Are 'Kid Trackers' a Parenting Boon or Privacy Threat?

Dec. 12, 2005 — -- Whether they're concerned about the risk of abduction or simply trying to keep tabs on their young ones, parents now have some high-tech options to track their kids.

"When you look around your house and you can't find your child, you go to the mall, you go to a park and your kid's missing and you get that gut-wrenching feeling for 30 seconds or five minutes, 'I can't find my child,'" said Bob Frank, the chief executive officer of Bluespan, which makes a child tracker called "ionKids."

"That panic of the parent who thinks they've lost their child, that's what got us going."

Their gadget uses a "base unit" and a high-tech wristband or keychain to sound an alert when a child wanders too far. Other products use other technology -- even satellite GPS tracking -- to perform a similar function.

Some say it's a great way to give parents peace of mind. But others contend that at best, many of these systems offer a false sense of security, and at worst they represent a troubling new form of surveillance.

ionKids consists of a base unit for the parent and a child unit that comes in the form of either a tamper-resistant wristband or a keychain-like "tag."

A small LCD screen on the base unit shows the relative distance of the child from the parent. As many as four children can be monitored with one base unit.

"Right now it goes up to about 350 to 400 feet outdoors," said Frank, "which is home plate to center field at any ballpark across the country, and you probably don't want your kid that far away when you're at the zoo."

Though Frank says that Bluespan is working on extending the range up to more than half a mile outdoors, it's limited to 200 feet indoors. Within that range, it's up to the parent to decide how big to make the perimeter.

When children stray too far, both their units and their parents' devices buzz and light up. At that point the parent can use the device to "sweep" like a metal detector. The screen on the device looks like radar, beaming out to locate the child.

"I think parents need to take a step back and understand that the bottom line for the safety and security of their family is a consistent education program with their children," said David Shapiro, special assistant to the president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited children.

Shapiro says that although the choice to use a high-tech kid tracker is a personal one, parents should not assume it's a cure-all against abduction.

"I can think of one case -- I think it was in the Midwest -- where a child was wearing one of these alarm bracelets and was approached by an abductor," he said. "She activated the alarm, and the abductor simply ripped it off, threw it on the ground and stomped on it."

But it's the issue of privacy that concerns Lee Tien, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties advocacy group.

"I don't like the idea of these sorts of tracking services and have no particular love of surveillance becoming institutionalized for use by parents on their kids," said Tien.

One area where this technology is making an impact is in the autistic community.

Peter Bell, a father of an autistic child and also the CEO of Cure Autism Now, understands the controversy, but wishes he'd had one of the devices when he took his 12-year-old autistic son to Disneyland last spring.

"My son was literally standing right next to me and I stopped to get a consensus on where we should go next," he said. "The next thing I know, I look to my side and he's gone."

Park employees were able to locate his child, but Bell says a high-tech tracker could have saved him several minutes of intense worry.

"I know there are some groups out there -- basically civil liberties groups -- that don't like the idea of being able to know where people are at any given time," he said. "But I'm speaking as a parent of a child with autism and one that kind of likes to wander."

Cynthia Johnson, director of the Autism Center at the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, also likes the idea.

"It's not for all kids with autism obviously," Johnson said. "But there are plenty of kids with autism that don't have the ability to communicate and are at great risk for not being able to tell somebody who they are, where they came from and they are at higher risk for wandering off impulsively."

You can learn more about protecting your children from abduction by visiting the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.