Mailing List Archive

On Mon, 6 Jan 1997, Howard C. Berkowitz wrote:

> Thanks to everyone who responded. I was eventually able to reach one of
> the providers, who was able to identify the callers through logs, and
> passed the information to the local emergency people. The patient is now
> under treatment, and did not take a lethal dose.

I'd just like to point out the similarity between this event and the use
of the phone company to track down suicide callers. This reminds me of
several 40's or 50's B&W movies with people running down banks of relays
looking for the connection. I suspect that as the use of the Internet as a
communications tool pervades our culture more deeply these events will
occur with increased frequency.

This is just one more good reason for every provider to have a
24/7 NOC service even if it just gets call-forwarded to someone
asleep in bed.

Michael Dillon - Internet & ISP Consulting
Memra Software Inc. - Fax: +1-604-546-3049
http://www.memra.com - E-mail: michael@memra.com

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> On Mon, 6 Jan 1997, Howard C. Berkowitz wrote:
>
> > Thanks to everyone who responded. I was eventually able to reach one of
> > the providers, who was able to identify the callers through logs, and
> > passed the information to the local emergency people. The patient is now
> > under treatment, and did not take a lethal dose.
>
> I'd just like to point out the similarity between this event and the use
> of the phone company to track down suicide callers. This reminds me of
> several 40's or 50's B&W movies with people running down banks of relays
> looking for the connection. I suspect that as the use of the Internet as a
> communications tool pervades our culture more deeply these events will
> occur with increased frequency.
>
> This is just one more good reason for every provider to have a
> 24/7 NOC service even if it just gets call-forwarded to someone
> asleep in bed.

Add to this that this is the second time in 6 months I have heard of a
such an incident where the net was usefull in stopping this.

Reminds me of the time a guy walked into our offices and turned over
the handgun he had been toying around with the night before because
one of our staff convinced him not to use it.

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I'd like to point out that such things can be an invasion of privacy.
While person A might claim that person B threatened to commit suicide,
it is possible that person A wants to locate person B for other,
not so good reasons.

This will happen if all one has to say is "suicide" and everyone will
ignore their normal privacy policies.

> > > Thanks to everyone who responded. I was eventually able to reach one of
> > > the providers, who was able to identify the callers through logs, and
> > > passed the information to the local emergency people. The patient is now
> > > under treatment, and did not take a lethal dose.

> > I'd just like to point out the similarity between this event and the use
> > of the phone company to track down suicide callers. This reminds me of

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I think the way we would handle privacy issues here is that if we received
such a request to locate one of our customers, we would pass the customers
location information directly to local law enforcement along with the
request we had received. This way, the requestor cannot use such a claim
to learn private information of our customer, but yet our local cops could
provide assistance if it's really required...

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At 12:05 PM -0500 1/7/97, ALAN DORN HETZEL JR wrote:
>I think the way we would handle privacy issues here is that if we received
>such a request to locate one of our customers, we would pass the customers
>location information directly to local law enforcement along with the
>request we had received. This way, the requestor cannot use such a claim
>to learn private information of our customer, but yet our local cops could
>provide assistance if it's really required...

Sounds reasonable to me. This might be a good bullet to put into the draft
policy I started in a separate message.


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At 09:58 AM 1/7/97 -0500, Jon Zeeff wrote:
>
>I'd like to point out that such things can be an invasion of privacy.
>While person A might claim that person B threatened to commit suicide,
>it is possible that person A wants to locate person B for other,
>not so good reasons.
>
>This will happen if all one has to say is "suicide" and everyone will
>ignore their normal privacy policies.

I have dealt with this in the past and only given out the information to
the local EMS system, and had /them/ use the information. I also did
things like call back the original caller to make sure that I had valid
contact info for them, etc etc (gives some level of ability to track
things back if its a prank or harrasment or something.)

As a side note, when I lived in Chicago I had a similar experience to the
one mentioned above, (except I knew the name and address of the person
already), and it took a /lot/ of time to get patched through to EMS and
then to get EMS to actually believe me. To their credit the EMS dispatcher
did call me back later to apologize for not believing me when it turned out
that the person's life was saved.

Justin Newton
Network Architect
Erol's Internet Services
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> I think the way we would handle privacy issues here is that if we received
> such a request to locate one of our customers, we would pass the customers
> location information directly to local law enforcement along with the
> request we had received. This way, the requestor cannot use such a claim
> to learn private information of our customer, but yet our local cops could
> provide assistance if it's really required...

This would be great if the Police didn't use radios that everyone has
scanners for. This is the same as cracking - if you can prompt a
legitatimate query which creates a legitimate response then you can
snoop the session.

...until the police finally get better radios. Apologies to those of you
who live in countries where the police have caught on to this.

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From: INDIGO::DORN "ALAN DORN HETZEL JR" 8-JAN-1997 08:31:17.05
To: MX%"joe@Navigist.Com"
CC: DORN
Subj: Re: Thanks to all--medical emergency under control

> I think the way we would handle privacy issues here is that if we received
> such a request to locate one of our customers, we would pass the customers
> location information directly to local law enforcement along with the
> request we had received. This way, the requestor cannot use such a claim
> to learn private information of our customer, but yet our local cops could
> provide assistance if it's really required...

This would be great if the Police didn't use radios that everyone has
scanners for. This is the same as cracking - if you can prompt a
legitatimate query which creates a legitimate response then you can
snoop the session.

...until the police finally get better radios. Apologies to those of you
who live in countries where the police have caught on to this.


I think I would be willing to take that risk. Life is not
perfect and I cannot prevent every possible leak of data;
someone could break into our offices and steal all the computers
and the information on it; they could do it with guns and shoot
all my employees too; this doesn't mean I won't keep any
computers or information in my office...

If I give information to the police and they manage to lose
control of it, it is unfortunate, but I would just have to
consider it outside the scope of what I have available worry
cycles for...

-Dorn

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>Add to this that this is the second time in 6 months I have heard of a
>such an incident where the net was usefull in stopping this.
>
>Reminds me of the time a guy walked into our offices and turned over
>the handgun he had been toying around with the night before because
>one of our staff convinced him not to use it.

Not as exciting or controversial as a suicide attempt, but an interesting
timing coincidence, no less...my next door neighbor showed up at my front
door yesterday morning holding a branch from a house plant. Her six-month
old had just eaten couple leaves off of it, and the poison control hotline
had told her to wait for symptoms before rushing the kid to the hospital.
Still, she was frantic enough to knock on our door to try to identify the
plant and it's toxicity. Bottom line, it took about 6 or 7 minutes to
identify the branch and show that it's relatively safe...the "consumer's
Internet" (just a web browser & no privledged access) serviced a practical
and immediate need.

My neighbor's now threatening to get connected, maybe with a WebTV box.
Just an interesting tidbit for the archive.

-jp
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeffrey Payne Voice:206.674.2364
GM, Technical Operations FAX: 206.674.2696
Progressive Networks, Inc http://www.prognet.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------

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"Joe Rhett" <joe@Navigist.Com> writes:
> This would be great if the Police didn't use radios that everyone has
> scanners for. This is the same as cracking - if you can prompt a
> legitatimate query which creates a legitimate response then you can
> snoop the session.
>
> ...until the police finally get better radios. Apologies to those of you
> who live in countries where the police have caught on to this.

Not to drag the NANOG list down a completely irrelevant path (like
that's ever a concern for others here :-) ), but there are other
rather substantial concerns here. In most areas, public-safety radio
frequencies are considered public-access, and the relevant agencies
are prohibited from encrypting their radio traffic. This is mainly an
oversight issue; the idea is that private agencies should be able to
keep an eye on what the police are doing.

Naturally this doesn't prevent the police or similar agencies from
coming up with creative ways around the issue, ranging from voice
radio codes ("code 6" instead of "domestic assault", etc.) to
"trunking" radio systems that hop frequencies every time you push
PTT. Apparently the regulatory agencies have decided that this is
okay, but (e.g.) digital spread-spectrum isn't...

-Marc
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