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Police Chief Teaches Parents To Keylog Kids
Hugh Pickens writes writes "LiveScience reports that James Batelli, the police chief of Mahwah, NJ, and his detectives conduct seminars that teach parents how to outfit a computer with keystroke logging software, giving them access to the full spectrum of their kids' online activities. Batelli explains that kids put themselves in potentially dangerous situations online every day, especially on Facebook, where they run the risk of coming into contact with child predators who troll the social networking site. 'When it comes down to safety and welfare of your child, I don't think any parent would sacrifice anything to make sure nothing happens to their children,' he says."
I spent most of my free time for a big chunk of my childhood from about age 8 to 12 down at the local river /stream building damns and rafts with some of the neighbourhood kids about a mile from home.
when going out the door I'd call out "going out for a few hours, if not back avenge death."
In that time I never put myself in any more danger than I did climbing trees in my parents garden. Some danger but no more than the norm.
My parents had a fair idea of roughly where I was and had instilled in me the basics of not killing myself.
When we got an internet connection when I was 12 or 13 they instilled the basics of "don't give out your details online, don't give out your location online" which is really really really easy to follow if you're not an unusually thick child.
being a 13 year old boy I looked at quite a lot of pornography, went on a lot of forums and a lot of chat rooms but not once did I ever get approached by any kind of child predator or anyone trying to dig my location/details out of me.
the fear of child predators online is wildly over the top.
Your children are vastly more likely to run into them in real life than online and it's almost trivial to stay safe.