Fire resources tied up, just place about 3-4 bogus phone calls. By the way, my blog has been up/down today, because have some "runaway process on a separate node" according to my VPS. My server easily withstood the 20,000 hits in 12 hours from reddit.