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Message Digest
Volume 28 : Issue 107 : "text" Format
Messages in this Issue:
Re: AT&T "Family Maps" cellphone location tracking
Re: AT&T "Family Maps" cellphone location tracking
Re: Thieves in Town of Wallkill make off with Frontier's telephone cable
Re: AT&T "Family Maps" cellphone location tracking
Re: AT&T "Family Maps" cellphone location tracking
Re: AT&T "Family Maps" cellphone location tracking
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Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 06:59:14 -0500
From: gordonb.yt9wo@burditt.org (Gordon Burditt)
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: AT&T "Family Maps" cellphone location tracking
Message-ID: <1bCdnQ3YkPkPXXTUnZ2dnUVZ_gydnZ2d@posted.internetamerica>
>Summing it up, my feeling is that when there's a social problem, the
>problem itself needs to be fixed, not use technology to build walls
>around it. That is, if kids are facing danger, let's eliminate those
>dangers, not simply track our kids. Indeed, kids will turn their
>phones off, let the batteries run down, or simply lose them,
>eliminating the tracking ability.
I think the technological spying will backfire a LOT worse than
that. Kids will learn you are tracking them. They will learn how.
Then they will use it against you to spread disinformation. At
this point you've blown any possibility of them trusting you. (I
am reminded here of one kid who held a totally staged conversation
with her sister, knowing the parents were going to hear it on the
nanny-cam, about how she was going to commit suicide if she didn't
get the latest Barbie doll or whatever for her birthday. She got
it. Guess what happened just before Christmas?)
If you put a camera in the kid's room, he will then honestly figure
that if he stands up on his bed at 3AM, faces the camera, and
reads it a note from his teacher that he's actually delivered the
message like he was supposed to. That may be the only communication
you get from the kid.
If they really want to go somewhere they shouldn't go, the phone
won't go with them. On the other hand, the phone might be left
in the car so it tracks Mommy instead. That tracking system to
keep the kids safe may end with the kids living in a single-parent
home.
Kids can spy, too. And blackmail. They may not have the technical
sophistication of the parents but they can also use disinformation
as a weapon - consider the kids letting Mommy overhear them plotting
to hide their drugs in Mommy's room, so when she searches she'll
find Daddy's porn collection. Then again, the kids might be able
to turn the tables on the parents. There are some households where
the "parental controls" on TV sets control what the PARENTS watch.
Some kids think that since their parents are so afraid they'll use
drugs, it's fun to see how many searches they can get the parents
to do. The parents may not know the kids have a secret code in
which "Mary Jane" actually refers to a classmate, "heroin" is a
female movie lead, and "cheese" is something you put on top of a
burger, but they let parents overhear the drug talk so they will
search and find the dead cat hidden in the closet. The *really*
nasty kids hide Daddy's gun and some drugs in his luggage when
he's going on a business flight.
>This is not to say I'm against cell phones for kids--they are an added
>convenience and safety measure. But if parents can't trust their kids
>to be truthful and resort to tracking devices, drug tests, room
>searches, IMHO there is a deeper problem and technology is only a
>Band- Aid, not the real solution.
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 12:09:43 -0700 (PDT)
From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: AT&T "Family Maps" cellphone location tracking
Message-ID: <28e35182-be37-4e0c-8697-eaba445f2fbc@e18g2000yqo.googlegroups.com>
On Apr 18, 8:50 am, gordonb.yt...@burditt.org (Gordon Burditt) wrote:
> I think the technological spying will backfire a LOT worse than
> that. Kids will learn you are tracking them. They will learn how.
> Then they will use it against you to spread disinformation. At
> this point you've blown any possibility of them trusting you. (I
> am reminded here of one kid who held a totally staged conversation
> with her sister, knowing the parents were going to hear it on the
> nanny-cam, about how she was going to commit suicide if she didn't
> get the latest Barbie doll or whatever for her birthday. She got
> it. Guess what happened just before Christmas?)
I agree. When I was a kid, the first thing any kid did after
imposition of new rules was to figure out how to break them, often
successfully.
In my high school kids were forbidden in the halls (ie to visit their
locker) between classes. They had a student corridor patrol (hall
monitor) to enforce it. Fights would develop between the monitors and
kids. Then the school abolished the rule and the monitors, and put
kids on the honor system, that is, they could visit their locker if
they did so quietly. The end result was that the halls were quieter
than before. Win win for all.
In my day if a kids parents snooped too much over phone calls, the kid
would merely use a pay phone.
As discussed separately, today there's an issue of "sexting" where
kids send risque pictures of themselves to each other. In several
locales prosecutors are bringing charges of felony illicit pron
distribution or possession against kids involved to "teach them this
is wrong". Some parents are for these aggressive measures. But most
people are shocked with the idea of charging a 14 y/o with the same
crime as an adult pervert. "Sexting" is a stupid thing for kids to
do, but it's only a small minority involved. It's a fad that will
probably die out. The real solution is for parents and schools to do
a better job of teaching kids the dangers involved.
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 14:24:28 +0000 (UTC)
From: Paul <pssawyer@comcast.net.INVALID>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Thieves in Town of Wallkill make off with Frontier's telephone cable
Message-ID: <Xns9BF16A2B17A66Senex@85.214.105.209>
Stephen <stephen_hope@xyzworld.com> wrote in
news:1arhu41m90mdk9juk199of14o6c5cf3e7n@4ax.com:
> On Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:53:49 -0400 (EDT), Steve Stone
> <spfleck@citlink.net> wrote:
>
>> This is about the fourth report of cable theft in my area over
>> the past 2 months..
>>
>>------------
>>
>
> Another good reason to put them underground?
The thieves, anyway.
--
Paul
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 12:14:29 -0700 (PDT)
From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: AT&T "Family Maps" cellphone location tracking
Message-ID: <736240fb-9fda-4312-9982-a16a32c89569@e18g2000yqo.googlegroups.com>
> ***** Moderator's Note *****
> June Cleaver is not vacuuming Ward's little trophy home anymore: she's
> hustling between meetings at mega-corp, dreading the next series of
> layoffs, taking work home all the time, and fighting physical and
> spiritual exhaustion every day. Ward's little trophy wife is as numb
> as her kids (or Ward, for that matter), and Eddie Haskel is depositing
> his drug profits to addresses in the Netherlands Antilles, to add to
> his retirement fund and in case he needs to buy his way out of an
> inconvenient truth.
The old Bell System used to employ thousands of women. True, many
telephone operators were young just buying time until they found a
husband. But women in the commercial section, such as service reps
and billing clerks, and their supervisors, were older. Likewise,
Western Electric employed women in its factories. How did all these
women deal with their families in the 1950s? The Bell System 100
years ago provided matrons and support for the young girls who worked
as operators, many of whom were away from the farm in the city for the
first time. But I don't think family support existed in the 1950s.
The Cleavers were not a typical family, they were more affluent than
most. A great many families required the women to work in factories
or offices, even in the 1950s, to make ends meet.
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 15:08:56 -0700 (PDT)
From: David Kaye <sfdavidkaye2@yahoo.com>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: AT&T "Family Maps" cellphone location tracking
Message-ID: <a63c6e5c-9abc-45c4-a35e-2aa2b93ff5da@n7g2000prc.googlegroups.com>
On Apr 17, 8:38 pm, hanco...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> Certainly, as a parent you want to do everything possible to protect
> your children (not only as kids, but forever). But the reality is
> that you can't, even with new technologies. Very seriously--how far
> are you willing to go with technology? Put GPS in the car?
They already have that. It's called FasTrak, and it's used for
automatically paying tolls on bridges, etc.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, roadside signs in various places
estimate how long it will take to get to the various airports,
bridges, and major highway intersections. What most people are
unaware of is that the FasTrak transponders are also used to track
movements of specific cars to provide information to those signs.
http://www.bayareafastrak.org/static/privacy/index.shtml
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 00:18:11 +0000 (UTC)
From: dwolff@panix.com (David Wolff)
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: AT&T "Family Maps" cellphone location tracking
Message-ID: <gsdqk3$pvg$1@reader1.panix.com>
In article <33401170-fb76-4ec7-9fa6-ba9b9cd43933@o14g2000vbo.googlegroups.com>,
<hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote:
> AT&T announced a new cellphone service targeted to parents to track
> their kids. Privacy experts are concerned.
>
> See:
> http://www.kyw1060.com/AT-T-Offers-New---Family-Plan---Cell-Phone-Trackin/4209208
>
>
> This kind of thing makes me uncomfortable. Yes, I know plenty of kids
[snip]
> ***** Moderator's Note *****
>
> <RANT>
>
> Privacy be damned: when my kid was underage, I wanted to know where he
> was, and who he was with, every second he was out of my sight.
[Extensive moderator snip]
[etc]
Geez, Bill. Are you letting PAT use your PC again? :-)
Thanks --
David
***** Moderator's Note *****
No, I was just venting. My son is a developmentally-delayed adult, and
he has always been easily manipulated by those around him, to the
extent that I no longer allow any of his "friends" in the private
areas of my home, because it turned out that when some of them
visited, things tended to go missing. I could carry on for hours about
the terrible lack of services and supports for kids like him, but
that's not something appropriate for a telecom group: suffice to say
that parents in my situation need all the help we can get, and we
learn early on to put practicality ahead of theory.
As far as location-reporting phones go, I'm all for them: I'm also all
for parents developing backbones and telling their darling little ones
that they are not yet adults and that a cell phone isn't a toy, and
that they have to make a trade in return for the convenience of being
allowed the privilege of using one. In this case, the price is having
their parents able to know where they are.
Bill Horne
Temporary Moderator
------------------------------
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End of The Telecom digest (6 messages)
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