Tracking Kids, Tracking Employees — What's The Difference?

from the walkaway-walkaway-I-will-follow dept

Motorola’s decided to throw its hat into the cellular kid-tracking game, its CEO saying it will make phones that allow parents to monitor their child’s whereabouts (well, the whereabouts of their phone, anyway) as well as censor content they don’t like. This comes the same day as Sprint says it will start offering employee tracking, based on a service that Nextel, its recent purchase, has been using for a while. The benefits of tracking either employees or children aren’t necessarily clear: while the idea of always being able to locate your child or keep tabs on an employee might sound wonderful, there’s little reason to believe that either group won’t figure out how to circumvent any tracking (or censorship) mechanism they don’t like, and the unintended consequences of tracking can often outweigh any benefit. Wonder if dogs do the same thing when they’re being tracked.


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Comments on “Tracking Kids, Tracking Employees — What's The Difference?”

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5 Comments
dorpus says:

Irrational Fear

Americans have an irrational fear of authority, government. What’s to prevent such tools from potentially creating far more efficient societies? What if other countries in Asia manage to achieve much lower rates of child abductions, or much better traffic management, while we obsess over abstract fears of “tyranny”?

sage (profile) says:

Re: Irrational Fear

abstract fears of tyranny my a$$.

theres nothing abstract about it. it is historical fact that ANY government that accrues power will do everything it can to KEEP that power, and even work to increase it at the expense of freedom and free choice.. Tyranny was and is a very real occurrance. the real problem is that far too many people are sheep, unwilling to actaully take a hand in regulating themselves instead relying on “government” to do it for them. crass laziness on the part of most people. It isnt a case of “maybe” the technology (and the power that comes with it) will be abused, but how quickly it will happen. so called “tools” such as this will NOT promote a better society. ’nuff said.

char (user link) says:

Child Safety

i have a 14 y o girl in my care who self harms, has boundary issues, runs away whenever she feels she is losing a boyfriend (because he hasn’t gotten a bit lately) is treated as a “jack” by blokes almost twice her age, is set up to be humiliated, constantly harassed on chat, txt and email, and thinks that if a group of blokes are trying to get her into a house it’s because they think she is “hot”.

i will do what i need to ensure her safety b/c at this point in time she actively encourages predators and is caught in a cycle of sexual, physical and mental abuse.

when i rock up at a blokes place she has run to – she knows i am looking out for her, she knows she is cared for. everything she wants in life.

when she realises how valuable she is i will drop the espionage and tracking; till then, her predators are my hobby.

Wang says:

Reagan's infamy

I know it may be hard to believe.

However, it is absolutely true that Ronald Wilson Reagan committed horrible, racist, hate crimes during his presidency.

A lot of people know about Reagan’s infamy.

And a lot of people will know about Reagan’s infamy–even until the end of human existence: they’ll find out.

Numbers 32:23: “Be sure your sins will find you out.”

Respectfully Submitted by Andrew Yu-Jen Wang, J.D. Candidate
B.S., With the Highest Level of Academic Honors at Graduation, 1996
Messiah College, Grantham, PA
Lower Merion High School, Ardmore, PA, 1993

(I can type 90 words per minute, and there are thousands of copies on the Internet indicating the content of this post. And there are at least hundreds of copies in very many countries around the world.)
_________________
‘If only it were possible to BAN invention that bottled up memories so they never faded and never got stale’ (an analogy: like scent is held in or restrained or inhibited or suppressed or ‘bottled up’). Off the top of my head—it came from my Lower Merion High School yearbook.

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