Subject: [SIP] 911

From: Sandra Turner <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 06:22:13 -0700

In our investigation as to whether or not to offer IP telephony as a 
service where I work, one of the major stumbling blocks has been 911 (if 
you move your IP phone to another office and have a heart attack, how will 
the emergency services people know where to go).  I've established a 
mailing list (http://lists.cs.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/911) and would 
like to propose the following for discussion:

- Use 
http://www.cs.columbia.edu/sip/drafts/draft-schulzrinne-sip-911-00.pdf as 
the start of the requirements document
- Ask for authors interested in completing the requirements document
- Solicit feedback on whether a group of authors or an appointed design 
team should complete a draft which would form the basis of an RFC
- Discuss both the campus and residential/carrier environments (former may 
have multiple PSAPs and/or own in-house emergency response system 
[e.g.  fire department], rather than the town/city)

---

From: "James M. Polk" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 17:27:28 -0600

Sandra

At 06:22 AM 3/10/2001 -0700, Sandra Turner wrote: 
>
> In our investigation as to whether or not to offer IP telephony as a service
> where I work, one of the major stumbling blocks has been 911 (if you move
> your IP phone to another office and have a heart attack, how will the
> emergency services people know where to go). 

This shouldn't be a SIP-specific issue because the location of the SIP device
isn't or shouldn't be pre-programmed into the device (that's old-world
thinking) and wouldn't work even in a campus environment with a mobile SIP
device.

> - Solicit feedback on whether a group of authors or an appointed design team
> should complete a draft which would form the basis of an RFC

*Location* of the IP Telephony device making the e911 call is the issue you're
trying to solve here I believe. 

Cisco and Nokia tried to set up a Working Group within the IETF to deal with
this very issue (Spatial Location at: http://www-nrc.nokia.com/ietf-spatial/)
indirectly due to its localization to the United States -- but the IESG had a
real problem with it's potential misuse. The Applications AD's are attempting
to figure out how the Charter of our BOF can be re-worked to satisfy the
security requirements associated with learning the location of an IP Device
that potentially can be associated with a person, thereby learning that
person's geodesic location by some unauthorized entity.

Your suggestions are quite welcome in fact here

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James M. Polk
Consulting Engineer
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