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GPS Wristwatch for Kids
1010011010 writes "A company called 'Wherify Wireless' has created a $400 watch with a built-in pager, GPS unit and wireless data connectivity. It's targeted at families with kids. According to their website, 'Wherify's GPS Personal Locator helps keep loved ones safe by combining Wherify's patented technology with the U.S. Department of Defense's multi-billion dollar Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites plus the largest 100% digital, nationwide PCS wireless network.' It includes a pager, clock, two-button '911' calling (parent can disable this), and remote-control keyfob (to lock and unlock it) for the parents. It is apparently water- and kid-resistant, and can be locked onto the wrist so that it cannot be removed (easily). $400 plus $35 a month... that's a lot more money than those stretchy wrist-leashes I see at the mall." There are so many things wrong with this that I don't even know where to begin.
What is wrong with this? There is absolutely nothing more important to a parent than the safety of their child. Of course you're not going to tag your child with it 24/7 but if you're going to say Disneyland, or the beach or some other large public venue, it would be an excellent idea to place this on your child.
Would you want to lose your child because you were too busy being a conspiracy theorist and trying to think up reasons as to why tagging your child is morally wrong? No.. I didn't think so.
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
Sure, I've got no problems strapping it to a little kid at the beach (though, frankly, it's hardly necessary - child abduction by strangers is *very* rare). Its use with older children, though, concerns me greatly.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
"There are so many things wrong with this that I don't even know where to begin."
If youve ever lost a child you wouldnt even think about saying that, infact, at the time youd probably give an arm and a lag to have had one of these on your kid.
I think this is a really marvelous idea. Please don't mod me down as flamebait here, I've heard of some AWFUL things happening to kidnapped children. Out here in SoCal we had thousands and thousands of posters with Danielle Van Damme's picture on it until she was found, dead, and burned, in the boonies. I think the /. eds are too rabid about this with the constant slippery-slope arguments about how the government's going to mandate this on all citizens to enforce the dictatorship. Please. I think this company has a great idea, and if they can get the price down to something reasonable I think it would be great.
And while you're in the rabid dog civil rights mood, think about this. Danielle had every one of her civil rights taken by the creep who murdered her. On your guys' level, she did have all her privacy taken away by all the posters posted looking for her. This wristwatch idea could have _SAVED HER LIFE_. And in fact, _PROTECTED HER PRICACY_. This wristwatch is heavy on the scales of civil rights compared to some paranoid concerns. Accept it for what it is, don't bash it for something it's not.
You're either not a parent or forgotton how easy it is for a 2 or 3 year old to get lost. I have not yet met a parent who has NEVER lost sight of a child for a few seconds, even on reins they can wriggle out, or remove it when your attention is elsewhere - shopping is a classic example.
If you're in the UK, you'll remember Jamie Bulger? Do you suppose his parents would have had this device if they could?
Perhaps if you do have kids, and do momentarily lose sight of him/her and they tyhen go missing, you might change your mind. I sincerely hope it never happens to you.
We had a child wander off, took us 5 minutes to find him, i have never been so panic-struck in my life. It happens, even to the very best parents.
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
> that I don't even know where to begin.
As mentioned in the comments there are some "practical" uses for this. And, as a disabled single father of a 5 year old son, I can definitely see some serious advantages in this product.
That being said, this device still makes me very uncomfortable. It worries me on many levels, too. I honestly can't decide if this would be a Good Thing<tm> or not.
There is one little niggle I have, too. It's $400 a pop and $35/mo for this. I can see people buying it for their young children and I can't shake the feeling that this is just exploiting the fears of parents to make a proffit.
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
A lot of folks are saying positive things about this because protects children against abduction.
This system offers a means for someone to totally track every movement of a child. While the parent is intended to receive the data, what prevents someone else from hijacking this data? Wouldn't it become easier than for a potential abductor to observe the habits of the child and choose a time when the band was known to be off?
Let's say that an abductor abducts a child with one of these things. What's to stop him from just wrapping something around the device to block the signal?!? It surely wouldn't be too difficult.
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
> I have not yet met a parent who has NEVER lost sight of a child for a few seconds
Fair enough. You're a parent, you're out shopping, your kid suddenly disappears. Do you:
a) Call his/her name;
b) Find the nearest assistant and tell them you've lost your child;
c) Look for him/her, heading first towards the toy department;
d) Go find the nearest Internet cafe, log on, type in your account number, wait a few minutes for them to tell you that they can't locate the device because it's inside a large building...
Responsible parents wouldn't pick (d), even if their child did happen to be wearing one of these things. On top of which, I don't think the company would stay solvent very long if every parent who loses sight of their child for thirty seconds starts ringing them up demanding that they be found immediately. Unfortunately, I think the majority of parents who would buy these contraptions in the first place are the kind of people who would do exactly that.
The real use intended for this is locating children who have actually gone missing (i.e. who are feared abducted). In that scenario, I do not doubt for a minute that serious crimes could be prevented. But my personal feeling towards this company is one of revulsion - they are preying on the fears of parents for commercial gain.
Your child is hunreds of times more likely to die while crossing the street than be abducted and killed. So does that mean you're an irresponsible parent because you don't make your child wear luminous clothing and head-to-toe padding whenever they leave the house? Please.
</rant>
These sigs are more interesting tha
So, all that happens now, is that the kid *does* get abducted, and one of three things happens:
....
1. The abductor is an idiot and doesn't discover the 'watch'
2. The abductor manages to defeat the lock.
3. The abductor removes the kids hand *and* watch.
Either way, a determined abductor is not going to be concerned
gus
.. if only.
Having raised 2 kids of my own, I understand the paranoia that parents can go through. When they were about 3, they managed to let themselves out of the apartment (kids can be very resourceful). Of course we imagined the worst. A gadget like this would have helped us find them and eased our minds. Given the price, we would never have been able to afford it though. Living in the real world the worst wasn't what happened of course. We found them exploring the stair well a few floors up on the far side of the building. I see technology used for things like this (Young kids) as a non-issue. If you can afford it, and it gives you some piece of mind, then nothing is lost, and it sure a lot better than registering you kids fingerprints with police.
...that so many posts here are paranoiacs insisting that using this thing will make kids paranoid.
I don't understand what Michael thinks is wrong with this (other than the astronomical pricetag).
Using GPS to protect your children is a great idea. If your child is abducted, having a GPS on them would make it more likely that they can be located before anything happens, and makes it easier to prosecute the abductor. As a father, I can imagine the anguish parents whose children have been abducted must go through. It must be absolutely horrible to not know what happened to your child. Even in the worst case scenario where something bad does happen to the child, this technology would at least give the parents some small comfort by locating them quickly, instead of putting them through days, months, or years of anguish and worry.
Some people may argue that this is an invasion of privacy, but I don't see it that way. Does a 6 year old really have a right to go anywhere she wants without her parents knowing about it? Absolutely not. Certainly older kids (say teenagers) should be given a certain amount of privacy, but kids of that age could probably easily disable or cut off a GPS wristwatch. So, I really see no problem with this technology at all. Except that subscription price. Ouch.
How about understanding humor?
GPS receivers CAN (in theory) work indoors, despite what the usual handsets do.
> The Personal Location System incorporates
> enhanced GPS technology, which enables it to
> obtain location information indoors as well as
> outdoors.
(from the FAQ)
Having worked in the GPS handset industry previously I can tell you there are three methods to achieve this:
a) Receivers are getting better - more effective, steeper-edged filters and lower noise mixers means better SNR, so that you can pick up a weaker GPS signal. This is the usual claim of 'enhanced GPS' from Snaptrack etc. and I'm doubtful this has been employed.
b) If you let it be known to the receiver that you are remaining in the same place for a while then it will just increase the 'integration time'. Essentially the GPS signal received repeats every millisecond and you pick out the signal from the back ground noise by averaging chunks of 1ms. The longer you do the averaging, the more you lose the noise. This relies on the signal not changing (you must be stationery of the order of a couple of centimetres). But the theory goes that if you stay still for a few minutes, you can pick out them signals from inside a normal office building. I've never seen it done, but is certainly feasible. Maybe these guys have done it.
c) Cell phone location systems are widely available (e.g. Cambridge Positioning Systems) but only work in areas of high population (lots of base stations to triangulate from). Luckily this is exactly complementary to GPS which tends to work best away from buildings. Maybe cell phone location is also used here - but then they would have probably claimed that since it would be pretty novel.
The real danger with a device like this is parents believing that someone else is looking after their child and not watching them correctly. These things can be useful, in fact in some amusement parks you can rent them for the afternoon. It doesn't absolve the parent of their responsiblity to watch their kids. I can just see these parents crying on the 6:00 news "but we had the GPS device, we can't understand. We only let little Billy outside for 8 hours without watching him. We're going to sue the company."
I guess the question comes down to a cost/benefit analysis. Sounds cold doesn't it? But really, this seems like a company that is trying to make a profit on fear. Trotting out the Jamie Bulger case only helps them in the fear-mongering.
Let's look at what they're offering for a service and the average scenario where you'd need it. A lot of lost/wandering children occur in large busy places. They get turned around or distracted by something and then they can't see their parent in the sea of people surrounding them. (To get an idea, walk into the local department store, get on your knees and then try to spot someone, then try this at Christmas time.)
So, kind wanders off, gets lost. Parents rightfully panic. Turn on the old homing beacon. Interesting, GPS doesn't work too good in that three story department building does it?
So, the big question is, does the product that is being offerred actually work? Looking at their web site they're offering a web lookup and a 800 number that will allow them to "give you the nearest street address". Wow, they give you the address of the mall. THAT was worth the $400 up front plus $35/month.
So, all that money spent. You're a good parent. But would it have done anything to decrease that 5 minutes of complete terror?
BTW, I'll be joining the parenting crowd in a few months myself so I'll try to see how much my attitudes about things like this change.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Here's my 2 cents -- while I agree with the privacy advocates that there limits (at some point kid's old enough to take care of himself, deserving of privacy, etc), I also think that for younger kids this device is very useful. When I was two, I followed my grandfather's beagle into the woods when he turned his back for a second. I was gone all afternoon, and luckily was found before dark.
I now live on the same property. It backs up to a huge state forest and mountains, and I hope my son (coming up on his first birthday now) will someday enjoy the same hiking, exploring, climbing and wandering that I did growing up (/. will be for rainy days!). A device like this would make me feel a LOT more secure about letting him ramble solo. Looking back, I did a lot of stupid things when I was 8 or 10, playing soldiers and running & jumping from rock to rock, climbing too high by myself in trees, not watching out for snakes on sunny rocks, etc. It's easy for a kid to get hurt and immobilized, and when you're talking about a couple thousand acres, finding them is not easy. Hell, this is exactly the kind of device that serious climbers, hikers and backpackers wear on purpose for exactly that reason - they want to be found if they're injured!
I want my kid to grow up competent and able to handle himself outdoors, and to feel that I trust him to go out exploring on his own (at an appropriate age), but at the same time, if you can ameliorate some of the risk through technology, why not? It's not like this device is going to be permanently implanted; at some point, they'll outgrow it.
My wife and I are expecting our first child in about three months. It'll be a couple of years before we have to worry about the wandering problem, but I, for one, am willing to give this product a long, serious look when that time comes. In fact, I had talked (half-jokingly) with a friend of mine about building something similar a few years ago.
Why am I interested? It's not that I need to know where he'll be 24/7. It's not because I want to track him as a teenager. It's because children disappear just often enough that it's something I'll worry about in the back of my mind until the day he leaves for college. And a device like this is something that might help prevent that from happening. I really see it as something where, if I used it, it would be during the toddler years - when he could wander off on his own in a flash without thinking twice about it. I'm more worried about his getting lost than I am about someone snatching him, and the odds are much better that he'll get harmlessly lost. But it's still a nice way to let child's first watch increase his mom and dad's comfort level.
Start putting them in adult watches, and then I'll worry about privacy issues. When my child is old enough to be aware of privacy, it's time to give him a regular watch.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
...psychopathology, do you? Since most abusers don't choose their victims at random (more than 90 percent of victims know their attackers), this logic is badly flawed and is a good reason why this device is a bad idea, since it fosters a false sense of security.
Virg
Haven't read the article, but unless you are afraid of your kid being lost, wandering outdoors with no trees or buildings obscuring the line-of-sight necessary to track the satellites, I can't see this working.
If the kid is indoors, inside a car, or in dense foilage, the tracking device won't work.
You could solve this by applying a large antenna, but that would make it non-tamper-proof, since someone could just wreck the antenna.
So, why can't the abductor (who is overwhelmingly a non-custodial parent, other relative, or boyfriend/girlfriend[*]) just cut the thing off with a pair
of snippers?
Even if it's the classic melodrama of seedy pervert hanging around the mall looking for the random abductee, it's a case of 1) find person; 2) grab person; 3) snip off watch; 4) toss in garbage.
Meanwhile the idiotic parents, completely self-absorbed in their deluded state of irresponsibility, just think that Johnnie is taking an awfully long time at Sbarro's...
[*] in this situation the kidnapped has run away or eloped, and the parents attempt to stop it from happening by filing charges of kidnapping on the other party.
when i have kids they will be wearing this or something like this, when they get older i wont lock it on their arm but they still can use it or carry it around if they want the security
-- botsex is {grep;touch;strip;unzip;head;mount}
Given that most of the market for such gadgets comes from the oh-no-my-child-is-going-to-be-abducted-and-torture d-by-a-paedophile market, I'd say that the locking makes perfect sense.
Yes, but look at the facts. Parents are SO worried about strangers abducting their kids, but it would appear that parents and other adults they are in regular contact with are a FAR greater threat to kids than strangers are.
I don't have any stats to quote yet, but most of the time you read about a court case involving sexual abuse or abduction, it is a parent or trusted adult who is the culprit. THAT is the real tragedy.
We warn kids about strangers, we want to "street-proof" our kids, but the most dangerous people are the ones they know.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
This right here is a perfect example of why so many good kids go bad. You can't rule your house with an iron fist .. that sort of extreme is just as likely to result in rebellion as giving them 'too much' privacy.
A parent-child relationship should be built on trust. Just like a husband-wife relationship. Do you think it's a great idea to invest in a bunch of technology to constantly check up on your wife to make sure she remains faithful?
When I was a kid, if my parents had imposed this sort of restriction on me, it would have sent the clear message that they don't trust me one damn bit. Maybe other people would become submissive to this sort of thing, but I'd be more of the type to reflexively trust my parents as little as they trusted me.
Sure, you should know what your kid(s) is/are up to, and of course you have the right as the owner of the house to know what is going on under your roof. But to enforce things in this fashion is asking for disaster just as much as being a lazy, uncaring parent. There is no peace of mind in extremes. Building a trusting family is the only answer.
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
"if you are living with the parent then your[sic] subject to their rules."
As soon as you phrase the relationship that way, you've converted it into a confrontation. It's not that what you say is false, but that resting on it does a huge disservice to everyone involved. As other posters have already stated, the child gets a clear message that they are expected to do "the wrong thing". Some of them will translate that into "I am a bad kid." It does a disservice to the parents because they have to be on guard at all times now that they've put it up. It also puts up a wall between, not around, the members of the family.
This is true of any relationship. Overprotective boyfriends and girlfriends scare healthy lovers off. Overdefensive companies (how many stables did you use?) frustrate and drive off their best employees. Churches, clubs, and governments are all the same. Relationships built on mutal respect are FAR stronger and more effective than those built on fear or force. The age and genetic relationship of the individuals involved is of minor importance in the analysis.
Any parent who straps a GPS locator on a child over 10 has probably already failed to build the trust which should come naturally from being trustworthy and ever-present.
[Disclaimer: My parents didn't watch me closely, but I ran away to live with my (then 28yo) sister when I was 16 anyway. I'm 28 and have no children of my own yet. My view is clearly biased.]
...cannot do now because the ratio of sickos/idiots to normal has over tripled...
I doubt that this ratio has ever changed. But I do believe that our paranoia about sickos/idiots has probably tripled since the 70's.