Arguments against location monitoring technology for parental control

Cell Phones and Privacy

Is Big Brother Really Needed to Keep Track of our Kids?

This paper is taking the position that the use of Global Positioning System technology - as a way for parents to follow the movements of their children - is an invasion of privacy and essentially is a tool for spying. Also, this paper asserts that cell phones are not always reliable in terms of their coverage, and in any event the child carrying the phone that is supposed to be used to keep her or him safe can simply turn the phone off and thereby cut off her or her parents' observational abilities.

There is already plenty of evidence that citizens are slowly but surely losing privacy; the federal government simply taps phones when it wants to and uses the justification that it is fighting terrorism; bank accounts are also subject to government snooping in the name of the war on terror; and just about every public building and retail store and parking lot has camera trained on all who pass by or enter. This society is now being watched, monitored, observed and recorded at levels that are unprecedented. it's time to take a close look at our privacy.

LITERATURE REVIEW: The idea of keeping track of one's children is not a new concept; parents from the time of cave men and women have instinctively kept a close watch on their offspring. But although parents haven't changed in terms of their concern over their children's safety, times have changed. Now, there are technologies designed to assist anxious parents as they worry about the safety of their kids, notably teenagers. The first such device came out in 2006; it's by Verizon and they call it "Chaperone."

For about $20 a month, a family gets the "LG Migo VX1000" phone and the technology to "let parents know when their kids have stepped out of predetermined boundaries," according to C/NET Reviews (http://reviews.cnet.com).

The parent can look on the Internet and see if their child has arrived safely at school or wherever he or she has indicated as a destination.

But wait. Is this technology really necessary? For users of these phones, the technologies "...raise social, psychological, legal and interpersonal questions," according to Matt Richtel writing in the New York Times (Richtel 2006). Indeed, this cellular technology can be a "double-edged sword," Richtel continues. He sites the views of Roger Entner, an analyst with Ovum Research, who said in an interview that even by using this technology a child could be abducted "and harmed but unreachable because the phone had been turned off or the network was down." Another possible intrusion into people's privacy could occur if "adults use the service to track one another without permission."

Say a jealous wife or girlfriend (or vise-versa) is suspicious about her husband's plans for the evening; she could "surreptitiously attach a phone" to her husband or partner's car to track where that person goes during the evening. In response to that scenario, Sprint, another one of the companies carrying the child-monitoring phones, says it can not be responsible for how people use these services, and Sprint adds that they are not promising 100% effectiveness from these phones.

We believe wireless customers understand this and do not expect otherwise," Sprint offered in a published statement. In the Times story, Parry Aftab is interviewed about the new technology; Aftab is executive director of www.wiredsafety.org, a group that gives educational information to parents and the public on how children can best be protected with available technology. "I've never seen parents more freaked out than they are now," she said, blaming television for over-hyping the potential intrusiveness of child-monitoring phones.

Another person interviewed by Richtel in the Times, James E. Katz, who is director of the Center for Mobile Communication Studies at Rutgers University, said "These technologies reflect our neuroses by having to protect against very unlikely scenarios." He went on to say that such devices could "diminish the quality of life between now and when a catastrophe occurs, if it ever does."

Disney also has a phone that can allow parents to keep tabs on their children; what Disney is really selling, they insist in the Times' article, is "peace of mind." "It lets the parents follow up and make sure their kids have arrived somewhere," said George Grobar, general manager of Disney Mobile.

But Pam Dickey, a parent in San Francisco who works for a major pharmaceutical company, says "We hardly have any privacy as it is now - you go to a gas station and there's a camera on you." You go to a neighbor's house and they have cameras outside their homes, she continued; and her company now requires employees in its national sales force to carry phones that allow supervisors to monitor where they are and how long they have been there. "It's too much of an invasion of privacy," she complained.

Meanwhile, if you're a person concerned with privacy issues, the latest cell phone technology has gone quite a bit past just providing parents with a way to keep track of their children. Indeed, for those who have recent phone models, there is a new capability to it called "E911," which means that phones now - all cell phones - are "embedded with a Global Positioning Chip, which can calculate your coordinates to within a few yards," the online journal Legal Affairs points out (Koerner 2003). This means that private sector employees are 'essentially at the mercy of their bosses," Koerner writes. Bosses can scrutinize, covertly, the performance of employees by tracking their physical movements all day.

Although this technology has been in place for several years, user guides for cell phone owners make no mention of the GPS chip or about privacy implications. The attitude of the cell phone manufacturers and companies like Verizon and Sprint is "Don't worry, it's too complicated for you to understand" writes Koerner in Legal Affairs.

Consumers are too easily seduced into abandoning their privacy, says John Soma, a law professor at the University of Denver, and the author of the book Computer Technology and the Law. Quoted in the Legal Affairs article, Soma says, somewhat cryptically: "If you were at a McDonald's in downtown Denver, and you agreed to give everyone three free Big Macs, fries, and a shake if they'd sign away their DNA, you'd have 200 people lined up."

What about the Federal Communications Commission, which is supposed to take responsibility for the "public interest?" Koerner writes. The privacy of cell phone users is not currently a concern of the FCC, the author explains, since the Bush-appointed chairman Michael Power took over. Recently the FCC "turned down a request from the Cellular Telecommunication Industry Association to draw up location-data privacy rules." But the FCC said it did not want to "artificially constrain the still-developing market for location-based services."