Giving emergency services more powers to track down at-risk people through their phones could save lives, the Privacy Commissioner says.
Police told 1 NEWS the current process to access someone's location through their phone is governed by strict regulations and involves a manual, emailed request from communication centres to the telecommunications provider.
It can be quite a lengthy a process.
"The time delay between requesting this information from the telecommunications provider and it being received by Police, can be quite some time," says superintendent Dave Trappitt.
Jazz Thornton vividly remembers the day she had to phone the police about her friend who was in distress.
But it was too late.
Ms Thornton now runs a suicide prevention initiative and in the last month alone, she's called police more than 20 times about others at risk of harming themselves .
"There's been times police have been able to locate someone straight away because they're at their house or a location that can be identified," she told 1 NEWS.
"But unfortunately there's been quite a few times where it's taken them a long time, or too long, for them to be able to locate someone and it's ended really badly."
And that's exactly why Privacy Commissioner John Edwards wants to make the emergency services' job easier and faster.
It's being proposed that in an emergency, a search could be launched immediately with real time location information regardless of who alerted authorities.
Mr Trappitt says police welcome the proposal to speed up the process "as minutes are crucial when someone is in danger".
Police say every second counts when lives are at stake and this could help track missing people including overdue trampers, Alzheimer's patients, kidnapping victims, or those who are suspected of being about to hurt themselves or others.
"It's only going to be deployed when necessary to protect someone who could be in significant imminent danger," Mr Edwards says.
Ms Thorton says she thinks it's a great idea.
"I think it ultimately could completely save lives."
The change has prompted fears of privacy invasion.
"It's basically a good idea, but the danger is giving the Government, the state, the power to locate people like that… the risk the power will be abused," environmentalist Russel Norman says.
"Clearly we need checks and balances in place to make sure MBIE and other Government agencies don't abuse their power as they certainly have in the very recent past."
Thomas Beagle, chairperson of the Council of Civil Liberties, is also wary.
"When they want to use these new powers to find us, they should tell us afterwards," he says.
"You should get a notification saying, 'Hi, we looked at your location because of emergency'."
For Ms Thornton, a suicide survivor herself, it's a no-brainer.
"If this process enables people to live, I think that outweighs anything."
The Privacy Commission now wants feedback on the issue as it works out the balance of keeping people's privacy and lives safe.
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