911 Prank

[Lestan Gregor]

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2007/09/03/crank_caller_clocks_in_2000_pranks_to_911/2046/


This guy called over 2,000 times, every time he made it sound like a real 911 call

[ChrisT]

Ever wondered what old cell phones people put in the box at best buy are used for? I doubt it's for battered women. It seems strange though that they can't get an approximate location or even the location of the tower he's calling from.

[rbcp]

They can figure out his tower, even if it's an old analog phone.  The problem is that in a big city, a tower probably narrows down their search to a million people or so.  I wonder how they concluded that he's a homeless man.

[mr_doc]

They didn't. The media is just demonizing the homeless in society's mind. Or downplaying this incident to make the law enforcement agency seem more competent and less affected.

[trevelyn]

a 911 operator calls me often at work here, we used to carry these prepay phones that ran through veriZon service, owned by CricKet - and called "Jump Mobile"  911 frightens me.  in fact, the show COPS, every movie with FBI agents busting hackers/phreakers, makes me pjear those ppl so badly, in a real emergency i think i would be too scared to call 911.  if i even see a COP i get scared..   

[afreak]

In my whole life, I have only called 911 once. I had some homeless person come up to me and tell me that he was having a heart attack, and my girlfriend at the time believed him. In my case, I am trained in CPR and realised that he likely wasn't having one, but because the guy was not going to leave us alone anyway, I called for an ambulance. When I was speaking with the paramedics, they told me that my assumption was likely correct because they had seen this guy a few days before. My guess was that he was just severely drunk from the bottle of Crown Royal that he had in his possession and that likely he had heart burn or something.

[gangals]

a 911 operator calls me often at work here, we used to carry these prepay phones that ran through veriZon service, owned by CricKet - and called "Jump Mobile"  911 frightens me.  in fact, the show COPS, every movie with FBI agents busting hackers/phreakers, makes me pjear those ppl so badly, in a real emergency i think i would be too scared to call 911.  if i even see a COP i get scared..   

That was very incoherent.

trevelyn, what did I tell you about hitting the sauce this early in the morning.


I had to call them once for real when I was mugged, that was fun

But at work, when I test help/emergency phones, it goes to our local 911. The other week, half the time I tested a phone, I was on hold for at least two minutes before I got an operator, that's screwed up.

[trevelyn]

a 911 operator calls me often at work here, we used to carry these prepay phones that ran through veriZon service, owned by CricKet - and called "Jump Mobile"  911 frightens me.  in fact, the show COPS, every movie with FBI agents busting hackers/phreakers, makes me pjear those ppl so badly, in a real emergency i think i would be too scared to call 911.  if i even see a COP i get scared..   

That was very incoherent.

trevelyn, what did I tell you about hitting the sauce this early in the morning.


I had to call them once for real when I was mugged, that was fun

But at work, when I test help/emergency phones, it goes to our local 911. The other week, half the time I tested a phone, I was on hold for at least two minutes before I got an operator, that's screwed up.

oh yeee, the woman calls about prank calls coming through from Jump Mobile service, and asks me to search the numbers to get a name address/which with prepaid phones is 99% of the time fake. 
and cops scare me when i see them, even if i dont have my laptop with me.

[RijilV]

They can figure out his tower, even if it's an old analog phone.  The problem is that in a big city, a tower probably narrows down their search to a million people or so.  I wonder how they concluded that he's a homeless man.

They should be able to figure out even more than that.  They [should] know what side of the tower he was coming in on.  his mobile phone would be reporting its output power (yes, even old AMPS does this), and the tower [should] log the received signal strength.  So at this point you have a good idea what director (typical towers are broken up in 1/3rd) and a good guess how far away. 

But it gets easier.  Since the cell network (yes even AMPS) was designed for handoffs the network is constantly monitoring the signal strength of a device from multiple towers, so they [should] have all of this data for two or more towers.

Really, all they need to do is just read the logs, assuming they are logging.  Logging is alot of like keeping backups, or setting a good password, or wiping your ass.  Many people seem to forget how to do these things.