In what circumstances would you want to contact 911 but not reveal your location?
device owner decides when to opt-out
device owner does not need to explain why
Not saying this happens, but the only way it could happen is if the guy calling has some guarantee of not being identified.
I'd much prefer having a criminal get away and saving a life thanks to the 911 call than him getting away and letting someone die because he had no way to call 911 anonymously without disclosing his device's location.
full stop
This trivially becomes a back door for malware that can initiate phone calls, by circumventing ordinary OS security and control.
Maybe there's a reason to intercept location data (e.g. cheating spouse), via a completed call that transmits a silent audio channel. So the software lands on the device, initiates a 911 call just to obtain the location of the device and send it to a botnet, and immediately hangs up.
Mission Accomplished: spouse is confirmed to be cheating. At the expense of an extra ring to 911.
This example is facetious. There are other reasons to snoop on a single individual's location data.
Now the calls are being triggered by remote software control, with your phone being hijacked as a proxy device, and who is left to blame?
Maybe your brain finds it convenient to shut off there, but not for many of us. We have experience reporting crime but don't want to be identified because the rest of the criminal's cronies could turn on us.
Without knowing how our information travels once it leaves our hands, retaliation from crooked government organizations, gangs, small time mobs, abusive family members is all too possible. And we all know how information wants to travel.
Providing the location has literally nothing to do with anonymity in this scenario. If your cell phone is not traceable to you, then it doesn't matter if your 911 call is accompanied by location info automatically. You're going to provide that same location info to the dispatcher anyway. And the criminals involved will also know the location because they are there committing the crime.
I'm not saying that I don't think there is a use for this feature, but your claims are bordering on the absurd.
Just because something is technically possible with a lot of preparation, doesn't make it a continuously usable source of information, especially in retrospect. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be wary, but we shouldn't practice all-or-nothing thinking.
Okay. It'll be high accuracy when you give the exact location to the dispatcher, though. Or are you using 911 for non-emergency calls? Keeping your location secret from the dispatcher in an emergency essentially means you're preventing an appropriate emergency response.
> it's not logged continuously.
Sure about that?
> And it's not readily available to anyone who wants it.
No change. Apple has not proposed posting your location on Twitter when you dial 911.
> And we are usually surrounded by others so things can't always be pinpointed to an individual.
Uh. You are wildly incorrect. Your cellphone is transmitting its location all the time. Assuming it can reasonably be called your cellphone, that location is definitely pinpointed to an individual.
Why are you calling 911 if you don't want emergency services to know where you are?
What would the punishment be for a situation where you leave your phone unattended, and it gets misused?