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Using Cellphones to Track Your Kids
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun Dec 24, 2006 05:32 AM
from the better-than-a-collar-i-guess dept.
from the better-than-a-collar-i-guess dept.
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."
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this is terrible (Score:5, Insightful)
part of growing up is spending time away from ones parents, not being continually monitored by them.
Re:this is terrible (Score:5, Informative)
Heck, one of my friend's kid even uses an ultrasonic ringtone so his teacher at school can't tell the phone is ringing. Apparently, it's based on the fact that adults can't hear high frequencies children can. Kids are clever and have always been. If they want to do something, they will, and no amount of technology you can graft on them will change that.
Parent
Re:this is terrible (Score:5, Insightful)
> shouldn't know about. Or let the battery drain, so they don't get blamed when they get home ("oops, I
> forgot to recharge it! sorry...").
Not if you parents are violent, physically or emotionally. You're a kid. You haven't grown up, you don't have experience, you're totally dependent on your parents in every way, you're scared to tell anyone what's going on, and you just don't know any better.
Roughly half the people I know, maybe somewhat more, had shit parents. I NEVER want to see such people having this sort of technological hold over their children.
It seems to me the benefits decent parents will derive from this technology is far, far outweighed by the harm and suffering that will be inflicted by it upon the kids who have awful parents.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
1. most phones can't reproduce the note. Oops. That's your $3 ringtone put to good use right there.
2. so what if the teacher can't hear it? Yay for the classroom, but why not just put the thing in buzz/vibrate mode then? Then the rest of the kids in the classroom won't be annoyed by the shrill tone either.
3. and even with that.. so now you know your phone got a new text message, or you're getting a call. Now what? You'd still have to answer it in some way, and if the teacher catches you the
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
That's an urban myth! Modern TV's don't make any such noise. I'm in my 40's and I haven't heard it for years!
Children have been raped and murdered forever. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
"enter your password" (Score:4, Insightful)
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.)
Re: (Score:2)
They don't want your child. they want a child , so the one wandering across the road right now will do fine. They don't need to look one up on the internet. (Assuming that these wild packs of child molesters are really roaming the streets in the numbers we're led to believe in the first place - I thought it was family members who were most likely to be guilty of those sorts of crimes)
Should we gouge out peoples eyes so they can't
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
As well as anyone else able to access this data. How well is the phone company going to vet their employees?
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?
Or even attempt a rea
Gotta teach them when they're young (Score:5, Insightful)
They already did this sort of thing (Score:3, Interesting)
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).
Re:They already did this sort of thing (Score:4, Insightful)
> 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).
What happens when the parents are abusive?
The kid goes to see a relative or a cop or a helper or whatever, to try and get help, to tell someone, and the parents will KNOW. And maybe beat the crap out of the kid for doing it.
Same problem with the State.
Say you do something or make a report which threatens a major industry. There's a LOT of money at stake. The State - or rather, a bit of it, maybe a branch which regulates this industry but has basically been compromised by that industry - starts doing things which are entirely unethical to try to suppress the report - perhaps discredit the author in whatever way they can. (Bit like with Lewinsky, where the Press Office deliberately and specifically lied about her and what happened and attempted to discredit her.)
They won't mind a bit getting hold of his position information and using it to track what he does, which journalists he visits, where his family is.
This technology is massively open to abuse, and humans are shit. It WILL be abused, and everyone who is in a position where they may be doing something which the State will object to will KNOW it will be abused, and it will flatly discourage them from doing what ought to be done.
Parent
I am using it... (Score:3, Insightful)
You dont even need GPS (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Opening the API? (Score:2)
This is evil (Score:4, Insightful)
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*.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Any kid could simply leave the phone in his/her bedroom and still sneak out the window while any surveillant parent using only this technology would only see the location of the phone instead of acting like actual parents and personally checking up on them once in a while.
There is a company called Digital Angel [digitalangelcorp.com] which is working on a product which is in ess
This will only track ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, technological solutions to non-technological problems just won't work as it is the wrong approach altogether. Let them fool themselves, I guess.
There are two reasons why this tracking does more bad than good. Firstly, the parent will just follow their kid only via technology, instead of talking to the kid, learning the kid to talk about what it's doing, keeping to its boundaries, etc.
Second
Re: (Score:2)
Using your option 5) get another SIM they could have another phone and forward calls from the tracked one to it. That way they can answer the calls and appear to be somewhere they are supposed to be at the same time.
Also I propose 6) hacking
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Grrrr!
That isn't capitalism! that's an ABSENCE of capitalism.
The phone market in the UK and elsewhere is sane and normal - but it's broken in the States.
Stop blaming the free market for a shit situation when the situation is as it is BECAUSE there ISN'T a free market.
Re: (Score:2)
Big Momma (Score:3, Funny)
Easy to Bypass (Score:2, Informative)
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 k
Re: (Score:2)
> 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.
Not if your parents are abusive and will beat the crap out of you for turning your phone off.
These are kids - they don't have the experience, strength of character, or economic indepen
Tin foil hat for your mobile phone (Score:2)
Australia's had i-Kids (locked to Vodaphone) (Score:2)
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?
Lost kids (Score:2, Insightful)
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 alon
What age? And What Benefit? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
How will the system know, ... (Score:2)
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
Criminals (Score:2)
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"...
Overestimating is worse than underestimating (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Hypocrisy at its finest (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:From Bachelor to Tyrant (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
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
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
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
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
KFG
My son will have fun with your daughter. (Score:2)
Then why the "preacher's daughter" stereotype? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I don't know; do I pass the Turing Test [wikipedia.org]?
Re: (Score:2)
I read once that laws in the US require cellular carriers to calculate handset position using the distance between the handset and three cellular base stations. I think the intention is to give positional information to emergency services. I know that a lot of emergency calls from mobile phones here in Australia often say something like oh there's a crash right in front of me, where you say? Oh about half way home,
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
More recently phones in the US have been required to incorporate a GPS receiver, possibly because such triangulation does not always work too well (especially with some US specific cellular systems). This information is available to the network, even if it is not accessi
Re: (Score:2)
Thing is, there's a lot of bad things which can happen to kids. Car accidents, illnesses, etc.
Child abuse is way, WAAAAAAAAAY down the list. It's extremely rare, both in absolute terms and relative terms.
If we're really concerned about the well-being of our kids and we wanted to reduce the chances of bad things happening to them, we should adopt rules like - you can't drive (too dangerous), cross roads as infreque
Re: (Score:2)
As has been mentioned earlier, there are numerous ways to get round this tracking feature, the easiest of which is to just throw the phone in the trash.
I've got nothing wrong with 'thinking of the children' but lets be honest with each other; this idea has nothing to do with post-abduction rescues.