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Watching Kids Via Mobile Phone
Joe the Lesser writes "This BBC article says how parents could soon keep a much closer eye on what children are up to on their way to and from school thanks to a mobile monitoring system. It will send text alerts to their mobile phone if the child deviates too far from that route or takes too long getting there."
Like this won't be hard to fool. Give your phone to a friend that *is* going to the school event. Or any number of a million different ways. Kids are very innovative.
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Big Mother is watching you...
The expression is "I could NOT care less." Think about it.
To keep them from deviating too close to the refrigerator? Sign me up!
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
A.G. John Ashcroft requires all citizens to carry mobile monitoring system. "Stop whining, be patriotic and recognize that this is for your own good. Now bend over."
It's a very small step from branding kids with these tracking units to implanting tracking units in every citizen. Though such a move would no doubt improve the ability of the police to track down criminals, I worry that it could be used in such a way to discriminate against certain groups.
This is a bad usage of this kind of technology.
I have been pwned because my
Was world war II fought so that we could enjoy the freedoms we don't want our children to?
Like the freedom to get snatched while walking to school? As with any information utensil, it's only as invasive as you make it. Something like this appeals to me as a father of a young daughter. I wouldn't use it to track where she's going, only to alert me if something "went wrong". What they fought for in WWII is to allow me the freedom to utilize this tool if I think it necessary.
"Some good parenting = trust ! facist paranoia."
... leaving your phone at home, or turning your phone off. Now perhaps people will say that since they are kids, and most kids are irresponsible, this is a good thing to do. However:
I never had this problem with my parents. They always trusted me, I'm pleased to say, however, I'm not here to discuss me. There are a million ways to get around this, such as
"Rules are meant to be broken"
-Some wise soul
I take for example spy software that my best friend's mother put on his computer. He wasn't computer savvy enough to bypass it, however, if I had had such software on my computer:
1. I would hate my parents, and feel resentful towards them.
2. I would do my best to bypass this with things that are available here.
Don't people realize that spying on your kids will only make them want to break the rules? If I knew that my parents were the type that would spy on me while I'm at school, then I would refuse to have a cell phone.
This seems to me to be something for overly paranoid and protective parents that think they can't trust their kids, and need to know at what second of the day their kids are doing anything.
-Dae
"Alle reden vom wetter. Wir nicht." - SDS Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund.
j00 4r3 3n73r1ng l337 w0r1d.
They have similar devices already. Usually they are attached to the ankles of Inmates who are under house confinement. You want your children to grow up in fear, strap one of these phones to them and teach your children to be afraid of the consequences of deviating from the defined path. Why not proactively teach them the right way to conduct themselves through positive reinforcement rather than by making them paranoid?
An average one mile walk will have around 10 checkpoints but the parent can have fewer if they wish.
Maybe by the time my children get around to having children we'll have mobile phones that can completely rob our children of free will. Hell, since we're already starting to design them from birth maybe phone triggered on(wake)/off(sleep) switches as well. Anything to keep us from actually having to waste our precious time or assume any sort of responsibility for our kids - that's what technology and the government are for!
...about these things !
I can just imagine, "Honey, stop by the grovery store, and the cleaners, and gas station, oh, and I'll be monitoring your progress so don't get 'lost' on the way..."
[shivvvvvers]
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
Presumably, the reason parents aren't able to maintain a close trust-building connection to their kids its that they are too busy.
Yet...they have time to program their Sprint "Orwell's Friends and family" plan and change the parameters every time their kid goes to the mall.
<free advice> Invest the time in your kids rather than their phones! </free advice>
(sig on loan to Smithsonian)
Hush, my baby. Baby, don't you cry.
Momma's gonna make all of your nightmares come true.
Momma's gonna put all of her fears into you.
Momma's gonna keep you right here under her wing.
She won't let you fly, but she might let you sing.
What we do to our kids, they will eventually turn around and do it to us.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
I know that legally colonial serfs had more rights than I do as a minor in the USA, but I wouldn't take shit like this.
This is just begging for waterproof-testing, dogbiteproof-testing, bullyproof-testing, backingcaroverproof-testing, and fireproof-testing. I can understand the acceptability for much younger children, but by the time we get a single friend with a driver's license the "leash" idea is dead in the water.
You celebrate that the government doesn't have the right to put a radio collar on you, yet you jump at the oppurtunity to put one on your own child!
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I would hardly equate liberating Europe after a sneak attack by the Japanese with parents wanting to know where their kids are. Or perhaps you think child accountability and genocide are about the same thing.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
Why not just attatch a GPS tracking system into them or something? Then when your daughter turns 16 and you're worried about young Billy going to second base with her you can make sure they really are going to the library and not MakeOut-Point. Maybe it can set off a proximity alert if his hands get to close to her bra?
;)
Remember, folks, Big Brother begins at home
Fuzzy Knights: New RPG Strips Tuesday and Friday!:
http://www.fuzzyknights.com
if they stray to far away from their destination in their car, parents send a text message and child plows into oncoming car while reading thier parents message
There's no "I" in Linux.. err..
Oppression always shows its strongest form on children. There is an enormous amount of power in the hands of the parents.
Parents do things to children that would be unconscionable on ordinary citizens, or even the worst criminals.
Think about it. Think of the uproar that would occur if the government:
- Drugged undesirables with adult 'ritalin'.
- Tracked our movements to make sure we were in the right place at the right time.
- Removed the right to free speech like they do at schools. (even though the supreme court ruled that the right to free speech did not end when students and teachers entered the school doors)
Just something to think about.
Eventually, the monitoring system will be combined with GPS data so that parents can track the location of their precious children at all times.
This leads to some interesting possibilities for teenage pranksters. Imagine the look on Mom's and Dad's faces when, just before leaving on his three-day camping trip, little Johnny sends his cellphone to China by FedEx.
I am certain that no one, not even the cellular services, will use this to their advantage...
::walking downtown::
::Text message beeps::
Two years later...
I open it and it says,
"Why not try a tasty burger from 'Flinging Freddy's' only 2 blocks away."
Call my cynical,
--Joey
I'm not suggesting a legal remedy, nor am I saying that parenting should be restricted by the government. I am saying that placing such restrictions on children is a bad idea and is rarely in their best interest.
I care because I read George Orwell's 1984, and I saw that as a possible future.
No one gives a shit about parent and child relationships so long as they aren't physically or sexually abusive. In 15 months, is it likely that I won't give a shit either? Do any of us care about the plight of other human beings that we can't directly relate to?
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
WARNING: Timmy is leaving the sceduled path deserters will be shot! there is a viable alternative for this device. actualy WALKING WITH your child to school. but of course if thats too much you can have your robot drug your child and have him shipped to school via fed ex.
It's probbly rights online because someone ALWAYS complains about what topic it's under, and also there is no "Parenting" topic here like that other site might have...
Because everyone knows there's no difference between kids and criminals. Or is that kids and property?
Bumper sticker: My junenile delinquent is screwing your honor roll student.
This American study seems to suggest that a) abductions by strangers are rare, and b) teenagers are much more likely to be abducted than younger children.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Picture a child, who...
Was this you when you were young? Would you really be a better person if you had done these things? Would you be happier? My vote is NO, as I spent all of high school doing most of these things and was ready to kill myself freshman year of college, when I was given an ID card, a room key and told to fend for myself.
My mind drifts to Jonbenet Ramsey as I wonder why American parents have such sterilized, plastic-molded ideals for their children.
We live in a time where our civil liberties are in great peril, and it seems that so very few people seem to care (present company excepted, of course). Are we raising a generation of kids that have been so tightly supervised by parents that they see nothing amiss when government takes over the same supervisory role as they mature to adulthood? Sometimes I wonder...
You realized you shouldn't because you were given the chance to come to that decision like a human, not tethered to your parents 24/7.
Trust works both ways. Parents who subject their children to this kind of treatment show that they are the ones who have problems with trust.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
They seem unbothered by monitoring. They just assume that everything is recorded somewhere, and that's the way things work. They'd like to be able to track their friends via their cellphones. They spend a lot of time updating each other on where they are, and think it would be easier if they didn't have to call to ask.
This gives you a sense of where things are going. Location as a public record.