From: <egk2101@columbia.edu>
  To  : <cpc@emoglen.law.columbia.edu>
  Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2006 07:46:40 -0400

Paper 2: Monitoring Our Future

Monitoring Our Future

Most of us, I would venture, would resent being tracked by someone,
our movements constantly broadcast and intercepted without our
consent. However, we might feel differently about the matter if it
was us doing the tracking. Advances in technology are currently
making it possible for parents to keep constant tabs on their
children. The devices, which are smaller than a dime in most cases,
have been incorporated into cell phones, cars, and wireless
watchbands. There is even the possibility of one day having a
device implanted under the skin of your children. That way, you can
be one hundred percent assured that you know their location.

When I first read about such technologies, my first reaction was
alarm. It must be those fanatically over-protective parents, I
thought. Due to the fact that I am currently childless, I wondered
what my parents thought about this issue. During my childhood, they
had not been over-protective in any sense. I knew they worried, but
I always had a sense of freedom. Would they have tracked me, if
they could have, when I was younger? To my surprise, their response
was an unqualified yes. “Absolutely,” my dad said. As I thought
about one day having my own offspring, I realized that a parent’s
worse nightmare must be to lose their child and never know what
happened. All of a sudden, technology promised protection against
that nightmare.

Admittedly, I would use some sort of tracking device with my kids.
My privacy concerns would be easily overridden by the potential
benefits of such a system. It is easy to justify a boycott of
privacy encroaching technology when it is only you who you
disadvantage. It’s another thing to force your children to bear the
costs of you holding firm to your principles. If a parent were ever
to lose a child, the knowledge that they could have prevented it
would be almost equal to the loss itself. I believe many parents
are going to embrace tracking technology, especially as it becomes
more inexpensive and user-friendly.

The trend has already started. Cell phone companies such as Sprint
Nextel are rolling out new “family plan” service packages, which
allow parents to determine their kids’ whereabouts on a map by
flipping open their phone or logging onto a website. Disney Mobile
is set to launch a similar program in June. According to IDC, a
research company, “The market for location-based services is
already estimated at nearly $600 million and is forecast to
approach $5 billion within three years.” The market supports a wide
array of applications, such as product shipment, parolee tracking,
employee monitoring, and emergency service delivery. Tot-tracking
and location-based advertising are newcomers, but are bound to grow
quickly.

However, it’s not always true that children’s safety will compel
parents to allow tracking. Consider the case of Sutter, a small
farm town in California, where an elementary school recently
attempted to institute a pilot student tracking program that
required students to wear radio frequency identification device
(RFID) badges. While the badge does not track students like a
global-positioning device would, it does allow confirmation that
each child is in his or her classroom. The purported reason for the
policy was to simplify attendance and, of course, improve student
safety. Parents reacted with outrage, although a few saw the
measure as beneficial. Due to intense mobilization of parents and
civil liberties groups, the experiment was brought to a swift end.
As Cédric Laurant, Policy Counsel with EPIC (Electronic Privacy
Information Center), stated regarding the controversy, “"Monitoring
children… is a very bad idea. It treats children like livestock or
shipment pallets.”

On the one hand, Laurant’s statement rings true. On the other, the
market does not lie. Child-tracking technology is being
increasingly accepted by consumers. How can one reconcile these
schizophrenic sentiments? The answer seems to lie in the fact that
parents are okay with tracking as long as it is under their
control, and by their decision. While parents desire the
technology, they will resist when it is forced upon them,
especially by government.

This “choice” based theory might also help explain the reaction of
the public generally to location-monitoring devices. Americans
revile at the thought of national ID cards and cameras in public
places. We’re creeped out when we travel to London and can’t shake
the “being watched” feeling. However, our reaction to the
proliferation of consumer products which incorporate tracking
devices has been more placid. We accept the necessity of GPS in
cell-phones, the recording of our EZ-pass activity, and the
cacophony of RFID signals we emit as we shop from store to store. I
agree that for some people the culprit is probably ignorance: if
they only knew the extent of how much they were tracked, it would
spur them into defiant action. However, this has not been my
experience in trying to scare my friends with warnings that their
beloved cell phones can betray their locations. Perhaps the real
cognitive deficiency is not ignorance, but over-confidence. We
think that just because we “choose” to drive in the EZ-pass lane
this time, that we have control over when we are tracked. I wonder
though, when we choose to no longer be tracked, whether it will be
too late to stop the machine from grinding forward.

Returning to the subject of the next generation, how will growing up
under a system of monitoring affect children’s perceptions of
privacy? By indoctrinating our kids into a world where they have
been continuously tracked since birth, we send to them the message
that such surveillance is normal and acceptable. Under a
Constitutional system of protecting “reasonable expectations,” we
may be eroding tomorrow’s notions of freedom even as we fight to
protect that liberty today. On the other hand, perhaps it is not so
bleak. Children are notorious for resisting the bonds that parents
seek to throw around them. If “choice” really matters, then we can
expect a lot of resistance from our kids, especially if we still
enjoy a great degree of freedom ourselves.



Word count: 1004

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“New cell plan allows parents to track kids”
By Tricia Duryee
The Seattle Times
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002927433 sprint13.html

“Locating Devices Gain in Popularity but Raise Privacy Concerns”
By Simon Romero
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/04/technology/04LOCA.html?ei=5070&en=1ea9b89ac7a4f03a&ex=1145160000&pagewanted=print

 “Tracking devices on grade-schoolers raise privacy fears”
By Lisa Leff
The Associated Press
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002175932 school10.html


 “California Company Pulls out of Program to Track Student
Movements”
American Civil Liberties Union
Contact: media@aclu.org
http://www.aclu.org/studentsrights/privacy/12847prs20050216.html


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