Smart Computing has an article about a field test of the Wherify Wireless GPS Personal Locator for Children, a wristwatch-style device with a GPS receiver and PCS transmitter that can be “locked” onto a child’s wrist and send periodic updates to a web server about the location of the device (and, presumably, the child). Parents can login to the site and see where the device was last detected. While the reviewer describes the technology as “promising”, the testing revealed a number of shortcomings including discomfort and lack of security in the wristband “lock”, short battery life, and significant lapses in tracking updates.
The article portrays the Wherify device as a potential solution to parental anxiety over “an apparent rise in the number of threats to our children. Stories of child abductions, bus hijackings, and school shootings fill headlines.” People are notoriously bad at assessing risks, and I suspect parents are among the worst demographic groups in the ability to accurately assess risks (though ongoing revelations about the assessment of risks by the Bush administration may suggest another, smaller, demographic group that is also “challenged” in this respect).
Even if Whereify worked [better], it’s not clear whether it would have much impact either as a deterrent or recovery mechanism. I’ve often wondered about the efficacy of such measures in protecting non-human valuables (e.g., posting signs alerting prospective burglars to the presence of home security systems or marking / tagging valuable objects); perhaps the primary value of such measures is simply to reduce the anxiety of the people who employ them (i.e., the placebo, or perhaps, pacifier, effect) … whether such an effect is intended by US foreign policy makers is left as an exercise for the reader.