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Using Cellphones to Track Your Kids
David Pogue at the New York Times wrote this week about a new, novel use for cellphones: tracking your children. Several new ventures, including ones from names like Disney, Verizon, and Sprint, will offer web-accessible locating services by pinpointing the G.P.S. signal in their commercial devices. There's also some discussion of child-specific services, like the 'Whereifone', which is more 'Star Trek communicator' than actual cell. From the article: "To pinpoint the phone's location, you call up the Web site, enter your password, click 'locate,' and presto: an icon appears on a map -- either a street map or actual satellite photo. In the photo view, you can zoom in enough to see individual buildings. These are existing satellite photos --you won't actually see your child standing there -- but this feature is still creepy and awesome. You can even watch 'bread crumbs' appear on the map as the phone moves around (cost: one talk-time minute apiece). That could be helpful if you're trying to assist someone lost on the road, or in the kinds of emergencies encountered primarily in your nightmares."
this kind of thing is horrible. how is a kid supposed to be a kid if they are continually being monitored by their parents? all i can think of is how bland and boring my own childhood would have been had i been burdened by such technology.
part of growing up is spending time away from ones parents, not being continually monitored by them.
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Yes I know the use of some vendors to use cock opposed to chicken is just asking for trouble.
"enter your password"
...yeah. So all that's standing between innocent children and the depraved preying on them is their parents ability to choose a strong password (or worse, the ability of the phone companies to do the same!)
For once, won't someone please think of the children and put a halt to these privacy invading schemes that are massively dangerous to the very children they're marketed to protect?
(I'll let someone else bring up the "once a generation of them have lived under constant surveillance like this, they won't fight it when the government implements the same for everyone all the time" slippery slope argument.)
That there every move should, will, and is being recorded. So that when they grow up, they can each have a GPS chip implanted into their arm and feel perfectly okay with it.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Telephone tracking has been introduced, like, 3 years ago in Lithuania. And hell, you probably never even heard of this country!
Boost Mobile has built in GPS systems in their current phones, and even have a game where you seek and locate friends with the same setup.
Now depending on the age of the kids, the whole "YRO" aspect is kinda dubious. Considering we live in an age where kids under 14 have cellular phones, is it really so wrong for parents to want to know where they are, and for that matter, is it really an issue of "rights"? Sure, if it's being used for tracking adults, then yes, it is. But not in keeping track of kids (as opposed to what, implanting chips/RFID chips in them? At the least, this is the least intrusive).
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
to track YOUR kids!
Just such a device may allow my wife and I to manage her intake of diseasèd cock; nevertheless: $0.50/ping is a good way to rack up frivolous, surveillant dollars.
jesus christ . maybe if you'd just raise your daughter right she'd make the guys use a condom, sleep with guys selectivly and wouldnt just let them stick their "diseased cocks" in her.
seriously, it sounds as if you're expecting your upcoming daughter to become a slut.
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This kind of service has been available for years with ordinary GSM phones, no embedded GPS system required. All of the major mobile phone networks (in the UK at least) offer commercial SMS location services, that will tell you the location and an error margin, you just have to know the phone number of the device, and supposedly have the consent of its owner. It may not be as accurate as a GPS device might be, with the accuracy ranging from a few hundred meters to a few kilometers depending on terrain, but then it doesnt require any special features like gps in the phone, which is a feature i havent heard of in this country yet.
L ocation_Based_Services
an example service gateway is this one, it gives plenty of info about range, pricing and restrictions. http://wiki.triangle-solutions.com/index.php/SMS_
Our daughters are becoming sexualized at an increasingly younger age; what used to be sex qua liberation is quickly becoming an enslaving self-prostitution.
You may notice an inconsistency: agitation about sex-crimes is coupled with sexualizing pre-teen-propaganda.
Now, we just need them to open the API so we can get a great multiplayer RTS going, a bit of 3d modeling and you can have your city as the battleground, and your friends the units, battle for control of the area!
...
Lil Charlie will swap over his sim card into his friends phone and leave his there... "Yes mum, I am having a sleepover at my friends house...see?" While he's have a lil liason with the opium den down the road.
No one is "sexualized." It's called education, something you should give to your daughter ASAP because you seem to have some problems with it.
I am afraid that the abuse of this new service will outweight its benefits.
How many good parents are out there, and how many bad? how many parents who forbid their children perfectly normal and reasonable things?
You know David Millar, the disputed champion of the most recent Tour de France? his father forbad him to do cycling, because he didn't want his son to be a cyclist. David had to sneak out at 1am in the morning to practise overnight.
A friend of mine grew up with awful parents; they wouldn't let him have any freedom, see his friends, have friends over, have girlfriends, etc. He was badly repressed. He managed to work around it as best he could, by doing things secretly. Now he'd be watched, permanently, and have absolutely no way whatsoever of having freedom.
Another friend of mine had a very violent father. He used to beat the crap out of her regularly. What would her fate now be if he could also now know exactly where she was at all times?
How would you feel, thinking back to when you grew up, if your parents always knew exactly where you were?
It's not even so much that you were going to do things which were "wrong" and now you can, but rather, you knew that you *could* and you chose not to. Now, you know that you CANNOT. That choice has been taken from you. You have no freedom.
It's ironic. We're so concerned about our own freedom from the State, but apparently we're entirely happy for our kids to have no freedom from *US*.
. . .now that I have a daughter on the way, however, I have to find clever ways of curtailing décadence with a light hand.
Dear Poor, Ignorant Bastard (my daughter is 26),
Your daughter is going to simply arrange for her cell be where you expect it to be while hooking up with her "diseased cock" using a prepaid disposable, thus all you will be doing is impossing a financial burden on her.
Although the experience of learning to run rings around you will have some real life value.
Have a nice parenthood.
KFG
What GPS signal? This is a funny misconception from movies; GPS receivers do not emit a signal.
I assume they use some other sort of uplink, SMS? Anyone knows? Is there a standard for this?
Or are they just calling it GPS but in reality they just use the ol'e standard lobe tracking?
(BTW, does the phone think the kid is lost forevar if the kid goes into some other kids house, a mall or a car, so the GPS receiver can't get a signal? Or do they enhance the phones with SirfIII chips that can withstand some rougher environments?)
To keep the cell switched off!
... kids who want to be tracked.
Any kid who doesn't want to be tracked has a number of options including:
(1) Turn the phone off.
(2) Leave the phone at home (one of my kids does this regularly when he's out of credit).
(3) Leave the phone somewhere harmless, eg at an approved-of friend's house, whilst off doing something less harmless.
Now, all these involve not having the phone with you, so the kid might also wish to:
(4) Get another phone for real-life use, which you don't tell your parents about.
Or, sometimes even cheaper, don't get a whole new phone:
(5) Get another SIM for real-life use, which you don't tell your parents about.
OK, so none of these work if the parent is phoning the child every five minutes and expecting them to actually answer - there's a limit to how often the child can "not hear" the ringtone, or claim that "I don't answer the phone whilst sitting on the loo", or whatever. But, as ever, such a family has people-issues to which a technological solution ain't gonna work anyway.
Light hand is the key composite; and I still haven't given up on pædagogy, I'm afraid.
(I'm sorry your daughter has HSV and HPV.)
Love, MI
The only consolation is that there will be countermeasures for the kids. For a fee, the kids could subscribe to a service that fakes their position in the system. If for some reasons the networks don't come out with such a service, one workaround could be to leave the phone with a friend and forward your calls to a secondary phone. Of course, any such scheme would require some financial resources on the part of the kid.
There's always www.phonetrace.org...
There are none so blind as . . . parents.
KFG
"Our daughters are becoming sexualized at an increasingly younger age;"
well for starters "our daughters" used to get married and have children at 13 years old if you read your history.
what used to be sex qua liberation is quickly becoming an enslaving self-prostitution.
all i can say is, no, i completely disagree. please provide some substance behind your claim.
"You may notice an inconsistency: agitation about sex-crimes is coupled with sexualizing pre-teen-propaganda."
i'm pretty sure peole have always been extremely concerned about sex crimes. plus i think you're spinning conspiracy theories here.
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This will lead to kids turning their cell phones off. So you cant reach them. Also, how bout tracking people that arent kids? Stalkers anyone? What if a pedohile tracks your kids?
Several things to consider here. Good old fashion word of mouth restricts the information to where your kids are to you.
Trust, build it up. But hey...trust is also a weakness...
You come over as so much of an asshole, initially I'd say you have to be religious, however on further investigation investigation it would appear you are a math geek which would infer intelligence. Perhaps you are one of the rogue intelligent people who actually vote Republican.
Fascinating.
sounds great!
Lets track the position of every child, im sure no-one else other than parents would find this useful (perverts) and that the windoze boxes hosting it will be perfectly secure!
... is watching?
If a kid doesn't want to be tracked, he won't be. Star Trek has only covered this about 12 times by now...if Security can simply ask the Computer where you are, take off your communicator and leave it wherever you're "supposed" to be (like confined to quarters). A kid may do one better by removing the battery.
Still, this is a disturbing trend. What good can come from it? Paranoid parents are paying extra for this technology to avoid potential troubles that are, let's face it, unlikely. Meanwhile, the kid gets so sick and tired of being interrogated about his every move that he decides to ditch his phone: thus robbing him of a real asset when a typical problem does occur (like car trouble in the middle of nowhere).
"Microsoft killed my company, I hold a personal grudge. I don't use Microsoft products and neither should you."-JWZ
Every other time a story about this service comes up, someone points out that pedophiles can use it to track your children too. Hooray for modern technology!
.evom ton seod gis eht
Brand new market springs to light, really, it's the latest fad to have a tiny tin foil hat on your cellphone.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
i-Kids = GSM phone + GPS
(but easy for kids' use)
It would have been nice if these
puppies were open spec'd, so that
- like Amateur Radio's APRS -
anyone could receive the GPS
location "blips" (ie, Lat/Long data)
ie, without needing to pay Vodaphone
for a specialized service.
Anybodu up for hacking this phone's
GPS data comms protocol, eg, to
free it from a single-source of
GSM service?
When your child goes missing, for whatever reason, you will be singing a different tune.
You're able to assist them, so you must be in contact with them. Therefore, you can call them and give them directions, as opposed to tracking them in this rather sinister fashion.
If, as a parent, you find you're rarely aware of where your child is, maybe you should start to question your relationship with them. As they're evidently unable to trust you with their whereabouts, following them around isn't going to help you get along, and will only make them bitter in the future.
The "lost child" scenario could be used to justify any level of surveillance. It automatically ensures parental support and, as most people are parents, this makes up a large proportion of the population. People should think about these kinds of things rationally, and not through such a knee-jerk, must-protect-my-young, decision. How much of your life would you allow to be videotaped for the sake of "ensuring" your kids' safety?
it's a trap...
This technology is already in use in Japan - my phone has it. It's in the form of a Java/Brew application on both phonesets. On the child's set, you enable it (off by default) and then on the parents phone they just open the app to find out where the child is. It works by a signal being sent to the child's phone, which then responds by sending back its current location using GPS. You can also set it so an alarm goes off on the parent's phone if the child leaves a certain designated area. Very young kids walk home from school alone at a very early age, so it can be pretty handy.
If you give a phone tracking device to your.....what? 10 year old? Then that will allow to do.....what precisely? Compare that with your 16-17-18 year old whose movements you will track and that will allow.....what again? Seems to me if you have a kid who refuses to callback or answer their phone you've lost either way. And if you want to use this as a passive device to track them in spite of their own behavior, well, let's just say I'm glad I don't have to sit down with your family at dinner.
See, let's just set aside the squishy implications of whether you think this is an ethical thing to do. That's your decision to make, not mine. Instead, as a practical matter, if your kid tells you they're at "A's" house and you doublecheck and discover they're not, then what do you do? And below a certain age if your kid is out of your sight and lying to you about it, then you have bigger problems than technology can solve, unless of course you plan on subjecting your kids to drug tests and lie detector tests the moment you drag them home. On the other hand, if your kid is almost 18, then the same behavior really says more about you as a parent and maybe your anal retentive, passive aggressive borderline paranoid martyr complex than it does about your kids.
Let's just say that as a parent of teenagers who routinely do not like to be interrupted when they are doing exactly what they told me they were going to do, that whether I can verify where they are at all times will just make them that much less eager to talk to me and answer their phone. As I've said many many times;
Sometimes the greatest revenge you can wreak on a control freak is to actually give them total control. It will piss them off and burn them out faster than resistance.
... absolutely definitively, that the enquirer on the web site really is the person authorised to know where this particular child is located?
What with all the insecurities, such as reporting key loggers, to which computer systems are prone I might have, in a moment of total madness, installed such a system for keeping tabs on my son, but would have never ever even dreamt of setting up this sort of thing on my daughter.
In the context of child protection this is technology gone totally mad.
Have the perps. of this horror never heard of the word 'TRUST'?
My life experience about trust is that it works two ways: If you don't trust people they very quickly become untrustworthy; and similarly, those who cannot trust others are themselves usually untrustworthy.
This gadget might be handy in a work context so that the office knew where itinerant service people are situated.
It saddens me that the product of the loins beneath a mind like this will some day be running around in my world. Hopefully your daughter will have some streak of willfulness or independence and defy your paranoid, degrading assumptions about her. Or perhaps she's lucky enough to have a good mother, though I don't see how one would be foolish enough to procreate with you. Please mod parent and his other posts down, they are egregiously off-topic and inflammatory.
When? You behave like children are disappearing left, right and center.
Children are most likely to be abused by someone they know: A neighbor, relative or parents. There are way more cases of domestic abuse then abductions.
Yes, there is a risk that something awful will happen to your child but it's stupid to live in fear.
Well written, Mr. Pogue. I am quite impressed with the turns of phrase.
He'll show her how to easily circumvent your surveilance, and after having his way with her, send her on to a life of daddy-hating slutitude!
Blar.
Oh what a boon it will be for sexual predators too... who can now hack into a system and track their prey.
The only assurance that information will not be abused is to not collect it or allow it to be collected in the first place. Just because something CAN be done doesn't necessarily mean it should be done. The crisis of the 21st century will be privacy vs safety, because they are absolutely diametrically opposed to each other.
Alas, the masses will keep on chanting "if you have nothing to hide"...
Actually, AC: I rebuke the false dichotomy of Republican/Democrat. The false dichotomy of Republican/Democrat is for those "thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."*
No, I vote Nationalist.
_____________
Thoreau, Walden, 1-E.
I'm just going on what I'm reading from you here, but... what the hell kind of traumatic incident happened to you to cause you to have such opinions? Get thee to a psychotherapist!
Sincerely,
AC-'cause-I-modded-in-this-thread
If you stash one of these phones behind the dash with a constant 12V supply to the charger, you can track your unwitting spouse. Combine that with your internet connected smart phone and you've got a portable homing device system without having to bother Q.
:)
Better make sure my wife doesn't find out about these things.
No, I vote Nationalist.
How fervent is your nationalism? "My nation is infallible" nationalist? or is it at least marginally more reasonable than this?
Reading these comments, you'd think these kids circumventing their GPS tracking are straight out of some orbiting Battle School (Ender's game ref!), and not the standard, mind-numbing public schools that most people subject their kids to. Never mind that _parents_ are being cast as folks with IQs lower than your standard Fox sitcom character's. I attribute this to many Slashdotters feeling that they were much smarter than their foolish parents about computers, so, obviously, said Slashdotters were much smarter about EVERYTHING.
Will a few kids be smart enough to circumvent this, and the parents too dumb to notice? Yes. Clearly, it is not a solution for every case. But most of these supposed circumvention techniques (leave phone somewhere else, turn it off, pay someone to answer it, whatever) rely on parents being completely stupid, and not having some sort of verification method. I'm not sure if I think the entire concept of GPS tracking your kids is great (I'd like them to be able to provide their positions with their own free will via a button push), but it's not nearly as worthless and bankrupt as some Slashdotters have been ranting.
It's disturbing as all hell to see the kind of parenting mantra that's being espoused on here: "you'll never be able to stop your kid from seeing the real world, so let them run wild at 13!" I guess it's a relief that your average Slashdotter probably won't ever have kids anyways.
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
>But, as ever, such a family has people-issues to
/.'s makeup slamming parents is fun,
>which a technological solution ain't gonna work anyway.
The "people-issues" may well be entirely those of
the child.
I know that given
but individuals do have temperments. Some kids are
just plain wild, with no fault of their parents.
What do you do then? Your best. You may have to take
measures that seem excessive to others - who are
lucky enough to have kids with easy temperments, or
who just don't care where their kids go or how they
behave. Tough. Unless you've been the one with
the responsibility over that child, unless you know
intimately that child's temperment, you are in no
position to judge.
Case in point: She was traveling here from Florida this past Thursday. She got off of I-10 near Beaumont, TX, and was having a very hard time getting back on (to be fair, she is well into her 70's). If she could have called us, and us being able to see where her GPS indicator was showing her to be, we could have coached her via her cellphone on how best to get back to the Interstate.
So yes, I think it's a grand idea. If a kid gets in a jam and need some help, I don't see any reason why not to get them this type of service. It depends, though, on the type of relationship that a kid has with his parents.
So, and I'm not trying to offend here as I am genuinely confused -- do you actually talk like this, or is this satire?
Perhaps life really is full of possibilities.
Seriously, though, are you a real person?
Perhaps life really is full of possibilities.
... the helmets, kneepads, and elbow pads. Might as well surround them in bubble wrap while we're at it.
Add a permanent carry-along douche too, since we're raising a nation of pussies.
[/end grinch]
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
What scares me more than the eagerness of the powers-that-be to use technology to further diminish our privacy is the willingness of the common man to use these same technologies to diminish our privacy of his own volition under the guise of love.
Perhaps life really is full of possibilities.
You must be new here. On this planet, I mean.
You do realize that cellphones can already be roughly / accurately pinpointed by the emergency services, right? You do realize that although they do this when you actually make a call, that as long as your phone is on and thus registers itself to the various cell towers, somewhere, some machine knows where you are, right?
The State (did you mean 'The Man' without saying 'The Man'?) can already track you. Leave your phone and credit cards at home, and by all means wear a disguise, take back alleys, etc. if you want it to be nigh-impossible for you to be tracked.
however, I have to find clever ways of curtailing décadence with a light hand.
and then Peter Paedophile cracks your account and uses it to track her so that he can insert his desease...
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
In Japan, this is used by parents to track CHILDREN, meaning elementary age kids. It's to make sure they haven't been kidnapped, or wandered off rather than coming straight home after school. It's absolutely not intended for spying on teenage kids, and the very thought that it could be reliably used that way is way too laughable for intelligent Slashdot folk to take seriously. They can just turn the feature off.
Or perhaps she's lucky enough to have a good mother
If so she is likely to be raised in a one parent family.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
because I refuse to buy a child a cell phone. Why should I spend $50 a month just so my kid can have an expensive toy that they will lose, break or have stolen? I finally succumbed to buying my 14 year old a cell phone. All of his friends have had them for years (so why does he need one, unless he is wandering off without his friends). It used to be easier to say no, because I didn't have or need a cell phone either. But then my silly company went and bought me one, so it became harder to tell my stepson he didn't need one. Still, I understand why he wants one at such a young age. I was an early adapter, too. I got my first cell phone at the age of only about 22. But after I got rid of that one, I didn't get another one until I was in my 30s.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
...TruePosition. I used to work there a few years ago. One of the managers in IT was a total dick (which is why I left) but the product of the company is pretty amazing stuff.
It's dangerous to assume that any web-based service is secure. As a parent, I'm really unhappy about the idea of random strangers being able to track my children at all times. I don't think the small amount of extra security I would feel from being able to track them myself is worth that kind of risk.
It is a woman's prerogative to change other people's minds.
I don't know; do I pass the Turing Test?
My little brother (little in the birth-order sense... he's 26 years old) has the worst sense of direction. Ever. After he got his driver's license, he routinely got horribly lost. As in, not even close to his intended destination.
The problem was, he was so lost and so clueless, he couldn't really explain to anybody where he actually was, or worse, he would think he was somewhere and be wrong. In-car GPS wasn't very common back then, and I doubt that would have helped anyway. If he couldn't figure out that a "Hospital" sign could be any hospital, not just one specific hospital (I'm driving by "XYZ Hospital" right now. Help!, but he'd really be by "ABC Hospital"), how is he going to properly enter his destination into a GPS unit?
Something like this would have been good for him. He could call home and say, "Help, I'm fucked." and somebody could see just where on the planet earth he was actually fucked, and unfuck him.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
There ain't no rebel like a person who grew up under the thumb of an authority figure!
Blar.
Another use of this technology would be tracking old farts who have a tendency to get lost. My mom is 80 years old -- I want this for her. It just needs to be combined with a simple phone with large buttons.
I love the blatant hypocrisy shown in the replies to date. The Slashdot Hivemind is always getting all wound up about how parents are responsible for their children, etc... etc... But when a tool that can be useful to that end is proposed... It's instantly the worst child rearing tool since the Iron Maiden.
This is a great way for parents to teach kids to be independent and learn on their own by second guessing their every move. Either that or they'll teach themselves how to wrap their phone in foil.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Freedom is great for adults, not for kids. As a parent, part of your job in raising kids is to keep them safe, and to keep them in line. A cell phone with GPS fits into my scheme of "Trust, but Verify" When the kid shows enough maturity, etc. to get a little more freedom, give them the benefit of the doubt, let them stay out later, let them stay over at a friends, but have something like this to verify they are where they SAY they are, if you are suspicious. You can't follow the kid around 24/7, and you would look like a nut to call the other parent's house every 30 minutes or so to make sure they are still in the house. (Believe me, there are other parents who, either through neglect, indifference, or whatever, let their kids and guests leave the house at all hours of the night during a sleepover) I have a GPS tracker on the car my daughter uses that you need to manually download the data, so it isn't real time, but it gives me where she drives, and what speeds she drives. We only use it to verify her story if she shows up late with some lame excuse, and was unavailable by cel phone for an extended time. Wait until you have a teen daughter, it is SCARY!!! The technology gives us the comfort level to give her MORE freedom, because we can check up on her if needed.
You just hear about it more these days. World-wide media just dredges these horror stories up from remote locales and brings them to you.
Blar.
There is one major hidden cost in these systems no parent realizes. The conditioning of your child to obey rules and never question continuous invasive surveilance, to bend over backwards and take it up the *** by the police state, and be conditioned never to stand up for their rights or freedom, but to be herded at will by command by anyone who presumes to be an authority figure. Whether this authority figure is a corrupt cop, a perverted school teacher, a gang leader, a shaggy haired band leader they look up to, a cult leader like Manson, their best friend with horrendous motives (most likely), a pimp, etc. You're basically training your kid to be a frightened scared timid trusting cow who follows, follows, follows, and obeys.
Public schools are horrendous for this. Indoctrination with the pledge of allegance, question / response type programming, regimentation, continuous testing and therefore continuous judging, on campus police force, metal detectors, barb wire, mandatory attendance, peer pressure, etc. From day one we are taught to obey... if we cry someone stuck a bottle in our mouth to shut us up. More than likely you have pounded this into your kid their entire life. Do what they are told. No you can't have that, because I said so. Sit down and be still. Do your homework. Eat your peas. And on and on and on. You've taught and trained your kid to obey every command given to them. Have you ever taught them to say "no"? Have you ever taught them to say "you do it!"? How about "go f* yourself?" How about how to physically fight? I imagine not. How do you think they are going to react when some bully tells them to give them your car, or their money, or to get in the car with them, or to go help them do some crime?
Eventually your kid is going to be on his own in the world no matter what with no supervision at all. And at the mercy of a viscious hustling world of corporate interests, spin, doublespeak, and out and out lies saturated in our media. You need to be teaching them basic skills... money management, how to get a job, how to cook, how to clean, how to avoid toxic products like softdrinks and junk food that will make them diabetic and fat, depressed, fatigued, and sick.
You can follow your kid around all you want with your GPS in the cellphone or car, and live with the false sense of security you're protecting your suburbanite kid. What happens however when they run into the streetwise black kid from the ghetto who's grown up taught by his ex-con dad how to hustle all his life, sell drugs, manilipulate people based on their wants, etc. You're sheltered kid is going to be like a fat loaf of bread and the ghetto crack kid is going to be like the knife.
Whoosh!
It's poetry with a beat behind it! And guns! They're like beatniks with automatic weapons.
I can see a nice new backyard industry springing up. Some enterprising children will tend other childrens phones for a small fee. While the child is out doing forbidden things his mobile will be in a safe zone on the move.
I'm not sure what it's called in english but there should exist a service where you can bounce your calls to another phone without the caller knowing. If this is available in the USA the parents will have a very hard time finding out that their kids are not the ones carrying around the GPS transmitters.
All she has to do is drive the car to the store to get picked up for a rendezvous. Unlike kids, there's not much you can do about that. Double points if the pick-up opint is at the hardware store!
You could use one of these phones as a low-cost "Lo-jack" device if you liked though. If you were so inclined, you could probably rig it up to a car alarm system to have it call you in an emergency.
I can't remember if it's the terrorists or the sex offenders winning at this point.
Reality.
KFG
http://slashdot.org/hardware/02/03/28/0432228.shtm l?tid=137
From the Old News dept...
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Seriously, why the hell would you even want that? And furthermore, don't these people know that GPS doesn't actually work in buildings, or near tall buildings, or in cars unless you've got an external antenna or a soft-top?
Well said.
While I don't have experience with teenagers yet (my kids are 5 and under), I do realize that kids will go through different phases, some of which present big risks. A parent has to do what it takes to get through the challenging or risky phases. At some point, most kids will grow out of whatever problems they are having. Obviously (I hope) though, a parent has to try to preserve as much mutual respect, trust, and love as possible.
I would like to bring up a specific set of parents which would be absolutely hellish with this kind of tech.
Evangelicals.
I grew up with one of my parents being evangelical and the other not really wanting to argue with her.
There is a particular oddity with this type of fundie. Unlike many other types of fundies, they believe that a big company's technology is never wrong.
This is the same type of person who quotes some marketing gab and then when questioned says something equivelent to "I think they know better than you do".
The same kind of person who warns someone to not fix say...a pair of glasses for chrissakes because one isn't "certified".
Now merge that with the fundamentalist mindset.
"Dr. James Dobson said young men being around women makes them crazed for sex and that they give birth to demon children! You are forbidden from seeing these harlots!"
Now...do we really want this kind of person to have this type of tech? And before a rebuttal is made of "they're too stupid to learn tech". No, they are not. Evangelicals and other fundies will learn it if it is to keep their widdle children "Safe", whether physically or safe morally however they define that.
This completely outweighs the benefits of this technology. To repeat what was said above. Shitty and insane parents happen more than kidnappings.
Happiness does not come from having much, but from being attached to little.
To activate it, you simply call your child and ask them where they are.
If parents are honest with themselves, the "invasive surveillance" is not for protecting angelic Johnny from rapists, murderers, and grizzly bears. It's for knowing the ecstasy dealers aren't his friends. People, kids included, make stupid decisions. I'll set and adjust boundaries for mine so they learn the "viscious, hustling world" is not rewarding or necessary.
Sure there's such a thing as overparenting. But underparenting is probably worse, for the child's success and society at large.
Your Brave New World of indoctrination has nothing to do with knowing where my kid is. I need to know because I pay the bills. Not because it gives me wealth and power. And I'm not some schmuck "presuming" to be an authority figure, I'm the real deal. It's important to teach the difference, because I'm more forgiving than the legal system.
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Prime UID Club
>>Perhaps you are one of the rogue intelligent people who actually vote Republican.
If intelligence is defined as being as in touch with reality, then the Republican party has all the intelligent people in America.
"You can even watch 'bread crumbs' appear on the map as the phone moves around (cost: one talk-time minute apiece)."
I don't know which is worse, the invasion of privacy or the insane prices these services will be sold at. Hmmm, maybe that's a good thing. Anyway, doesn't the damn phone already "check in" and report its location regularly anyway, without extra cost?
is being recorded
They aren't logging yet. That comes after this invasion of privacy is accepted fully... "Well, we couldn't locate her this time, but if we had just been logging her location the whole time, we would have known where she was in time to save her from a gruesome death at the hands of her pedophile kidnapper." Thennnn, they start logging. Expect some kind of "Megan's law" for mobile phone location logging. I thought they were going to push right into it with the traffic jam excuse, but it looks as though they'll go with the tried and true, "Please, think of the children!" bullshit after all.
Given that many cell phones out there already have GPS features built-in (for E911), why can't I just pop open my phone and get MY location via GPS? If I want to know where I am, I have to go buy a Garmin or similar GPS unit, which is a hundred bucks or more, and another gadget I have to carry around.
Good thing that's not the definition of intelligence.
Le français vous intéresse?
It tracks the location of your kids phone. This is an important distinction to make. Intentionally or unintentionally, kids (and adults too) forget things.
Heck, i could turn this to silent, hid it in a library bookshelf, and look like I've been studying for the past several hours, when in fact, I've been smoking in the boys room.
All this does is give a false sense of security to parents who are already too "busy" with their lives to watch their kids.
Look out honey cause I'm usin' technology
Ain't got time to make no apologies
Although it is possible to track, where your kid goes. Is it possible to get the data whenever you wish to see? I personally think, instead of being helpful tool for parents, it will become a worry tool, if they come to know the unexpected things about their kid.
With Regards, V Raimond
Especially if it can deliver an electroshock, remotely triggered or automatically activated if the transmitter is turned off. Also, a collar could be equipped with a camera that would tell me not only where the little bugger is, but what he/she is smoking and who he/she is screwing too. ;-)
Actually, AC: I rebuke the false dichotomy of Republican/Democrat....I vote Nationalist.
A racist then.
State Assembly Rep Marlin Schneider has submitted legislation to limit retention and release of cellphone location data, such that the cellcos would be required to purge records when no longer needed to complete calls or 911 locate, unless the customer opts in (which would seem to exempt the parental use.
Employers would be allowed to track only with disclosue, and only on paid time.
The proposal's currently waiting on the legislative reference Bureau to reconcile with pre-existing law.
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
You are probably one of the stupidest people ever to post on Slashdot. Please leave, forever.
Rubbish. Kids respond badly to bad parenting. Much of the time when you bring someone in who knows what they're doing, things settle down substantially. Virtually every exception I've ever seen has been due to either biological problems (manic depression, etc) or some kind of severe trauma inducing psychological issues that are beyond what can reasonably be handled in the home.
But most is bad parenting.
Hey - you can always just plop a GPS Tracking Device in your kid's car, too!