Verizon to Launch Mobile 'Chaperone' Service

Billosaur writes "CNET is reporting that Verizon will soon be offering a service (branded "Chaperone") which will allow parents to keep track of their cell phone-carrying children. Following on the heels of a similar service started by Sprint in April, the system will allow parents 'to set up geographic limits and receive text alerts if their children, who also carry phones, go too far from home. The service also lets parents check where their offspring are via a map on their cell phone or computer.' Disney will purportedly be offering a similar service when it begins selling mobile phones sometime this summer. It's 10pm -- do you know where you child's cell phone is?"

Comments

It's 10pm...

[Anonymous Coward]

> It's 10pm -- do you know where you child's cell phone is?

Does someone else know where your child is?

Re:It's 10pm...

[elliotCarte]

Does someone else know where your child is?

Also, does your stalker know where YOU are? Someone could hide THEIR phone in your car or something and track YOU as well. They'd just need to pick the phone up later, which wouldn't be difficult to find!... Small world, huh? Fancy meeting you here... again... and again... and here... and there. Yes, indeed. It IS a VERY small world.

Steps for Workaround

[tekiegreg]

1) Tell parent you are going to a friends house...
2) At friend's house, tie Cellphone to family dog (make 'em think you're actually there and moving around)
3) ???
4) Profit!!!

Re:Steps for Workaround

[gfxguy]

Have your calls forwarded to your friend's phone. Unless he's being tracked, too... deperate kids might just chip in and buy some pay-as-you-go phone.

Re:Steps for Workaround

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

Scenario-- It is ten oclock. Your kid asks you if he could spend another hour at his friends house for whatever reason. Because of this system you know that he is there and not in the front yard of some keg party somewhere... so you let him hang out a little longer. What is so bad about this?

Re:Steps for Workaround

[fooDfighter]

Nothing, but if you can't trust your kids even a little I think underage drinking will be the least of your worries.

Moreover I don't expect that a generation raised using surveillance will be particularly upset by increased government surveillance in their adult years. Or maybe that's the whole point.

Re:Steps for Workaround

[mOdQuArK!]

It encourages your kid to figure out ways to lie to you without getting caught.

Everytime they are successful (and assuming that they are lucky enough to avoid any of the dire circumstances that you might have warned them about), it will confirm to them that parents are over-controlling morons who need to be bypassed at every opportunity to "have fun".

They will continue to push the envelope of what they can get away with until at some point they will get in over their head, and will not trust you (the over-controlling, untrusting moron parent) enough to come to you for help.

Re:Steps for Workaround

[Kadin2048]

Because of this system you know that he is there and not in the front yard of some keg party somewhere... so you let him hang out a little longer. What is so bad about this?

Because of this system, you believe that his phone is at his friend's house. You have no idea that the system is accurately reporting his position, or that the phone is actually in his possession. While you can probably safely assume that the position of the phone will be reported accurately, the latter is probably a bad assumption.

If you're going to not trust him as to his whereabouts in the first place (which is why you'd use the system), then there's no reason to assume he hasn't stashed the phone somewhere and is just forwarding calls through it. I could think of lots of ways to defeat this, and I'm sure I would have come up with at least a few of them when I was 12 or 13. Even if the system notifies you if a call is being forwarded, there are always ways around it (am I the only person who remembers acoustic couplers?).

What is so bad about this is the false sense of security that it gives you as a parent. Maybe not you personally -- I don't know you and therefore won't judge -- but I can think of a lot of people that would use something like this as an alternative to checking in on their kids. The end result, since it would be easily bypassed, is less supervision and not more, plus less parent/child interaction.

Re:Steps for Workaround

[JesseMcDonald]

I believe this kid-tracking service was previously (c. 2000) marketed to parents in Europe, then subsequently the ability to turn it off was marketed to the kids.

War is good for business. Selling to both sides, doubly so.

Re:Steps for Workaround

[MoneyT]

Yes, I do think that many parents are this stupid. Remember all the stupid kids you grew up with? The ones that were better at getting the girls than you were? They're parents now, and I assure you, they're no more intelligent now.

How pointless is that?

[raitchison]

Seriously, the kids will know this kind of watching is being done and will either turn off their phone or leave it behind (or ata friends house inside the "permitted area".

Then if the kids really get into trouble they won't have the option of calling for help.

Sounds like a great plan to me.

Re:How pointless is that?

[sidfaiwu]

Obviously this technology would fail for teenagers. I think the intended audiance is that of parents with younger kids.

This seems like a violation of privacy rights...

[Anonymous Coward]

but children have no rights. Oh well.

What did parents do before this?

[ajiva]

Seriously when I was growing up my parents never had any of this technology and yet they managed to keep me out of trouble. While I agree the world is a different place, and there are lots of new and different problems, it all boils down to the parents taking an active role in the child's life. Things like asking the kids how their day went, what sorts of issues they had, things that let the kid know that home is a safe place. Or how about
making time to have dinner together, or helping with the homework or the millions of other things families should do together.

Is this hard to do, hell yes. But nobody ever said life was easy, and in the long run spending time with your kids will be worth it. Remember it works both ways, when the parents are old and need someone to talk to, the children will be there.

Re:What did parents do before this?

[Billosaur]

Seriously when I was growing up my parents never had any of this technology and yet they managed to keep me out of trouble. While I agree the world is a different place, and there are lots of new and different problems, it all boils down to the parents taking an active role in the child's life. Things like asking the kids how their day went, what sorts of issues they had, things that let the kid know that home is a safe place. Or how about making time to have dinner together, or helping with the homework or the millions of other things families should do together.

But in this age of two parents working, those kinds of things don't happen anymore. I spend 12 hours out of my day commuting and working. I get maybe 4-5 hours of sleep a night; the rest of the time is spent trying to pay bills, fix the house, make dinner (occasionally), take children to events/activities, etc. There's precious little time enough to have a true family dinner let alone quality time where a family can be together and share ideas and exchange thoughts. Heck, it's hard enough just getting my kids to sit down for a meal, and they aren't even teenagers yet.

Maybe some would see this as a panacea or a substitute for poor parenting, but it might prove a boon to parents who can't be available as often as they'd like and still want to be able to watch their kids no matter where they are.

Re:What did parents do before this?

[TheDarkener]

Dual income households have become mandatory in most areas unless you're part of the relatively privileged few who can afford to have a spouse stay home and still maintain a roof over their heads and food on the table.

"Priviliged few"? Like people are 'chosen' to be priviliged.

Seriously. I don't have kids, so you won't listen to a word I say most likely, but I'll say it anyway:

YOU make your OWN life. Nobody TELLS you who to be or how to live. And if they do, you need to change that. You're in control of your life - not your wife/husband, not your kids. Get some guts and start making your own decisions. If you're living somewhere where it's necessary to fix your house and pay for your 12MPG SUV, then maybe you should relocate and find alternate means to travel.

Nobody is locking you into your lifestyle, you're just acting a scapegoat because it's easier to accept than to change.

Re:What did parents do before this?

[onkelonkel]

Our new neighbors moved into our white collar suburb, from a not too distant blue collar suburb. They went from owning, clear title, a big 4 bedroom house, to buying a much smaller house with a $250k mortgage. The wife couldn't stay home with the kids any more, and had to go back to work full time, the kids into afterschool day care and the husband switched shifts so he could be home when the kids got up.

I couldn't figure out why they would go through all this just to get into a neighborhood they could barely afford. Then the mom explained that at the school they moved away from, parent volunteers had to clean the kids playground every morning and pick up all the discarded needles and used condoms before the kids came out to play.

Sometimes it isn't about the SUV and the plasma TV.

Re:What did parents do before this?

[spun]

You don't get it. The median household income in the US was $43,318 in 2003. Half of all households make less than that. Many people in the US are barely scraping by with both parents working, often more than one job each. This is not their fault, either. They are not lazy, and not all of them are stupid. They are just unlucky. We have built a system that accepts this reality in exchange for the ability of a few to make outrageous amounts of money. This isn't about people making bad financial choices and whining about being forced into living beyond their means. This is about people having no choice but to live beyond their means, because their means are so small.

One of the major privileges of being a part of the dominant culture is that you never have to question your assumptions. People in the dominant culture assume that anyone can do what they did. People in subordinate and marginalized cultures know this is not true. They are forced by hard reality to question their assumptions. For instance, I'm guessing that you believe you got where you are through hard work and smart choices, and anyone in the US can do the same. Well, if you grew up poor, or a minority, or both, you hear the same thing. But reality shows you otherwise. Minorities and poor people see others like them working hard and making the smartest choices they can given their circumstances, yet still failing.

I know this flies in the face of the idea of individualism. It seems to imply that we have a responsiblity for the system we create and the effects that system has on others. It also implies that our choices impact more than just ourselves. Luckily, one of the other privileges of being a part of the dominant culture is that you can simply dismiss theories such as this. In fact your culture gives you an indoctrination and training in exactly how to dismiss them and how to make the less fortunate feel as if all their problems are their fault.

Re:What did parents do before this?

[hyfe]

But in this age of two parents working, those kinds of things don't happen anymore. I spend 12 hours out of my day commuting and working. I spend 12 hours out of my day commuting and working.

Come again? You are two people working; You don't need long work-days. You don't need jobs with good pay, you need jobs with adequate pay. Seriously, find regular 8-hour work, preferably close to where you live.

I mean, maybe you'll drop 20-30% in pay in the process, but you'll have time to actually enjoy life and actually meet your family.. and sleep occasionally :). Work is for getting for money you can spend on your freetime. Work is not your life.

.. and before you say this is easy for me to say; you are right, it is really easy. Just as easy as doing it. There's nothing holding you back besides you... and your own preconceived notions of having to compete for having the biggest salary, having the least time to enjoy said money and having wasted the money on the most amount of crap you can show to friends in order to impress them with how successfull and well-adjusted you are. Free your mind :)

Re:What did parents do before this?

[soft_guy]

Who forces you to live in New Jersey?

Re:What did parents do before this?

[Deagol]

You don't get it. The median household income in the US was $43,318 in 2003. Half of all households make less than that. Many people in the US are barely scraping by with both parents working, often more than one job each. This is not their fault, either. They are not lazy, and not all of them are stupid. They are just unlucky. We have built a system that accepts this reality in exchange for the ability of a few to make outrageous amounts of money. This isn't about people making bad financial choices and whining about being forced into living beyond their means. This is about people having no choice but to live beyond their means, because their means are so small.

I don't think you quite get it. How you do in life is usually more about your choices, rather than how you started out.

My family of 4 lives comfortably on a gross income of around $17k/yr. My yearly income peaked 2 years ago at about $53k/yr. I'm able to live the way I do now because I planned and made wise choices with my money. I've been in the post-college workforce for about 10 years now. I consider myself "retired" from the 9-to-5 grind. I'm 34 and work half-time from home.

No huge cash reserves anywhere -- in fact, my savings is pretty much nill right now. Just a modest bit of equity in some property I paid off a while ago when I was getting paid well, and low monthly financial commitments. I bought a $40k house in the "country" -- 75 miles from a large city where an average starter home costs $150k. I have a $275 home payment, a $320 auto payment, a couple of utilities, and the misc stuff required of the car (insurance, taxes, gas).

We did the two-income thing for a few years early in our marriage, and it just wasn't worth it. The extra work wardrobe to maintain, the extra driving, the dining out because we were both too tired to cook. The need for TV to de-compress due to all the stress. When you break it down, most two-income families, in fact, come out worse at the end of the month.

At the risk of being old-fashioned, if one of the parents stays home and actually makes food from scratch and does other productive things to save money by reducing consumption or creating consumables, you make out much better. Why? Because savings are tax free. That $15 dinner for 4 at McDonald's was really $20 if you count the gross income needed to buy it. Toss in a buck or two for the gas. Then there's the indirectly-related expenses, ones that allow for the 2nd job: daycare, the 2nd car (and insurance to go with), etc.. So that $15 McD's meal may, in reality, come out to $30.

Now, a similar dinner made at home from scratch (where practical), may cost $7 in materials and a hour of time. Say it comes out to $10 when you count the applicable factors (outlined above) of a single working family member.

Sure, I was "lucky" by getting to go to college and starting off on relatively secure footing in life. Many are not so lucky. However... I see many "poor" making simply dumb financial choises.

I had a poor(-ish) neighbor that I would verbally assault on a regular basis due to her dog getting off his leash and harassing our livestock. I said, "Go spend $10 and get a body harness -- he'll never get loose again." She repsonded indignantly, "You have the money?!?", implying she had no money to spare. Yet she had a huge wide-screen TV and stereo set up in her house, she had a Dish subscription, and her high-school daughter would yap all night on the front porch with her cell phone.

Drive down the "poorest" neighbourhoods in your town. Look at the people talking w/ cell phones on the porch/lawn, the fanicer-than-needed autos in the driveways, the cable/satellite installations, with big TVs in the living room. How many are smoking or drinking beer? Sure, this is a generalization, and some are better/worse than the average. But think what $100/month (cable, cell phone, plus cigarettes) could do to jumpstart a "poor" family if put into a simple savings acco

Really Smart

[Telvin_3d]

Great idea. Now, when your child is thinking about doing something less than smart, they will also intentionally NOT take their cell phone with them.

How to defeat it:

[Farrside]

1. Teen sets up Call Forwarding on their number, forwarding to a friend's non-tracked phone.
2. Teen LEAVES their tracked phone within set boundaries.
3. Teen goes where teen wants, able to intercept calls from the folks on the other phone.
4. Profit! Or at least an unlimited party region...

Who will think this will work?

[Transcendent]

Ways around it:

1) Turn off your cell phone.
2) Leave it somewhere.
3) Pay some kid to carry it around (making it look like you're still moving)
4) Hang out in tunnels.
5) Line pockets with tin foil.
6) Get better parents.

If the kid doesn't want their parents to know where they are... then the parent's won't know where they are. All the company is doing is marketing a product to paranoid and overly-protective parents.

However... that being said it does have some merits for emergency situations, knowing where to pick your kid up from, and it could be a fun project to map the paths of a group/herd of friends.

The thing is

[alnjmshntr]

this is not really for tracking your children, that's just the cover story. More likely be used for tracking spouses - without their knowledge, of course.

Re:Big Daddy

[timeOday]

"Oh don't worry, we're only monitoring where you go, not what you do when you get there. It's just traffic analysis, so it doesn't fall under the 4th Ammendment."

You read it here first.

Such hypocrisy

[Doches]

For years, I've found it astounding the amount of discrimination modern kids face. At school, their civil rights are limited; High school students are subject to what, if placed in any other context, would be blatantly illegal search and seizure. Federal law required that internet access at public high schools (and, for that matter, at public libraries) to be filtered for inappropriate content.

This is really no different. Many Americans were furious to discover that the NSA had recently obtained their cell phone records, yet how many EFF members will raise a complaint against this system? None. Why? Because it's OK to discriminate against kids & students.

Think about it. Afraid your kids will be negatively influenced by some content on the internet? Were you warped by exposure to foul language, racism, and pornography when you were in high school? I bet I know the answer to both of those questions, and I bet they're not the same.

Read around on http://www.peacefire.org/. Again, think about it.

Disclaimer: For what it's worth, I'm 20. It's been years since I endured any discimination because of my age.

Re:Such hypocrisy

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

Yeah, like when I was a kid and wanted to sleep over my friends house my bitch of a mom would speak with the other parent to make sure that it was okay. How fucking intrusive was that?

Re:Such hypocrisy

[AK Marc]

This is really no different. Many Americans were furious to discover that the NSA had recently obtained their cell phone records, yet how many EFF members will raise a complaint against this system? None. Why? Because it's OK to discriminate against kids & students.

I buy a cell phone. I track the cell phone I bought and pay the monthly fee on. Next you'll be telling me that using OnStar for directions makes me violate my own rights, since I shouldn't know where my car is. This isn't a problem regarding rights of students and such. This is an issue of trust between parents and their children, with technology used in a manner to verify the actions of the children.

Or do you think it an unconstitutional violation of privacy for a parent to call the school their children attend and see if they are actually showing up to class? Perhaps the evil parent goes as far as to talk to the parents of their children's friends. I'm sure that should be punishable by death for that invasion of privacy.

Disclaimer: For what it's worth, I'm 20. It's been years since I endured any discrimination because of my age.

When is the last time you were in a bar? How about renting a car? And just because you are oblivious about the obvious, I'll assume that you experience discrimination on a regular basis in your job and personal life that you just don't see. Disclaimer: I'm 32 and I *still* experience age discrimination (and my mother is in her 60s and still experiences age discrimination and has her whole life).

Re:Such hypocrisy

[TubeSteak]

Because it's OK to discriminate against kids & students.

It is.

For all intents and purposes anything from a viable fetus to [your state's semi-arbitrary age] are treated as quasi-property.

This status does not change until [your state's semi-arbitrary age] or a court says otherwise. This is why (in many states) 16 & 17 yr old runaways can spend a night in juvie before being given a police escort back to their parents, even if they do not want to go home.

If the State decides that your parents are unfit, guess what, you do not go free. You become a "ward". A ward of the state, of a relative, of a family friend, of a foster family... etc.

Minors are not treated equally by adults.
Minors are not treated equally by the justice system.
Heck, sometimes minors get more protection in the justice system & society.

In the end though, everything hinges around the assumption that minors are the legal equivalent of an adult with diminished mental capacity IE someone who has a mental disorder/retardation.

Minors are not little people. Until a certain level of brain maturation, there are non-trivial differences in the way decisions are made & consequences are weighed. The law gives them the benefit of the doubt by assuming they won't know any better and treats them as such.

Once you start assuming minors should know better, their behavior is no longer a failure of parenting, it is a failure of the child & the law will punish them accordingly.

Kids don't get equal treatment, because they don't get equal punishments.

The 2nd worst thing that can happen to a minor is they get tossed in jail until they are 18.
The #1 worst thing that can happen to a minor... is getting sentenced as an adult.

Who watches the watchers?

[Rob T Firefly]

For heaven's sake, think of the children!!!

For heaven's sake, don't think of the identical chips in your own phone!!!

Re:So what?

[pla]

It's a service, if you don't like it either don't get it or put your tinfoil hat on the phone!

Some of us - Even adults for a good many years now - Believe that kids have some right to privacy. Personal experience demonstrated to me, at least, that the more controlling someone's parents acted, the worse that person turned out. You can let them know that they can always turn to you for help, but you can't actually do their thinking for them.

Therefore, you can either have them learn to think while still safely under your wing, or you can have them turn into human Spuds McKenzie impersonators their first year of college. You get to choose the "when", not the "if".


I for one would probably use this, at least a little.

Then you, for one, will someday understand the meaning of "false sense of security", when your merry little tracking device tells you Jimmy hasn't left the neighborhood, when he actually left the phone with a friend and has gone to a rave in another state.


Also useful in emergencies of course.

Gee, if only Jimmy hadn't left his phone with a friend, he could call when an emergency arises. Hope he makes the best of "ass, grass, or ass", eh?

It depends on their purposes

[MarkusQ]

whether it would be accurate enough for their purposes is unknown to me as well.

For example, if they want to know what room you're in at the Budget-99 Motel, probably not.

But if they want to

• Produce "proof" that you've done something naughty because you were in a neighborhood where "naughty" is just one of many fine services they offer, in order to blackmail you
• Drop a half ton of explosives on you, to kill you and anyone else who might be near you
• Provide "credible intelligence" that you agree with / are working with someone because you were in the same large building as they were, and use it as an excuse to seize your assets
• Etc.

...then the resolution should be more than sufficient. (And before anyone cries that they would never do these sorts of things, they already do them. They just haven't gotten around to doing them to white US taxpayers. Yet.)

--MarkusQ

Re:It depends on their purposes

[mpe]

...then the resolution should be more than sufficient. (And before anyone cries that they would never do these sorts of things, they already do them. They just haven't gotten around to doing them to white US taxpayers. Yet.)

How would you know? Blackmail is most sucessful when it goes unreported. If the blackmailer is some shadowy arm of government or the police who are you going to report it to?

Re:You make a good point, but...

[ShadowBlasko]

Sure, tell that to all the parents that have had kids abducted, raped and molested, and then murdered and left in some field somewhere.

You must not have children, and if you do I hope you live in a safe area because you are the parent letting the kids run around and after a couple hours realizing they're gone and phoning your neighbors and going "uh, is Johnney over there?"

Trust and relax. Please, get a frigging clue..

Yep, trust and relax.

Hey parents of kids who have had bad things happen, Newsflash for you: Bad things happen. Sometimes for no reason. You can teach your kids to deal, or you can end your life as it is...and become their 24/7 caretaker for the rest of their lives. But DO NOT EXPECT US TO DO IT FOR YOU, or put up with your poor parenting skills because you made their world "dangerproof".

"Hey, is the little one over there?" is how we grew up. We lived. Most of the kids will you know.

I will not tie my children to electronic leashes now, lest they become accustomed to it...and refuse to fight it, or even be alarmed by it in the future.

Screw "It's for the children" Give them back real playgrounds... real toys, real punishment for injuring others or acting out.

Give them real responsibility, and REAL consequences as they grow. Teach them how to learn from the enviroment, and stop protecting them from everything.

I grew up in 2 places. One an industrial city, with pretty bad crime...and then on a farm during part of the time.

And yes, I have a child, and she knows better in most cases than to do stupid things.

Yours will probably be killed the first time they walk down a sidewalk because you were not holding their hand.

/Come home when the streetlights come on, or call and tell us why you are late
//Dont talk to strangers.
///Shut the gate, and don't piss off the bull.
////You break it... you make it right again.

Re:This seems like a violation of privacy rights..

[Chris Burke]

What I find amusing is that a lot of emperors of China, etc, in centuries past were 13 years old.

Don't consider this as implying even the remotest knowledge of Chinese history, but were any of these 13-year-old emperors actually running the empire vs simply being crowned while adult aides ran the show?

Somehow, recently, we decided an individual is too stupid to think for themselves until they turn 18.

No, not true. 18 is not the age at which we believe you are no longer too stupid to take care of yourself.

18 is the age at which we as a society stop caring if you aren't.

I strongly disagree with a lot of the blatant abuses of children done by schools; I'm just pointing out that it is wrong to view it as "under 18 is incapable of being independent, over 18 is not". It's just the legal boundary at which societal protections/restrictions are lifted regardless of the consequences.

maybe the "AGE" isn't the problem

[DM9290]

The problem in this "age" isn't a lack of time. It is that too many people accept it as entirely normal that you should have "precious little time enough to have a true family dinner let alone quality time where a family can be together and share ideas and exchange thoughts."

We should not be finding ways to make slavery more convenient. We should demand the right to have the opportunity to raise our children PROPERLY OURSELVES.
I wont even get into the moral issue of whether or not a parent even has any right to force their child to carry a homing device.

Simple

[aepervius]

It is as bad as having a permanent leash. I dunno for you, but having such a leash on me around my teen would have pushed me to rebellion (or rather a head on conflict), defiance toward my parents, and even complete and uter distrust. After all why should i trust somebody which do not trust me a bit. Trust is to be shared and exchanged. it ain't a one sided issue (unless you are waaaay naive). Worst case scenario if you are a leash for your whole teenage, you do not get to experience by yourself , and even mature. Making yourself unfit for society. maybe you think i am exagerating, but I know of two of such people. And it is quite sad....