The purpose of the CAVERN network is to help everyone to keep each other safe from fires and other disasters, so some Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is needed. Happily, the project sponsor is a nonprofit privacy org that seeks a healthy balance between public safety & personal privacy.
Our project’s solution is to store Members’ PII in these two places:
(1) A public CAVERN Member DB (database) that other members can see,
which contains only first_name, last_initial, CAVERN_ID and GMRS_callsign.
(Members: contact NetCon to download the most recent PDF here);
(2) A private Admin Member DB for emergencies or to admin the project.*
So… each human being on the CAVERN network, please fill out the form below.
Network Control will use this info and an abacus to assign your unique CAVERN_ID.
* We’ve reduced data collection and give you options to decline anything not directly affecting safety. Your last initial will do: your full legal name is optional. Using a pseudonym helps parents with minors who could save lives with a radio (our favorite: Hobergs 4 is “Peekaboo”). As for where you are: if you think emergency help can “probably” get to you by sending first responders to an intersection near you, that’s your call (the more precise the better). With your address, we can also do useful things like figuring out if you can “see” the CAVERN Main Repeater #1 or determine if you’ll have line-of-sight to members in other groups. The Admin Member DB has a few more fields but is only accessible to the Cobb Communications Committee co-chairs and the nonprofit’s research director. The responsible adults have agreed to use the information only for reasonable expediencies or very specific emergency cases. For example, if we hear from one operator that another needs urgent help but can’t tell us where to send it, we’ll look up the location and relay it to the FD. We may also need to let people know about changes to the network that may impact their communications or safety, like adding or moving a Repeater. The project sponsor, a nonprofit R&D thinktank, may announce the testing of some aspect of the radio network or the R&D Mesh network hardware prototypes some CAVERN members may be want to test, etc.