(Charles Gervasi) A recent story on NPR discusses child-tracking technology and draws an analogy to a dystopian science fiction novel in which widespread connectivity leads to a culture of constant sharing and a distrust of any wish for privacy.
This touches so many important issues. I love wireless technology. The basic human right to be let alone is an important issue, especially with regard to new technologies. On top of this, I have two children, ages 3 and 5, who constantly make me balance the feeling that you can never be too careful when it comes to protecting children with the fact that you actually can be too careful.
Free-Range vs. Prudent Parenting Debate Goes on Independently of Technology.
There is a good book on resisting being over-protective of kids called Free Range Kids by Lenore Skenazy. You can learn more about her by doing a search on “America’s Worst Mom” in any search engine. The top hits will be about her. Skenazy argues that we deny kids the freedom we had in an effort to protect them from extremely rare perils. Some of these efforts may paradoxically increase the risk to children. For example, we tell kids not to talk to strangers. This may make them reluctant to seek help from strangers in a public place. If someone is threatening a child in public, the best thing to do is to let all the strangers around know it’s happening.
Two months ago I came across a crying child in a store. No employees were in sight. I told the child I would go tell the store manager who would find her parents. She asked me not to leave her. So I took this crying child by the hand and walked her to the front of the store. The child had much darker skin than mine, and any observer would probably guess we were not related. Even in my socially progressive community, I felt like observers would see my act differently as a man than if I were a woman. I held my free hand upward for her parents to see over the displays if they were nearby and to try to look less furtive. I found the parents at the front of the store. They were grateful and gave no hint of suspicion toward me. It was a happy ending, but it left me thinking our society needs a better way to track children. Considering the technology available to us, a random dad holding up his hand trying not to look like a child molester is a lousy way to find a lost kid.
Privacy Issue Is Not Peculiar to Child Tracking
Despite the value I place on privacy and my belief that our society needlessly protects kids from very rare perils, I am not opposed to devices to track children. The privacy issues are similar to those raised by technology in all areas of life. Two years ago I wrote about the US Supreme Court ruling that police installing a tracking device on someone’s vehicle without a warrant is an unlawful search. The Court said it was a search because the police went on the owner’s property, but Justice Sotomayor indicated that she might have ruled the same way even if no trespassing or physical contact with the suspect’s property were required. The old rule was that something that takes place in public has no expectation of privacy. The police could legally follow every citizen around in public, but that would have been impractical. It’s becoming practical, and it seems like the Supreme Court may have been telegraphing that it’s open to a case exploring this issue.
Technology Behind “Microchip” Tagging Kids
The NPR article mentions the possibility of embedded a “microchip” tracking device in kids similar to pets. These pet “microchips” are really RFID tags. Their range is less than one meter. Embedding an RFID tag in kids would aid in identifying them but wouldn’t help locate a specific lost child.
A tag not much larger than an RFID tag that can communicate with mobile towers is conceivable but not practical at this time. The biggest issue is it would need to be 8 cm long to radiate efficiently at 1.8GHz. Most of that length could be in the form of an antenna wire. There would have to be some way of charging its battery, perhaps inductively through a device worn outside the body. The output power would have to be lower than a mobile phone to meet SAR rules. The lower power and the added path cost of the body’s absorption, would limit its range compared to a handheld phone. If engineers overcome these challenges and the medical risks can be shown to be low, both big ifs, we will need to examine if it makes sense to install the devices in children.
Clip-on and wrist-worn tracking devices are reasonable to me. I would use them if I frequently took my kids to situations where I lose sight of them. I would need to be sure not to let the device provide a false sense of security or feed into the paranoia that child predators are hiding everywhere. For older kids, I would want some way for the device to reassure me they are okay without allowing me access to their every move. If the device provided all tracking information even with no evidence of kidnapping, their desire to be let alone would lead them to try to defeat the device. That could be a good exercise in hacking for them, but it would undermine the goal of being able to track kids if they should get into real trouble.
In the past year there has been an increased interest in wrist-worn devices in general. Some people even talk of it becoming “a battle for the wrist”. If this is true, maybe the past 10 years will be a brief interstice in which people momentarily abandoned wearing wristwatches. In this case, a child’s wrist-worn tracking device will seem more ordinary.