Slashdot Mirror
Swedish Daycare Tracks Kids With GPS Devices
An anonymous reader writes "A daycare center in Sweden is testing a new system for that will prevent missing children by placing GPS tracking devices on kids while they are outside of the confines of the nursery walls. The transmitters will report to a synced mobile phone, alarming teachers if a child moves out of a certain distance. The tracking devices clip easily to reflective vests that the children of the Malmoe daycare wear when outside of the school."
Is a real problem for Swedish daycares? How many Swedish children go missing from daycare every year? Wouldn't it be more cost effective to, you know, hire attentive teachers to watch the kids in the first place so they don't escape?
Tea and kung-fu. Life is good. Rising Phoenix
There are no swedes in malmoe
GPS is going a little far
Because monitoring every move of a kid can not backfire in any conceivable way. Right...
Isn't this whole tracking people thing going a bit too far already?
... I had a dog tag. So if found, returning to parents would be easy. It did get returned, found in a bush.
Personally I'm not against using technology for this. It does bring risks, and those must be dealt with properly. For example, like you can already "wardrive" around for wireless CCTV cams broadcasting their picture around, one could perhaps hijack these devices. The usual assumption is that this security thing has been taken care of properly, it's on the market, innit? But that usually isn't true at all, and very few people bother to look into it. After that you get into the usual hyped "IT security" culture of fear that isn't helping much.
We're also descending into a culture of overzealous security, like how every kid now wears eyesearing yellow or awful orange jackets "when outside". Wouldn't be surprised if we'll find that 20 years down the road they've developed deficiencies like not being able to timely spot moving objects on the road unless clad in hi-glow colours like that. Yes, I'm speculating, but that's not the point. The point is that you can definitely overdo this "security" thing, and heck it might cause the adults on overwatch to grow lazy and not spot it should kids ditch the jacket and bugger off.
And, of course, they'll have to grow up sometime. This "security fears" thinking might impair and impede grownups letting go and allowing the kids to become responsible adults themselves. That's the real, long-term danger of the "think of the childrun" mantra, and it's a risk here, too. Have they thought about that? Thought not.
Now you can finally know who is the fastest around the playground tricycle track!
It's not just one preschool, but over a hundred, and it's been going on for at least a couple of years. This is just one school that's testing it. The Data Inspection Board (Datainspektionen) is investigating whether it complies with Swedish privacy laws.
The general reaction to this among the Swedish public (as I gather from papers and other forums) is that the real problem is that there are too few teachers per child in daycare, and many don't like it, although some do see it somewhat safer than just relying on teachers counting the kids.
"Stop failing the Turing test!" -- Dilbert
Do the devices unclip easily?
When you're building any sort of security system the very first thing you need to do is decide what your threat model is. Then when you think about a solution you need to assess it against that model to see how it performs. If the threat here is kidnapping, the solution is useless since the bad guys will remove the tag. This solution is only ever going to help against "wandering" kids, but if the teachers think that the kids can't wander off then they are likely to pay less attention, which is means the kids will be at greater risk of injury from all sort of other things that the teachers would have spotted. The system almost certainly puts kids at greater risk than before.
If intelligent life is too complex to evolve on its own, who designed God?
How hard is it to take the gps off the kid
Take off the clip.
Saw this on the news a day or two ago.
It's worth noting that this daycare is a kind of all-weather-daycare, ie. outside activities the entire day, every day. Keeping track of kids in the forrest is not the same as regular daycare. The GPS beeps and warns when a kid goes outside the geo fence, and apparently the teachers felt that it was a second layer of security besides constantly counting kids, wich is what they are doing atm.
It's not the threat model, it's the business model that drives it. Parents are nervous people: the most precious thing in the world is their child. People generally overrate the threat of serious crime/ abduction. So if you can announce that your kindergarten not only has lots of lovely high trained staff *but also* shiny technology to protect the precious children, then you might get more parents sending their children to your kindergarten rather than the one down the road.
For the kindergarten it is a cost-benefit analysis and they've decided spending some money on tech will bring in more kids which will make more money.
From Aliens... "Man their all around us but I don't see them! We're surrounded!!" Marines then think to look up. Children with acid for drool start dropping from the ceiling and chasing the daycare marines.
Beware of those who profit off the docile and persecute the unbelievers.
I work for Whistler Blackcomb ski resort in Whistler, British Columbia. We've been using a GPS system to track kids in Ski School since 2009. I don't work in Ski School myself, but this is a massive resort and its incredibly easy for experienced riders to get seperated from there group. So as an instructor I imagine that despite your best efforts to keep your group together, if a student (kids as young as 5) got seperated from the group being able to call into dispatch and get a location would be a pretty huge advantage.
http://www.flaik.com/
The system is not in anyway meant to replace teachers or aids, but to simply enhance their watchful eyes and increase safety. Although it cannot prevent a child from running off, it can provide an alert to chaperones, who are outnumbered by their students.
I am the last person to defend GPS technology, or any of this other Orwellian bullshit that seems to be the norm, but this is a non-story loaded with buzzwords that the submitter knew would immediately rile us up (it was enough to get me to RTFA, at least...). The technology is being used to supplement the daycare staff's supervision, and alert them early on when a child takes off. This clip-on is not going to prevent the child from intentionally running off, and an abductor will just remove it (if he's not an idiot as some are). However, if the child wanders off -- which believe me it happens all the time -- they can find him/her more quickly and not risk another child getting lost in the time spend looking for the first one.
Looking after maybe 1 or 2 children and this is going to happen sometimes. Looking after several dozen and this kind of solution seems practical. It's not like they're implanting something in the children to monitor their every move at home or initiate them into our totalitarian surveillance state of fear or what have you. Yes it has controversies (what is the GPS company going to do with the data? how hard would it be for some predator to intercept the data stream?), but not on the scale that the submitter has everyone worried about. Congratulations, you all have been trolled.
The article link is to a scraper site that runs most of the major ad networks, from Amazon to DoubleClick to Fox. Slashdot's "editors" have been had. Again.
The article was scraped from Physorg, which scraped it from Google News, which obtained it from Agence France-Presse.
This is a commercial product called "ChildChecker", from Purple Scout.
I've thought about tracking kids before and I've always wondered if such a system exists on the market. I don't have kids but I've been responsible for my niece at times. When she's out playing with her friends I sometimes worry that something might've happened to her or maybe she has wandered off too far. I'd be interested to know where they got such a system (preferably at a reasonable price).
On a side note, some guy came by the house the other day looking for his little sister. I reckon he could've used this system.
WTF? WHY reflective vests?? That makes no sense. Is it really that dark in Sweden due to its longitude that kids need reflective vests?? I assume they only have school/daycare during the day....
hmmm
but not on the scale that the submitter has everyone worried about. Congratulations, you all have been trolled.
Yeah, TFS chose the wrong article to link to this week. He wanted the one about Rhode Island.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
From now Swedish kids need to buy portbale gps jammers