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Comment by afarrell | Hacker News Reader

Someone who is calling 911 (or 999) should have no expectation of privacy from the government as to their location.

To my knowledge, there is no special back channel through which your cell phone will transmit GPS data to the dispatcher when you place a 911 call. The telco will always have access to cell tower triangulation data, which can be shared with 911 services (or law enforcement), but in general they are not being fed GPS or WiFi geolocation from your smartphone OS's location service (unless I just don't know about it).

To get that kind of data from your OS to a 911 dispatcher simply by placing a call would be to concede the ability for that kind of data to be leaked over telephony at all, or otherwise constantly uploaded to telcos/authorities.

I believe almost all phones in the US now supply GPS info for 911 calls. I remember flip phones 10 years ago having the option in settings to only enable location transmitting for emergency numbers. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RRLP for an example and look up Wireless Enhanced 911 for more info.

Regardless of whether or not cell phones currently have the technical capability to upload GPS data, I assert that a Reasonable Person would not be surprised to learn that by calling 911, they were giving their location to the dispatcher.

e911: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_9-1-1

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