GPS tracking for...
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... teens.
https://tampabaymonitoring.com/portfolios/gps-tracking-devices-teens/
‘Desperate’ parents are strapping GPS ankle monitors on teens, company owner says
A Florida company is strapping GPS ankle monitors on teens to ease the concerns of parents who are worried their children will get into trouble.
Removing the bracelets is no easy feat, especially without specialized tools.
The device Tampa Bay Monitoring uses most often features a heavy cuff, which immediately alerts staff if the wearer tries to saw off the GPS monitor.
“Most people — we’re talking hardened criminals who try to cut it off — have ended up in the ER,” Kopczynski said.
A more cynical take on this:
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@PJH If your child needs daily location monitoring equivalent to that of a hardened criminal, then I think you have a much bigger problem on your hands. However, it costs $10 a day so they must be pushing this towards affluent dick bags.
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Funny, just the other day when talking to my neighbour, he mentioned that he had recently said, “You’re twelve already, don’t you want to go hang out with your friends in the village?” to his daughter. She’d apparently replied that she prefers FaceTime to stay in touch with them instead.
Somehow I suspect he wouldn’t see the use for a GPS tracker even if she didn’t have FaceTime.
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IMHO this should be illegal without a court order or something equivalent.
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Considering the availability of GPS jammers, any kid wanting to get rid of the overbearing parent could simply just use one of those, and then go anywher ethey damn well please without the parent ever finding out where they went. Especially workable if they have a plausible explanation, such as hanging out in a basement with no signal available.
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What's even the point of this? It's not like kids buy their own phones. You have every opportunity to install a normal tracking app.
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The paranoia is really reaching insane levels, isn't it? For fuck's sake, the world (at least the developed parts of it) is progressively getting safer and safer for like a century now, but people are getting more and more paranoid by the year.
As much as it sounds like a "raving lunatic" kind of statement, I can't shake the need to blame the media, both the mainstream kind and fearmongers on Facebook and similar, for this. Every time any kind of unfortunate tragedy happens it's publicized as if it's a regular occurrence, or a sign of the end days. I don't want to minimize any tragedy, but shit happens. It always happened. And it keeps happening less and less, but we worry about it more and more.
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@Carnage
Could be that it starts that stinking siren if it can't get a signal for certain amount of time? Upon which I'd expect no more from people than "hey, turn that thing down... fuckin' young'uns these days, I swear
". But it would get pretty embarrassing when it's not actually possible to turn that thing down.
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in GPS tracking for...:
@Carnage
Could be that it starts that stinking siren if it can't get a signal for certain amount of time? Upon which I'd expect no more from people than "hey, turn that thing down... fuckin' young'uns these days, I swear". But it would get pretty embarrassing when it's not actually possible to turn that thing down.A wet towel around the bit that does the beepbeep, and a pair of really fluffy boots or leg warmers?
But if my parents had put something like that on me, I'd have gotten myself a pair of bolt cutters and removed it.
I started going awol for a week or two at a time in my early teens, but my parents figured that since I actually turned up safe and sound, I could probably handle myself. I also kept my grades decent. The only thing they did was ask if I was doing drugs, and when I replied no, that was the end of that.
If you don't trust your kids enough to let them learn how to do life without constant surveillance, you kind of failed as a parent, IMHO.
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@Carnage said in GPS tracking for...:
A wet towel around the bit that does the beepbeep,
As a bonus, the wet towel will probably block the GPS signals too.
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@Carnage said in GPS tracking for...:
Considering the availability of GPS jammers
That has me wondering: would aluminium foil block this thing from working?
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@Gurth Idea: ankle-based Faraday cages.
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@Carnage said in GPS tracking for...:
A wet towel around the bit that does the beepbeep, and a pair of really fluffy boots or leg warmers?
I'm not sure about that. I've toyed with a bicycle siren of similar size. Those little shits can really make a noise. About the easiest thing about it is to wait while its battery runs dry in less than half a minute.
Anyway, I fully agree. This is paranoia squared that can only be sanctioned by mentally fucked up parents. Unfortunately there's no shortage of those these days.
Kids are unruly, stupid and ungrateful little fucks, but that's by design. If this is the best idea parents can come up with, they deserve everything that happens afterwards.
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@Applied-Mediocrity I'd hope that these are more robust than bike locks, but since I have never had the opportunity to fiddle with one I don't know. But bike locks are best silenced with a moderate smack with a hammer. Even most high end locks will STFU instantly with some percussive maintenance applied in the right (or wrong, depending on viewpoint) spot.
If they have open air speakers, you could even put a dab of glue in the hole to permanently get them to shut up with very little visible modification.
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@Carnage said in GPS tracking for...:
If you don't trust your kids enough to let them learn how to do life without constant surveillance, you kind of failed as a parent, IMHO.
Imagine something actually happens to the "unsurveilled" child. Who would you blame for that? The 12 year old who doesn't yet know everything there is to know about life, or their parents doing exactly what you said they should be doing?
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@Gąska said in GPS tracking for...:
@Carnage said in GPS tracking for...:
If you don't trust your kids enough to let them learn how to do life without constant surveillance, you kind of failed as a parent, IMHO.
Imagine something actually happens to the "unsurveilled" child. Who would you blame for that? The 12 year old who doesn't yet know everything there is to know about life, or their parents doing exactly what you said they should be doing?
If it's some mundane shit, a GPS tracker adds nothing of value.
If it's an actual emergency, what bloody good will a GPS tracker do the parent in that situation?If you have enough trust in the kids to not get into trouble to let them roam free, pretty much no problem they will get into will be improved by them wearing a GPS tracker.
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@Carnage said in GPS tracking for...:
@Gąska said in GPS tracking for...:
@Carnage said in GPS tracking for...:
If you don't trust your kids enough to let them learn how to do life without constant surveillance, you kind of failed as a parent, IMHO.
Imagine something actually happens to the "unsurveilled" child. Who would you blame for that? The 12 year old who doesn't yet know everything there is to know about life, or their parents doing exactly what you said they should be doing?
If it's some mundane shit, a GPS tracker adds nothing of value.
If it's an actual emergency, what bloody good will a GPS tracker do the parent in that situation?When it's late in the evening and the kid is not home yet, at least you know where to look for them.
If you have enough trust in the kids to not get into trouble to let them roam free
- What if you don't?
- What if you do but shouldn't because this particular kid is not to be trusted?
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@Gąska said in GPS tracking for...:
What if you don't?
Then you don't need a GPS tracker?
@Gąska said in GPS tracking for...:
What if you do but shouldn't because this particular kid is not to be trusted?
Well done, you made a mistake and have been classified as "human". If you're trying to save people from their own incompetence, I think you will be sorely disappointed sooner or later.
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@Onyx said in GPS tracking for...:
@Gąska said in GPS tracking for...:
What if you don't?
Then you don't need a GPS tracker?
If you keep them in cage all the time, sure. But that requires some heavy paperwork - at the very least, homeschooling, which can be PITA under some circumstances and in some jurisdictions.
@Gąska said in GPS tracking for...:
What if you do but shouldn't because this particular kid is not to be trusted?
Well done, you made a mistake and have been classified as "human". If you're trying to save people from their own incompetence, I think you will be sorely disappointed sooner or later.
Are we still talking about children and the parental responsibility to watch over them?
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@Gurth said in GPS tracking for...:
Funny, just the other day when talking to my neighbour, he mentioned that he had recently said, “You’re twelve already, don’t you want to go hang out with your friends in the village?” to his daughter. She’d apparently replied that she prefers FaceTime to stay in touch with them instead.
Somehow I suspect he wouldn’t see the use for a GPS tracker even if she didn’t have FaceTime.
I also can't convince my daughter to put down the effing tablet and go play with her friends in the neighbourhood. At her age, I used to roam the entire village on foot or on bike
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@Gąska said in GPS tracking for...:
Are we still talking about children and the parental responsibility to watch over them?
Yes, you made a mistake by misjudging either your parental capabilities or your child. Trying to fix either by slapping on a piece of tracking tech solves pretty much nothing, actually, probably makes it even worse by developing trust issues with an already unruly child. You think anything you do after that is going to be taken well by a child to whom you denied any sense of privacy or autonomy?
You cannot, and should not try to prevent mistakes children might make. Making those mistakes makes them become the adult they will have to become sooner or later. By trying to shield them all the time and hovering over their shoulders every second of every day, you're doing nothing other than delaying them making those mistakes, which could arguably have worse consequences if they make them as adults.
I'm not against changing tradition if it turns out the tradition is bullshit. But in this particular case, I can't see how it's a good thing on a larger scale. I can only see it increasing paranoia, on multiple levels (the child that was being tracked not being able to ever shake that feeling, and potentially doing the same to others).
I want to point out again: I don't want anyone getting hurt and I'm all for trying to prevent that, but not at a price of invading any and all of their privacy. Are we not on a forum where we constantly bitch about being tracked online so other people / entities know what we do every minute of our day? Don't we bitch about lack of options to turn off location tracking on phones in some cases? And now we want to do this shit to our children? Fuck no. That's no way to live, and I wouldn't wish it for my child. This will sound grim, but I'd rather have my potential child to experience two decades of as good of a life as they can muster, than eight decades of being locked up, either metaphorically or literally.
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@Gąska said in GPS tracking for...:
When it's late in the evening and the kid is not home yet, at least you know where to look for them.
What is the use of knowing where their tracking device currently is? And even if it is still attached to the correct person... you still haven't been able to prevent something bad from happening
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@bjolling said in GPS tracking for...:
@Gąska said in GPS tracking for...:
When it's late in the evening and the kid is not home yet, at least you know where to look for them.
What is the use of knowing where their tracking device currently is? And even if it is still attached to the correct person...
Why wouldn't it? Why would a child remove it, if they're the kind you don't have to worry about they're going to do something very stupid and tragic?
you still haven't been able to prevent something bad from happening
Just by having them home every night before 9PM, you reduce the risk of bad things happening by a whole lot. You can never guarantee that a meteorite won't suddenly fall from the sky and hit your baby in the head, just like you can never guarantee that a CPU will always give the right answer to 2+2 under any and all circumstances, but you can do quite a lot to reduce the risk of bad things happening.
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@Gąska said in GPS tracking for...:
Why would a child remove it, if they're the kind you don't have to worry about they're going to do something very stupid and tragic?
"If you have nothing to hide, why are you opposed to having all your private data exposed to <entity>?"
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@Onyx are you really comparing parent-child relationship to civil rights and state surveillance?
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@Gąska said in GPS tracking for...:
@Onyx are you really comparing parent-child relationship to civil rights and state surveillance?
From the standpoint of a tracked person, yes, on emotional level at least. Sure, it's not the same in pragmatic terms, but goddamn does it not feel the same.
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@Onyx there's a reason why children don't have full civil rights. Why they can't e.g. buy an expensive thing at a local store even if they have the money.
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@Gąska said in GPS tracking for...:
@Onyx there's a reason why children don't have full civil rights. Why they can't e.g. buy an expensive thing at a local store even if they have the money.
Wait, you complained that I was equating civil rights and parenting just a post ago... So I was right to do that, then (even if I wasn't actually doing that)?
Either way, we can argue about those laws being stupid or not in another place, being denied a service is just a tad different from privacy invasion in general, let alone from parenting concerns. I can still go out and buy that thing for my kid if I want to, and if I don't that still doesn't equate to tracking the child's movements.
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@Onyx said in GPS tracking for...:
If you're trying to save people from their own incompetence, I think you will be sorely disappointed sooner or later.
More likely "sooner and later", but yes.
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@Onyx said in GPS tracking for...:
@Gąska said in GPS tracking for...:
@Onyx there's a reason why children don't have full civil rights. Why they can't e.g. buy an expensive thing at a local store even if they have the money.
Wait, you complained that I was equating civil rights and parenting just a post ago... So I was right to do that, then (even if I wasn't actually doing that)?
As long as you keep adult civil rights separate from child civil rights, yeah, you can say it's similar. But you didn't at first, and probably still don't if you think you were right all along.
Bottom line is: there are plenty of arguments why state knowing everything there is to know about a citizen is bad, but these arguments don't work at all if you want to show that a parent knowing everything there is to know about a child is bad.
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@CodeJunkie said in GPS tracking for...:
@PJH If your child needs daily location monitoring equivalent to that of a hardened criminal, then I think you have a much bigger problem on your hands. However, it costs $10 a day so they must be pushing this towards affluent dick bags.
Thats scandalous! I found dog chipping gps services on google for about £10 a month. I will vote with my wallet!
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Kids, teens especially, are rebellious beings by design. If you treat them like criminals, and they're not(*), they will attempt to become criminals as they understand it, without realizing the consequences, just to spite you.
Some are beyond saving. Some may reform themselves. There are various levels of learning, but since the dawn of time the most basic has been, so to speak, to pee on the wire. If it turns out to be a live one, too bad.
I'll tell you what. Parents [doing this] aren't as afraid of what happens to their kid as of the considerable personal inconvenience that will follow - monetary expenses, being outside the comfort zone of their groundhog day, disdainful frowns of their neighbors and acquaintances, and trouble from authorities. The kids themselves matter less than all that, despite all the "love yous" and shit.
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in GPS tracking for...:
I'll tell you what. Parents [doing this] aren't as afraid of what happens to their kid as of the considerable personal inconvenience that will follow - monetary expenses, being outside the comfort zone of their groundhog day, disdainful frowns of their neighbors and acquaintances, and trouble from authorities. The kids themselves matter less than all that, despite all the "love yous" and shit.
And they're also thieves, because all drunkards are thieves.
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@Gąska
Show me an adult who remedies being (or failing at being) an adult with Big Alcohol and odds are good they are stealing office supplies. It checks out.
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@Applied-Mediocrity show me a gypsy and odds are good they never had a legal job their entire lives. Should we treat all gypsies as if they're unable to have any occupation other than stealing, begging and welfare-ing?
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@Carnage said in GPS tracking for...:
If you have enough trust in the kids to not get into trouble to let them roam free, pretty much no problem they will get into will be improved by them wearing a GPS tracker.
Getting lured into a car and then gang-raped for the next sveral months springs to mind as one example. And, yes, that was in the news a couple of weeks ago. One of the articles: https://www.iltalehti.fi/kotimaa/a/1f6d1589-755a-4819-a190-bd597a7c10a6
TL;DR (of the whole series): 7 men (later found to be refugees) aged 20-30 held an underage girl captive for 2 months.
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@acrow said in GPS tracking for...:
@Carnage said in GPS tracking for...:
If you have enough trust in the kids to not get into trouble to let them roam free, pretty much no problem they will get into will be improved by them wearing a GPS tracker.
Getting lured into a car and then gang-raped for the next sveral months springs to mind as one example. And, yes, that was in the news a couple of weeks ago. One of the articles: https://www.iltalehti.fi/kotimaa/a/1f6d1589-755a-4819-a190-bd597a7c10a6
TL;DR (of the whole series): 7 men (later found to be refugees) aged 20-30 held an underage girl captive for 2 months.Perfect argument for why we should implant a tracking device into everyone, not just kids. Maybe more than one.
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@acrow said in GPS tracking for...:
@Carnage said in GPS tracking for...:
If you have enough trust in the kids to not get into trouble to let them roam free, pretty much no problem they will get into will be improved by them wearing a GPS tracker.
Getting lured into a car and then gang-raped for the next sveral months springs to mind as one example. And, yes, that was in the news a couple of weeks ago. One of the articles: https://www.iltalehti.fi/kotimaa/a/1f6d1589-755a-4819-a190-bd597a7c10a6
TL;DR (of the whole series): 7 men (later found to be refugees) aged 20-30 held an underage girl captive for 2 months.And you don't think that such a gang would get rid of the GPS tracker?
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@topspin said in GPS tracking for...:
@acrow said in GPS tracking for...:
@Carnage said in GPS tracking for...:
If you have enough trust in the kids to not get into trouble to let them roam free, pretty much no problem they will get into will be improved by them wearing a GPS tracker.
Getting lured into a car and then gang-raped for the next sveral months springs to mind as one example. And, yes, that was in the news a couple of weeks ago. One of the articles: https://www.iltalehti.fi/kotimaa/a/1f6d1589-755a-4819-a190-bd597a7c10a6
TL;DR (of the whole series): 7 men (later found to be refugees) aged 20-30 held an underage girl captive for 2 months.Perfect argument for why we should implant a tracking device into everyone, not just kids. Maybe more than one.
Oh, I wouldn't slap a tracker on my kid without consulting with them first, when they get to that age. Only if they feel that it's necessary too. But if we need to visit China before they are old enough to locate and articulate to the nearest police officer, which is a legitimate concern for me at this point in time, they WILL wear a tracker vest.
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@kazitor said:
@Gurth Idea: ankle-based Faraday cages.
There's another idea - a new business in the area selling... "Ankle Grinders" *groan*
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@Gurth said in GPS tracking for...:
@Carnage said in GPS tracking for...:
Considering the availability of GPS jammers
That has me wondering: would aluminium foil block this thing from working?
Possibly, it's actually pretty hard to make a good faraday cage. I built one for GSM testing and the device still got a (weak) signal. I think the conductive glue on the copper tape wasn't conductive enough.
Edit: Also, coax cable is leaky as hell, which I didn't expect at all.
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@topspin
And put the tracking devices in a certain body part (or two), so they can't be raped. Imagine the perplexed looks on the perps' faces.
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in GPS tracking for...:
@topspin
And put the tracking devices in a certain body part (or two), so they can't be raped. Imagine the perplexed looks on the perps' faces.There have been attempt to make an "anti-rape device" that's inserted to a body cavity. But they're apparently too uncomfortable for day-to-day use.
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@acrow said in GPS tracking for...:
@Applied-Mediocrity said in GPS tracking for...:
@topspin
And put the tracking devices in a certain body part (or two), so they can't be raped. Imagine the perplexed looks on the perps' faces.There have been attempt to make an "anti-rape device" that's inserted to a body cavity. But they're apparently too uncomfortable for day-to-day use.
It's called the Rapex. A government service I used to have to use was called RAPEX, googling for the URL always resulted in unwanted pictures.
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@acrow
Fuck me running for even entertaining the thought for a moment. Have they made an online version one can track with an iPhone app yet? Because I can think of some potential clients already.
Although the buzzer thing might have unwanted side effects. A parent talking out of ass (doesn't matter whose ass) is perfectly acceptable, however.
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@Cursorkeys That's the one. Hmm... I was mistaken, then. Wikipedia says they never got to mass market.
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Can't imagine why.
All it needs is a catchy slogan.
Parents! Candy men are out for your kids. Act now! Rapex your kids before they do!
*cheerful jingle*Filed under: Is the next stop the Garage yet?
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@acrow said in GPS tracking for...:
There have been attempt to make an "anti-rape device" that's inserted to a body cavity.
Something like this figured in Snow Crash, though not with a tracking device, but a needle loaded with a strong sedative instead. I don't think that's gotten out of the realm of fiction into reality yet, though.
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@PJH For the parent that aspires to be more controlling.
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@Gąska said in GPS tracking for...:
Bottom line is: there are plenty of arguments why state knowing everything there is to know about a citizen is bad, but these arguments don't work at all if you want to show that a parent knowing everything there is to know about a child is bad.
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Children need to develop autonomy from their parents. Particularly as they get older and approach adulthood. The parent knowing everything about the child gets in the way of this and leads to things like teacup children and helicopter parents.
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Privacy is a basic human need. Children are human beings. Ergo children need privacy. Do they have a right to as much privacy as adults? Maybe not - I could be convinced of either side of that question. But that doesn't mean they don't have a right to any privacy at all.
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There is absolutely no way a parent is going to know everything about their child anyway. Yes, a very-difficult-to-remove GPS anklet will tell the parents where the child is at all times, but so what? Will it tell them who he is with? What she's doing with those people? What he is thinking? Kids do crazy, dangerous shit right in their own homes.
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