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NYC Opens 911 Hotline To Pictures, Video 60

Posted by Soulskill from the oh-the-possibilities dept.
Anti-Globalism brings news that New York City has set up a system to accept pictures and videos for their 911 and non-emergency hotlines. The files can come from cell phones, computers, and PDAs. Quoting: "Tipsters in New York City can now send photos and video ... to report crimes and quality-of-life issues such as potholes, officials announced Tuesday. Depending on the case, the images may be shared widely with the public, with police officers on patrol, individual detectives or other law enforcement agencies, according to city officials. The images may also be used to help in assessing and responding to emergencies."
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NYC Opens 911 Hotline To Pictures, Video More

NYC Opens 911 Hotline To Pictures, Video

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  • 911? (Score:1)

    by Chaset ( 552418 )

    It might make sense for non-emergency lines, but opening up the 911 seems to be asking for trouble with deluge of trivial, non-emergency data.

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It might make sense for non-emergency lines, but opening up the 911 seems to be asking for trouble with deluge of trivial, non-emergency data.

      I doubt that. I think that most of the useless data to 911 comes from prank calls from phone booths and such. I think this will be a lot smaller problem.

      And 911 might benefit a lot from extra data sometimes. Like getting image of a house burning and using that to send proper amount of firefighting units, getting image of car crash to see how bad the situation is... A picture might not tell more than a thousand words, but it tells a lot.

      I think this is awesome idea. The only problem I see is that if I got in

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Tom90deg ( 1190691 )

        Dunno...I see a whole bunch of ways this can go wrong. First, Lets assume...oh...1 in a thousand people in NY actually send in a photo or video. There's 8.2 million people in New York, so that'd be 8,2000 pictures and videos. All of these need to be looked at closly, to make sure that they're important, and if so, what it shows. That's a lot of time and effort, and I don't know how good it'll be.

        It has great Potential, but that may be all it is, a great idea on paper.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by WK2 ( 1072560 )

      From the summary: "Tipsters in New York City can now send photos and video ... to report crimes and quality-of-life issues such as potholes, officials announced Tuesday."

      According to the summary, it looks like they are OK with that.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by zobier ( 585066 )

      well who else do I call if my wife won't make me a sammich or I can't find my glasses?

    • Re:911? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by spooje ( 582773 ) <{spooje} {at} {hotmail.com}> on Saturday September 13, 2008 @05:34AM (#24988897) Homepage

      I think this is a great addition. Just think of the 911 dispatcher being able to send a video of an injured person to a doctor or the EMS unit, allowing the caller to get expert medical advice.

      Also think of Colombine, where police may have a chance to get a look at the suspects or be able to pinpoint their location by ruling out places that they aren't.

      • Re:911? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by nospam007 ( 722110 ) on Saturday September 13, 2008 @06:21AM (#24989071)

        >I think this is a great addition. Just think of the 911 dispatcher being able to send a video of an injured person to a doctor or the EMS unit, allowing the caller to get expert medical advice.

        But first they have to find it amongst the thousands of pictures of wrongly parked cars the overzealous 'photo-sheriffs' send in every hour.

        • Finding the criminals might not be much easier but I think the system is a really good thing because you then have real time proof given of what happened. Suppose someone killed someone else while you were there. First, you can send a picture/movie of the criminal (they know who it is which is probably the hardest part of a crime investigation) and second you can make sure you are not accused of anything, you wouldn't have to be afraid of getting charged yourself, I reckon people avoid calling the police be
          • Not only that, but once the data is transmitted to-da-Feds, apparently the transmitter is semi-immune from a potential beating by the said-accused. Sorta like those security cams that are so ubiquitous but yet-oh-so-different as The Real-time.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by mpe ( 36238 )
              Not only that, but once the data is transmitted to-da-Feds, apparently the transmitter is semi-immune from a potential beating by the said-accused. Sorta like those security cams that are so ubiquitous but yet-oh-so-different as The Real-time.

              Does this mean that when the police are up to something dodgy the phone system is apt to go down though?
        • Living in Brooklyn, I'll attest that hit-and-run type incidents are very common here. There are just soooo many people living here, that people bump into each other all the time and have minor to moderate altercations. From cars sideswiping people and other vehicles and then driving off, to crazy people using pepper-spray on others in the subway and running off.... There are lots of people with marginal understanding of civility and/or responsibility living here, and they'd much rather run off than do th

        • And that, children, is why swamped 911 voice calls were such a total failure starting 30 years ago that we abandoned them after a few months.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mikael ( 484 )

          If the 911 responder can get the telephone number of the person making the mobile phone call, why won't it be possible to have the incoming pictures also sorted by telephone number? Calls to 911 get routed specially - how else would the phone network be able to make such calls even when a PAYG phone is out of credit?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Chaset ( 552418 )

      ...oh, and "Frist Post!!!!"

      Dang, I wanted to do that for a looong time.

    • 911 should simply require that every submitted message come with a live person on a separate voice call, from the same callerID (the ones to 911 are ~100% reliable, in its parallel phone network). The caller should tell the 911 operator what the message means, and swear to back it up in testimony, for which the caller will later be called.

      All the multimedia should go into a big library, from which it's called as evidence (like if the responding cops immediately deploy, with a picture of a license plate or a

  • Does anyone remember that novel?
    • Yes now get off my lawn.

    • Does anyone remember that novel?

      I found this wiki when trying to figure out what you were talking about and there are some very grim predictions there. http://earthbydavidbrin.pbwiki.com/Predictions [pbwiki.com] This is kind of like one of the predictions there. I think it would be nice to make a Google service that was a number that I could call with caller ID enabled to send video of a breaking news event and people could get a couple bucks for breaking a news story by being where it happens. The sad part of all this is that with the advances in si

  • The real number (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    is of course 912.

  • That actually sounds like a good idea to me. How often do we get news about authorities using new technologies in a positive manner instead of taking a stance against them?
  • It does sound like a great idea with many benefits. Unfortunately this is going to open a big can of worms. I know privacy advocates might take exception and there will be certain drawbacks such as people thinking it is funny to send 911 a picture of their shaft & balls on a friend's cell phone. I hope people treat it responsibly but I have reservations.

    • Privacy advocates are more than welcome to refuse to send pictures or videos.

      They are also welcome to decline to call 911 at all, since doing so would give away their location, along with some valuable personal information they do not wish to disclose, such as the fact that their home was currently being broken into.

      Who knows what strangers would do with all that information!

      After the initial novelty wears off, I can't imagine "people thinking it is funny" being a worse problem than any other means of "pran

    • Speaking of a can of worms, what about authenticity? What happens if someone carefully photoshops an image and sends it? You can usually tell by someone's voice if they are joking around, but an image would make it much harder to tell.

  • goatse (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    That is all.

  • So let me see.... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Maelwryth ( 982896 )

    "When 911 callers tell police operators that photos or video related to their complaint are available, a detective with the New York Police Department's Real Time Crime Center will call back to receive the images."

    Instead of one phone call and staying on the line, you now have to hang up so a detective can call you back to teach you how to send an image from your phone?

    Have they even thought about the way they are going to make people feel at their weakest most vulnerable moment? And then great, they hav

    • Re:So let me see.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by zeptobyte ( 1140111 ) on Saturday September 13, 2008 @06:51AM (#24989169)
      Realize that this is an option, not a requirement. It's not as if you'll call 911 and they'll demand that you provide photos or video. But if it's relevant to the situation, and you did managed to get a picture (for instance, as someone said above, taking pictures of a fire), they are now equipped to receive that picture. Or say you just witnessed a robbery in progress and you got a picture of the getaway car as it was leaving, you can now send that to them. And of course this is also available for non-emergency lines, where it will probably see more use as the situations are not time-critical.

      • It's not as if you'll call 911 and they'll demand that you provide photos or video.

        Give the stupidity of governments these days, I could see them "solving" the problem of hoax calls that way.

        Pics or it ain't true!

      • Re:So let me see.... (Score:5, Funny)

        by antifoidulus ( 807088 ) on Saturday September 13, 2008 @08:45AM (#24989583) Homepage Journal
        Yeah, it would kind of suck if the last words you heard on this planet were "pics or it didn't happen"....

      • I can imagine a massive, MASSIVE hole in this whole idea. What's to stop a photoshopped image from being sent to them?

        So you just got a picture of a robber leaving a house or whatever. Photoshop someone you don't like's face onto there, and uh-oh... someone damn well better hope they have a better alibi than "alone at home, asleep".

        • No one ever makes false police reports now by voice, so though we're totally unprepared for that kind of abuse, it will never happen with pictures.

          Because the cops can't just trace your callerID or IP# which sent the fake picture, and charge you with "making a false statement". Nah, they'll never figure that out.

          I sure hope criminals never give up horse and carriage for those new automobiles the cops are starting to drive around in.

        • My take on this is that as it becomes easier and easier to manipulate pictures our reationship to pictures will become what our relationship currently is with word of mouth. When someone tells you something outragious you don't necessarily believe them. Just as when you see an outragious photo you don't necessarily believe what you see. This is already happening. But as photos become easier and easier to manipulate we won't trust the way we do now. They will still be useful however, just has word of mo

  • Don't need a picture (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 13, 2008 @06:51AM (#24989163)

    Hello, 911? It's Quagmire. Yeah, it's caught in the window this time.

  • and i'd say it was about time!

  • Great. So now you never know who is watching you, so you are afraid of everyone.

    Sounds like early nazi germany to me.

    • All open societies have ways for civilians to report crimes to the police. This one is just a lot better. If you do something in public, you should already expect that it can be recorded, as has been the case for generations, nearly a century.

      BTW, "early Nazi Germany" wasn't notable for "citizen snitching", at least not more than any other authoritarian state (which includes many current democracies). You're talking about Soviet East Germany (like the rest of the Soviet Union). Which didn't use mobile civil

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nurb432 ( 527695 )

        early Nazi Germany" wasn't notable for "citizen snitching"

        My meaning is that it was known for the fear of that. Fear went a long way.

  • watch your eyes.. (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    a thought that seems to have been neglected(and given the nature of /. is odd); as any considered the poor people working there? all that is needed is for some 4chan beasty to decide it would be amusing to goatce/tubgirl/meatspin.. the operators..... the horror!
     

    • Sending goatse to SWAT, the people that can put you in a place where your asshole will be expanded. Doesn't sound like a smart idea to me.

      It could end up being a real pain in the ass. Get it? Pain in the ass? I kill myself! (Applause from all of slashdot)

  • I've been asking for this 911 feature right here in NYC for years.

    I want to snap a picture (from the passenger seat, of course) of the homicidal maniac who just cut me off on the FDR Drive, including their license plate, send it to 911, then call, and tell the cops I'm following them from a safe distance until they arrive. Then the cops can arrest them and charge them with attempted murder. I'll be happy to show up in court to back up all the evidence.

  • Now I want my car to have cameras on it all the time, recording 360 degrees. If anything happens, my car should send the clip from the last several seconds or minutes over to 911. With GPS if I allow it, and patch me through by voice to give my eyewitness testimony.

    Then, when I follow the perp I videoed, the cops can back me up, and take over when they get wherever they're going.

    I'm the TRAFFIC AVENGER, HAHAHAHAHA!!!

  • I bet they haven't been to the goatse site yet. I'll fix that in sec.

  • It Will Happen (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DynaSoar ( 714234 ) on Saturday September 13, 2008 @02:59PM (#24992351) Journal

    People have been arrested for photographing buildings and such, and their equipment confiscated, being accused of plotting terrorist acts. People suspected of terrorism have had photographs they possessed used as evidence against them. Now people are going to be taking pictures and video of people, places and things in NYC, where they're already sensitized to this kind of thing.

    It's only a matter of time before some law enforcement person sees someone taking pictures of something, intended to be sent to 911, and investigates the situation for possible terrorist intent. In most cases the "perp" will be able to show their true intent, but it's only a matter of time before someone can't get themselves cleared on the spot and is arrested for suspected terrorism. Almost everyone so accused and arrested have been cleared and released, but many of them have been held without due process for extreme amounts of time.

    Envision a cab driver taking pictures of potholes. Not very damaging you'd think. Now envision that cab driver as wearing a turban, as many do in NYC. Figure their odds.

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