New Apple Watch 911 Calls After Falling May Cause Legal Problems



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Valentina Palladino

Late last week, Apple released more details on how (with some acceptance metrics) the Apple Watch Series 4 watch will contact emergency services if the watch detects a sharp drop.

Before contacting the first responders, the Apple Watch will try to give many urgent alerts: tap the wearer on the wrist, raise an alarm and display a visual alert.

This alert gives the option of immediately calling an "emergency SOS" or typing "I fell, but I'm fine" or "I did not fall".

If the Apple Watch detects that the wearer is "motionless for about a minute", he starts a countdown of 15 seconds. After that, the Watch will contact the emergency services, who can often use the mobile phone data to locate the carrier. (Apple says the feature is automatically turned on for users who have entered their age profile and are over 65 years old.)

The opt-in nature (especially) of the service may mitigate, but not completely, the concerns raised by some lawyers immediately following the announcement of the eve of 12 September.

Elizabeth Joh, a law professor at the University of California at Davis, was quick to point out that by inviting police to your home, Apple Watch wearers could open up to criminal liability.

In other words, if an Apple Police is alerted to a possible injury, it does not need a warrant to enter a home under the exception of fourth amendment on community care. This is the notion that law enforcement officers can enter a private area if they reasonably believe that someone needs a help from someone else. 39; emergency. This is similar to the exception of the "Urgent Circumstances", which allows the police to intervene if it believes that someone is in imminent danger or that physical evidence is being raised. Be destroyed.

In such a situation, the watch could tell the authorities that her carrier had fallen and that the police could enter her home. They could spot some joints on his coffee table and the wearer could be charged with possession of drugs.

"One of the interesting things here is that whenever there's a change in technology, it creates an involuntary fourth-amendment issue," Joh told Ars. "This is a good example of how design can inadvertently improve or interfere with privacy, and I'm sure this change in the way this Apple watch will work will only do very well. once there is a change of this kind, there will be accidents and there will be missteps. "

She noted that she would like to hear Apple justify this change in its design.

Apple has not responded to Ars's request for comments on the record, referring only to this web page.

"I would love to have this cost-benefit analysis," she said.

Fred Jennings, a New York-based criminal defense lawyer, agreed with Joh. He said he would prefer the carrier to automatically alert a relative or friend rather than the police.

On September 12, Jennings told Ars by phone that, sadly, there have been and still are cases where "the police call makes people less safe".

However, when Ars sent Jennings the September 20 issue of the new emergency call function, he said his concerns had been "confirmed."

"I think that" local emergency services detected automatically by call "are acceptable by default, but users must have the opportunity to replace them with their own settings," he wrote to Ars. "If I live in rural Montana, my home partner or former neighbor may be faster than the local police and may not have the same issues of confidentiality or over-response."

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