Would you do this?

[Hammer]

There's a child tracking device that's being worked on. Right now it's pretty limited but for the sake for argument let's say it's been perfected and works the way I describe it. (May take 5/10 years)

It's very small and implanted at a random location. It's biomechanical so it never needs to be serviced and typically would just be deactivated as opposed to removed. Only a MRI would reveal its location. Assume there are no security issues and that the ID of the locater is part of the child’s private medical history. Typically, at parent’s request, it would be implanted at birth and disabled at eighteen. Its main function would be to give real time location information and this information would be accessed by the parents through a web app. Let's also say it could keep one week worth of location information with a one minute resolution. The software would allow you define time based safe zones. If your child leaves the safe zone a page or email is sent to alert you. If a child is abducted or otherwise lost, the ID could be given to the police to allow them access to the tracking information.

Would you do it? What impact would such a device have? Other uses?

For me, I would do it in a heart beat. The piece of mind of being able to locate my child at any time would be worth any privacy concerns. I doubt it would even be an issue until the teenage years. It would take some discipline not to make sure that my son or daughter really went to the movies and not the motel 6;)

I think a good alternative use would be for criminals. Allow the option of much shorter active jail time combined with a longer monitored probation for non-violent offenders. For example a 10 year active jail term, changed to 2 years active + 10 years of monitoring.

[Swifty_Johnson]

Yup, I lojack my car, I'd lojack the kids. To many weirdos out there.

Swifty

[Rooster]

Tough one Hammer. My initial response is yes. Not sure though.. what if government was able to get that information -- of course, if it were in a terrorist related incident, I'd say, use it... but... that's tough....

What if the web tracking site got hacked.. then you have just given unfettered access to a stalker.

[]LoL[Harm]

My initial response is no. A more passive system might be better. This is a system that would not actively monitor the child but if a given signal was emitted it would respond. That signal would have a changing code that would be synced to a "sister" or "cloned" device that is implanted into the parent. If the parent needed to locate the child they could then go to the authorities, give the authorities permission to discover the current code in their implant (it changes hourly or at some other time interval) and then use that to actively "ping" the childs device that would respond. Any other request sent to the device would fail without the proper code. They already have tech like this with fobs that generate random, sync'd passwords for remote access to networks. It's where I got this idea from.

Bascially I'm against active monitoring, passive however I'd be all for.

[Rooster]

My libertarian (small L) instincts say No... but man.. being a parent... and just the THOUGHT of one going missing is enough to say yes. :(

[Jammer]

As a teenager who went to the Motel 6, I'm against it. :laugh:

There is a lazy parent part of me that thinks it might be a nice peace of mind kind of thing. But if I'm really honest with myself, I don't think I could do it. The little bit of peace concerning abductors would be far outweighed, in my opinion, with the relationship issues that would explode with the kids once they realized Big Brother had them by the fuzzies.

For example, my parents showed a lot of trust in my ability to do the right thing, hang with the right people and stay out of trouble. There's no doubt that occasionally, I would stray a bit as I got older, but for the most part, I did as they would wish. I did this because of the trust they showed in me. I simply didn't want to let them down.

If they were monitoring me, my entire mindset would have changed to "How the hell am I going to get around this tracking device?" So, if something like this ever makes it to the market, I'm going to invest in a couple of the black market extraction services that are sure to spring up within a week. :)

Jammer

[Allison]

I feel the same as Jammer on this. But, I don't have kids of my own, so take that for what it's worth.

[Figtoria]

For example, my parents showed a lot of trust in my ability to do the right thing, hang with the right people and stay out of trouble. There's no doubt that occasionally, I would stray a bit as I got older, but for the most part, I did as they would wish. I did this because of the trust they showed in me. I simply didn't want to let them down.


Ditto.

That paragraph could have been written by me too, Jammer.

Though...I can understand the temptation...

[]LoL[Harm]

Thats why I say passive devices work best, parents would have to go to the authorities and register an incident for you to even be able to be tracked. Having it as something that can be seen on the Web is just too easy to use and abuse.

[Rooster]

Kind of like the digital ID's for pets now?

Vets use it. But there's no end-user access.

[Swifty_Johnson]

For example, my parents showed a lot of trust in my ability to do the right thing, hang with the right people and stay out of trouble. There's no doubt that occasionally, I would stray a bit as I got older, but for the most part, I did as they would wish. I did this because of the trust they showed in me. I simply didn't want to let them down.

Trusting your kids is one thing, trusting the million or so scumbags out there who may want to harm your kids is another thing.

Just think, if only 20% of the kids out there are lojacked, child prediators will always have to think "is that kid lojacked?" as they prey. The number of child abducitons will drop way low.

Swifty

[Hammer]

I think a passive system would be too late. Good for body collection but not for preventing the incident in the first place. And the point would be that parents are the only active monitors, government would have to seek permission/be given access to the data. Also, most of the straying I did as a child came after 18, but still basically under the care of my parents. I also wonder if it was "Normal" to have this device would kids feel like it was an undue burden? Do you kids refuse to child seats or seat belts? How about bicycle helmets?

Any thoughts on secondary uses?

[spyder913]

I think being able to go to www.lazyparents.com and checking where your kid is with gps accuracy is not a good thing. Some method similar to Harm's idea where you have to go out and actually go through a process to track is more appropriate.

Neither way will prevent someone from being kidnapped, but both would tell where the kid is. And the second has a less 'big brother' feel to it.

My parents gave me freedom, in return I had to let them know what I was doing. It was good because there was two-way trust. If they could have tracked everywhere I went I think I would have felt they didn't trust me at all.

[Swifty_Johnson]

Not every child abduction is noticed hours later. With the system the parents can call the police and say "My child is missing can you help."

The police can activate the lojack and see there the child is,

Moving at a high rate of speed on a road out of town, problem.

Stationary in the woods at the edge of town, problem.

At the mall, maybe not.

But it will give more options to the police with missing kids.

Swifty

p.s. that would have worked in something like this.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/Northeast/04/26/girl.found.ap/index.html

At least this one had the girl returned home.

[spyder913]

The police can activate the lojack and see there the child is, Yeah this kind of barrier to keep the checkups from being casual is needed. There needs to be some method of requiring the parent's permission for it to be legal, or else the police might start to keep an eye on those troublesome kids.

[Boom]

This is a tough one. I don't like the whole big brother thing but when I turn on the news and hear about missing children like Polly Klauss or Elizabeth Smart I just go crazy. I mean I seriously lose my ability to think straight. I can't imagine how horrifying it would be to be their parents and KNOWING that their child is SOMEWHERE but having no way to find her.

I guess I think it would be a godsend for dealing with abductions, but I don't like the "lazyparents" implications. Maybe if there was a law limiting its use to abductions? Then again, minors really don't have all the same rights as adults and it is the parent's responsibility to monitor them. If a parent has an out of control child who is sneaking away to commit crimes and stuff should the parent have the right to use this technology to keep track of the child? I dunno the answer to that one. Its a toughy.

As far as using it to keep track of criminals, we already do that with those ankle bracelet thingies. This is just a more sophisticated version of it.

But I don't see how I could look Polly Klauss's dad in the face and tell him that I think we are better off letting more children like his daughter get abducted and killed rather than have this device available. I guess if it was up for public vote, I would vote for it, but I would be very uncomfortable with my decision.

[Swifty_Johnson]

I guess if it was up for public vote, I would vote for it, but I would be very uncomfortable with my decision.

If it also have provisions for some sort of "panic" button, I'd be all supportive of it, as the parent's consent. You don't have to have every kid lojacked, just enough to make the prediators think about it.

Swifty

[Allison]

Something else to consider is could this device ever really be a deterrent for a criminal. Perhaps when the devices are new, before they're widely used, an abducted child could be tracked and retrieved in time.

But honestly, these pervs won't be so easily put off. They're sickos who can't control their sicko urges, If such a device becomes common, surely there will be a way to disable it, or (sorry for the graphic discussion) to cut it out. Or, a child could easily be abducted and harmed within 20 minutes (and frequently is), inside whatever "zone" the child is supposed to be in, and no one would ever know anything was amiss.

The impact of a device like this on crimes against children would be minimal at best, and I'm guessing ultimately it would have no impact at all. Of course I could be wrong.

[Figtoria]

I guess if it was up for public vote, I would vote for it, but I would be very uncomfortable with my decision.


Oh heck - I'd have no trouble voting for this device to be available. I thought the question was whether we would use it for our own kids.


I wonder if there'd be a market for spouses to gps each other.
That'd be scary and weird.

Can I get one put into Johnny Depp???

[Canidae]

Can I get one put into Johnny Depp???
And Vin Diesel... and the Rock.. and Viggo .. and Orlando... and Sean Connery...

*drools*

[Allison]

You know they're all gay, right? ;) :rolly:

[Jammer]

I'm with, Allison, I don't think it would really function well as a deterrent to abductors. It might change the way they operate a bit, but they will indeed operate. But, that part of having this thing enters into my thinking very little. I'm VERY confident in my ability to protect my kids from stuff like that. So I guess I was looking at it more as a device to spy on my kids when they reached the age where they went out alone a lot (approximately 27 :)). For that purpose, I think the right approach is to build mutual trust.

Now, what I could get behind is a similar device that the kid himself could secretly activate anytime he was threatened in some manner. It would then set off alarms for the parents and the authorities and covertly start beaming GPS data for tracking purposes. THAT I would love to be able to offer my kids, my wife and even carry around myself.

Jammer

[Allison]

Now, what I could get behind is a similar device that the kid himself could secretly activate anytime he was threatened in some manner. It would then set off alarms for the parents and the authorities and covertly start beaming GPS data for tracking purposes. THAT I would love to be able to offer my kids, my wife and even carry around myself.

Jammer
Ooooo.. now that's a good idea, Jammer. An emergency distress beacon. Hmmm... I wonder how much that would cost to implement? I mean, wouldn't it be like a 911 system? Every police department would have to be equipped? Or, maybe it could be a national system that, once activated, would send a signal to a centralized location, who would then notify local authorities? Isn't there already something like this for hikers? Hmm...

[Rooster]

That's interesting... lost in a mall... (yeah, it's trivial, but would scare the every living shit out of a parent or child)

[Canidae]

You know they're all gay, right? ;) :rolly:


*blinks* OMG... I can't believe you just said that Sean Connery is gay! I mean its bad enough when you say the others are, but holy cripes!

[Rooster]

Hey, Ian McKellen is gay... /me cries

Gandalf gay? :whining:

:p

[spyder913]

lol roo - some people like to overanalize the LOTR books and call 90% of the characters gay ;)

[Canidae]

lol roo - some people like to overanalize the LOTR books and call 90% of the characters gay
Some people like to overanalize everything in their path. Hmm... some people need to chill out. *snickers*

[Allison]

Aragorn and Legolas kept each other warm during those cold nights crossing the plains. /nod /nod

[Figtoria]

Some people like to overanalize everything in their path. Hmm... some people need to chill out. *snickers*



LMAO!

Good one Canidae!


:rolly:


.....have to say though - I just re-watched LoTR:RoTK and if Merry and Pippin didn't ride off into the hobbity sunset holding hands and playing Hairy Footsie with each other than I would be VERY surprised!!

[Figtoria]

Aragorn and Legolas kept each other warm during those cold nights crossing the plains. /nod /nod


Pics.

Oh my.

Pics.

[Kegg OBeer]

and Viggo .. and Orlando... *drools*

Whatcha droolin over gay guys for?

We all know those two are gay, don't we Figs?

[Canidae]

Now Kegg darling... you and me been getting along fine... don't go pushing your luck. *winks*

[Kegg OBeer]

This was more of an in-game joke from a while ago... But they're still gay.

[Canidae]

*makes a disgusted sound* Meanies.

[Kegg OBeer]

Hey.... Can we put zappers in those devices? Kinda like the invisible fence for dogs? That'd be the life of any party...

[Rooster]

Lol