Spy in the sky can track your teen

If you're a parent of a teen-age driver, how would you like to be able to monitor the speed of your son or daughter's car on the Internet using global positioning satellites, or GPS?

If the car exceeds a preset limit, a unit in the car will notify you, letting you honk the horn and flash the parking lights, signaling your child to slow down. If you want your teen-age driver to stay put, you can disable a vehicle's starter from the Internet.

You can also set up a geo-fence, and if the perimeter - up to 30 miles - is broken, the unit will call, e-mail or page you. The unit will also notify you if the car has been in a collision.

Although the technology is not new, the price of installing a GPS unit has become more affordable, ranging between $699 and $799. And with newer systems, you can move them from vehicle to vehicle.

Several companies, including OnStar, GPS 2000, Code and InterTrak, allow customers to locate their car online.

The GPS system consists of 24 satellites launched and maintained by the U.S. military. A GPS receiver locates its exact position using latitude and longitude information from the satellites.

The GPS system has become popular with consumers, fleet managers, law enforcement agencies and school buses.

You can track your car using wireless technology on the Internet at www.trackmenow.com, by cellphone and by pager.

"While this technology may have great potential for parents, the possibilities for abuse is scary."

Perhaps we should require that any government official (elected or appointed) must wear one of these, and set it up so any citizen can track their location on the internet. Maybe we could require the addition of sight/sound transmission so we could see EVERYTHING they do. That's probably the only way we'll ever keep them honest (sigh).

The GPS system has become popular with consumers, fleet managers, law enforcement agencies and school buses [?].

Funny, I didn't know school buses were into this sort of thing.

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This GPS thing is a waste. Why don't we just leapfrog to the next step and insert the chips into people's forearms. Or hands. Or foreheads. Think about it, it's not always what kids do when the car is moving that's going to get them in trouble, it's what they do when the car stops.

I'm sure with just a few more enhancements the devices could be made to transmit the heart rate, respiration, blood pressure, and whatever you want of the host organism. (I wonder if we could do blood alcohol level?) And, if we provide a connection to the nervous system why, we might even be able to discern the thoughts, feelings, and intentions of the bearer.

Going this route, when you see your teen is getting to the agitated state you can remotely administer a shock or pain stimulus to halt the undesired behavior. This is already done to train dogs.

For a small additional fee, I'm sure some programming whiz could even come up with software to let the computer do this for you. It's simple, the incoming data from the panting adolescent is compared to a profile stored in the computer and if they match - ZZZZZT!

We are doing this for the children, after all, aren't we?

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