Cisco's emergency caller can send first responders to the wrong location Cisco has warned that its Emergency Responder product can send emergency services to the wrong location under some circumstances. The networking giant promotes Emergency Responder as an enhancement to its Unified Communications Manager as it "assures that Cisco Unified Communications Manager will send emergency calls to the …
"This can result in emergency dispatchers responding to the wrong address, building, or location."
It's not as if people have lost their lives because of similar screw-ups, is it?
This is so scary. Who thought it would be a good idea to send a default location instead of location unknown in those circumstances???
Don't mess with emergency services, and if you're going to release a product (add-on) specifically for communicating with emergency services, you better make sure every single release is flawless.
You mention police, but what about medical emergencies? There is generally going to be fewer situations where the caller is unable to give an accurate description of the location, but if people trust the system without verifying, you're going to run into big problems...
Here in the Great White North a challenger to the great monopoly Telco decided to roll out VOIP phones which supported caller id for emergency services.
Unfortunately the location they reported was that of the data center hosting the VoIP network gear - generally in a different city, and in one fatal case, a different province
Unfortunately the location they reported was that of the data center hosting the VoIP network gear
Some time back I encountered the same issue in the UK after the company relocated its head office and we all had ISDN phone links to there.
Having a need to call the police I was quite surprised to find the force I got was hundreds of miles from where they were needed. But more surprised they had no means to transfer me to my local force and the emergency service operator didn't know how to get a call to someone other than the local-to-them force.
>This is so scary. Who thought it would be a good idea to send a default location instead of location unknown in those circumstances???
Everyone it seems... I'm in Madrid according to world + corporate dog (Google, MS and assorted other ferals) and I've never been near the place. Starlink's ground station is in Madrid, so search results are all tailored for Madrid. Doesn't help that I might be calling from El Molar (Tarragona) and guess what's a suburb of Madrid, yup El Molar. My mate ended up with car insurance for El Molar Madrid because of that.
SkyDSLs ground station is in Germany so I couldn't access my banking app as it flashed up "FRAUD!" everytime I went on it.
If you don't have an old fashioned fixed line you're at the mercy of the "logic" of unknown programmers.
Calling by mobile will always be different as it will reference the active cell tower. What @bemusedHorseman is talking about is fixed addresses where Cisco may be in the loop and to borrow from the article there may be a sub-office for some national agency next door to him but Cisco only provide the Head Office details in the centre of Manhattan.
Yes XOR no. Basically, it comes down to the fact that cellular triangulation requires a certain number of towers, the same way that GPS only works if you have line of sight to at least four satellites, increasing in precision with more of them. When you call 911, the system looks up the source phone number to see if it's a landline; if it is, the street address is right there and it's assumed that you're calling from that address, making it easier to dispatch to you. If it's a cell number... it has to check the signal-distance to multiple nearby towers, but in a rural area, you might only have one. "The mobile phone with number 123-555-1234 is in a 1.612 kilometer radius of Tower WZZZ, and in range of no other towers" isn't usable at all, while "The landline with number 456-555-7890 is registered to 123 Main Street, Anytown, CA 90210" is actionable.
........of course, in theory this is the exact reason Emergency Services' scripts now begin with "what is your location" and then asks what the emergency is, but if all you were able to do was dial before Something Terrible Happened, all 911 has available is whether or not the number you're calling from is tied to a physical address, or if you're in an urban enough area for the required number of towers to geolocate you.
When we lived out in the country (50 years ago), pre-911 dispatch, we and our neighbors all had "fire numbers." These numbers were assigned by the fire department, and were completely independent of our postal box numbers ("Route 2, Box 423"). Peoples's postal boxes were supported by a vertical pole embedded into the ground. Each of these poles had a 1" x 6" x 16" board attached halfway up. Black metal plates, each plate with a white, retro-reflective digit, were attached to the plank to indicate that house's fire number.
The one time we had to call the fire department (neighbor's car on fire, stalled in front of our house), my mum had me run out and look at our post box to check our fire number, 'cause none of us remembered what it was.
Unfortunate, but in a project with this level of complexity, I can understand.
The important thing is that they have corrected the goof, and published the problem without pressure from some hacker threatening to go public.
Yes, I know, that's normal you say. Sure. But "normal" these days, at the corporate level, doesn't have the same meaning any more . . .
So, let's patch and move on.
$dayjob is very excited about their project to replace desk phones with Teams calling. That's fine for normal calls, but I really don't want to rely on an add on location service in an emergency, especially if my laptop is not at its usual location.
Granted, the safety briefing at one of our German plants included a note that in the event of fire, we shouldn't call 112 (contacts the nearest municipal fire service) but should instead contact the plant's fire department. The safety slide had something like a 10 digit phone number for the plant fire service.
Not...0118 999 88199 9119 725 3...by any chance, was it?
Regarding Teams calling...I (foolishly) attempted to call one of our clients (who is also a Teams user - should be simple, right?), and discovered that it is not possible...my Teams install was not licensed for that. When I messaged our IT people, they told me I needed X levels of approval for that feature, which turned out to be connection to the PSTN (something entirely different). So, rather than navigate the maze of Teams options and licenses, I set up a Teams meeting...just me and him, sent him an invite, and we had our conversation. A bit roundabout, but at least we could talk. No phones on the desks at my place of work either, but since I'm mostly WFH anyway, it makes little difference.
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