I've run across some acquaintances and strangers since SFD made the change and no one understands the change.
On the first day of the change, in the morning, I wrote a simple, straight forward message to SFD, Mayor's office, and council person Nick Licata, objecting to the new format. NO response. I know of others who have written. NO response. This is typical Seattle government arrogance in which the taxpayers are basically told to stick it you know where. (Similar to taking the vote about the viaduct off the ballot.) I'll remember this the next time a vote comes up for increased funds for SFD.
You are seeing the ever increasing trend in government to obscure, withhold, or simply hide information under vague claims of security. "Sanctions for Evil" is an interesting book that examines how abuse of power arises in groups and agencies. Secrecy is one of those elements.
We'll probably get as much truth out of SFD about this changeover as we get from Bush about why we invaded Iraq. When I was growing up I was constantly hammered with the evils of Communist secrecy and that the US was better because we operated in the open. Interestingly, the City of Seattle acknowledges the evil that can come out of secrecy. In sex offender bulletins from SPD is this statement: "We believe the only person who wins if community notification ends is the sex or kidnapping offender, since they derive their power through secrecy."
Another link about the change:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid= ... 1&from=rss
An interesting point about this changeover. If you read the PI article, you are left with the impression that SFD suddenly found data on another web site and this raised alarms.
From the article: "But during discussion about that project [of mapping on Seattle's own web site], fire officials discovered that an outside Web site already was using the information. That prompted the department to change the log's format so it would be harder to use for mapping purposes, Fitzpatrick said."
I saw an email that SFD sent in November 2005 that made two interesting points: 1) SFD acknowledged that they knew about web sites [plural!] that were taking the data off the official dispatch page and doing something with it (and there were no concerns about security expressed in that email) and 2) SFD acknowledged that there was some business use made of the data. That this is a suprise based on "discovered that an outside Web site was using the information" is simply not supported by email from SFD that I saw.
Since the change over, SFD is dropping out big responses. Any time you see a time stamp with the rest of the line blank, it is a big response. Frequently, though you can figure out the address in a few minutes, which is another reason this whole change is an illusion.
Take for example an entry today, 10/22/2006, 13:03. This entry would have had an incident # ending in 35 or 36.
If you look up five lines you will see an incident # ending in 35. That response was at 13:25.
The line shows only 1 unit for "Multiple Medic Resp 14 Per". Yea, right, one unit is going to supply 14 emergency responders? So, you can easily and fairly accurately figure out what and where the missing response was in a few minutes.
Earlier in the day at 03:57 is another blank line. This would have had an incident number ending in 38, 39, 40, 41, or 42. Four minutes later you see DEP1 and AIR9 dispatched with incident # ending in 40. AIR9 doesn't get dispatched unless there is a possible big fire event. So, four minutes later you get the address of a large response.
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