Watch Out, Kids: With GPS Phones, Big Mother Is Watching

Rob Pegoraro notes a certain discomfort with WaveMarket’s location-based service that “enables enterprises and fleet managers to manage mobile assets”.  There’s nothing new here, except perhaps a cost savings for the fleet managers.  We were putting GPS receivers in trucks in 1994 for this very purpose.  I was a lowly intern building out the functionality, but got to drive around in my oil-leaking Pontiac Phoenix with a GPS disc thingy attached to the top of my car and a mobile transmitter that would then transmit my coordinates as well as receive communications from the central system.
I well agree with Rob’s point, though, that “The whole idea of tracking your family in this manner is weird and alarming on some levels. So is the notion that we’re all so deathly afraid for our kids that there’s even a market for this.”.  That’s the reality in our society, though, as alarming as it is.  We worry about government spying on us, ostensibly to help keep us safer, and then pay to spy on each other in the same name of safety.