Using Cellphones to Track Your Kids 209
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 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.
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.
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I hate it.
I'm 30, and you're goddamn right I can hear it.
It sounds like that awful whine the TV makes.
Why on earth would anybody who is capable of hearing it want to hear it?
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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
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The tones are available for free from the internet. I would think you could just transfer it over on a good phone.
Vibrate mode can still make audible noise, and with some phones, situations, you can't tell it is there.
You can answer text messages silently, and even calls can be answered more discretely than a ring.
The only real problem with it is that many adults can hear it.
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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!
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How about just pretending your parents actually care about you and want to keep you safe? Sure these devices can be used to follow your children around and keep track of their every move. But you know, if you have open relationship with your kids you won't have to spy on them. I had just such a relationship with mine. I didn't have a curfew or a out of bounds limit ether. All I had to do was give them a reasonble idea of where I was and who I was with. They trusted me to do the right thing.
Weather
Children have been raped and murdered forever. (Score:3, Insightful)
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That to, but children where much safer in the '50-'70 than in the '80 and '90's. Back then people in communities watched out for each others children. There was a civil responsibility back then that you don't find today. It used to be when someone tried to snatch a child or did; the whole community would be up and arms.
Now no one really gives a shit. Like the case of a child that was snatched a few years ago around here. It took the cops a week to find someone who had seen the whole thing. She just
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also, i might add that allot of parents would not be so benevolent as you with this service and would use it to catch their kids playing hooky occasionally or going out when they're supposed to be sleeping over at a friends house. a little deviancy isnt a bad thing for kids to engage in and if you raised the
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All very good points. Many of which I have no answers. But then if the answers where easy, being a parent would be. This needs to be treated just as anything else. It is nothing but another tool. It can be used for good or evil.
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By turning their phone off?
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"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.)
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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
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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
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"Hey, we can make people pay for locating their kids for them!"
"Have you done a cost/benefit analysis?"
"Yeah, it'll cost the parents $1 per location, and its all pure profit for our benefit!"
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Gotta teach them when they're young (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget... (Score:2)
Add a permanent carry-along douche too, since we're raising a nation of pussies.
[/end grinch]
Independent Adults (Score:2)
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.
'The State' can already track you... (Score:2)
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 mea
Why would you want a phone with a GPS? (Score:2)
I am using it... (Score:3, Insightful)
You dont even need GPS (Score:2)
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Modern SirfIII based GPS receivers (which means almost every fairly new receiver available except the cheapest models) work quite well under difficult conditions.
Glove comp
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The problems I have trying to get GPS working in the car without an external booster... takes so long to get a good lock I can be there before I get directions.
Opening the API? (Score:2)
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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*.
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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
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Up to the point where I entered college, they did. In retrospect, it's probably good they were that hard-ass about it. Though it didn't necessarily keep me from getting in trouble in places they knew I was at. But that was quite a bit less trouble than I could have gotten in if I had had total freedom, that much is certain.
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David Millar is a convicted and admitted doper, who's never come close to winning the Tour. He was in the press this year because it was his first year back from his suspension.
Landis, OTOH, grew up Mennonite, which is a bit less strict than Amish.
Plus, given that the international Court of Arbitration of Sport, just upheld that the French lab that tested Landis' sample doesn't follow protocol (and cleared another rider of his positive test), whether L
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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.
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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
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As well as talking to your kids and actually having real interaction with them rather than treating them as a burden (watch the "back to school" commericals at the end of summer to find out how most parents feel about their kids) you can also live in a smaller community. I live in a town of about 100,000 people, and my kids can't go anywher
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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
My favorite - the Slashdot parenting advice column (Score:2)
>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
Re:My favorite - the Slashdot parenting advice col (Score:2)
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.
For people with no sense of direction (Score:2)
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 t
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Personally, I don't understand it. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own two eyes.
The problem has been solved, incidentally. He moved to Manhattan and doesn't drive. If the subway can't get him someplace, he will never arrive there.
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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.
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Actually, out of the "big four" - Sprint, Cingular/ATTWS, Verizon, and T-Mobile, two providers use GSM phones with SIMs - Cingular and T-Mobile. BTW, even with phones that don't have a SIM, the kid could just get another prepaid phone and forward calls to it.
-b.
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
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> 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)
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More real than you think.
Tracking the GPS in a cell phone is not a new thing. 1 year ago I was searching for a good 2-way tracking solution for cell phones (like www.mologogo.com). I stumbled over several employee-tracking solutions which seemed to offer exactly what is described in the summary (no, I did not RTFA). I also stumbled over some descriptions of how to circumvent the surveillance. Wrapp
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.
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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?
How about talk to him about it to find out why he was lying, then work out a better solution to whatever problem the kid was trying to solve?
I understand that lots of slashdotters are teenagers who (as nearly all teenagers do) resent their parents' attempts to keep them out of trouble, but I find yours a very funny comment from a parent.
Personally, I can see this sort of service as being very useful. Not to spy on my kids, but to give them greater freedom with less hassle for me and for them. My kid
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"...
Another "novel use"...track your spouse's vehicle (Score:2)
Better make sure my wife doesn't find out about these things.
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.
What scares me more than anything... (Score:2, Insightful)
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I think I need to remind you of something. The idea that your children have a right to privacy is a myth. While your children are under the age of 18 and living under your roof they have no right to privacy. You as a parent have the right to say where your child goes, who your child is with, and what your child does at all times. As a parent I have the right to search my child room, possessions, and person any time I feel is necessary.
And contrary to popular myth no court has ever taken this right aw
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I can't make us of this... (Score:2)
A lot of this no doubt is being supplied by... (Score:2)
Potential for abuse? (Score:2)
Hypocrisy at its finest (Score:3, Insightful)
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The idea to be more responsible in the raising of your children. Teaching them to make better decisions on their own, so you don't have to watch them continuously. What does having your children tracked all the time teach them? Behave because I'm watching, not because it's normal? Don't think about what you're getting involved in b
Good Idea (Score:2, Insightful)
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We now rejoin the debate already in progress (Score:2)
From the Old News dept...
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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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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.
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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
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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
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KFG
My son will have fun with your daughter. (Score:2)
Then why the "preacher's daughter" stereotype? (Score:3, Insightful)
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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.
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I don't know; do I pass the Turing Test [wikipedia.org]?
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If so she is likely to be raised in a one parent family.
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Reality.
KFG
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and then Peter Paedophile cracks your account and uses it to track her so that he can insert his desease...
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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,
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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
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I didn't find anything with google either.
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Verizon uses tower triangulation too. That leaves Sprint/Nextel, and Alltel and I doubt they're using real GPS either.
That leaves either 1, 2, or none using GPS. I get this feeling that nobody's using GPS. In fact, they aren't even calling it GPS at Verizon. They're calling LBS, Location Based System. At its BEST it's only goo
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To use my garmin GPS I have to hold it away from my body, with the antenna pointing at the sky, with a least 60 degrees of clear sky visible in two axies, then it takes a couple of minutes to sync before I get a lock.
I don't see how a cellphone, carried in a pocket or handbag, in a car or building, could give a GPS fix more than 10% of the time unless it was being carried by somebody who is aways outside.
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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
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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.
"Police state?" (Score:2)
Sure there's such a thing as overparenting. But underparenting is probably worse, for the child's success and society at large.
Your Brave