Strange days indeed
Gone are the days when parents stood on the back porch and shouted for their kids.
The AmberWatch Foundation, a nonprofit group focused on preventing child abduction, announced the pending launch of a Global Positioning System software application called AmberWatch Mobile. Parents can use the application to monitor their children's movements and children can use it to send an alert to their parents notifying them of their exact location.
The software enabling the service can be downloaded to a child's GPS-enabled cellphone. It then allows parents to log on to a dedicated Web site, amberwatchmobile.com, and quickly pinpoint their child's cellphone location. The child can also zap his or her location from the GPS-compatible handset via text message or email to the parent's phone by hitting a few keys on their cellphone.
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A GPS Device for Keeping Tabs on the Children - WSJ.com
GPS is "Global Positioning", not "Local Positioning". Does not work well in certain locales. Like under trees, tunnels, canyons, big city streets, forests, inside cars, buildings, malls, even frame houses. Kidnapping by strangers is extremely rare in the US. Abduction by family members in most cases lasts less than a week according to the Dept. of Justice. Not only that, only half of the 200,000 cases a year are reported as a problem because the caretaker knows who took the children and where they are. In a given year 94% of children are returned. A more accurate sales pitch would be less fear-mongering and focused instead on the utility of quickly finding lost children and adults, perhaps those with cognitive impairments.
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