GPS devices offer peace of mind, but at what price?
By Suzanne Bohan, San Mateo County Times Staff Writer
When Robbie Corey, 17, discovered the small GPS tracking device his stepfather planted under his driver's seat, he was shocked. "I actually thought it might be a bomb," said the Livermore teenager.
Corey switched off the small device, watching the LED light fade. He then later confronted David Hill, his stepfather, about the strange black box he found in his 1993 dark blue Saturn.
When Hill told him he installed the GPS unit to gather evidence on the teenager's driving habits and routes, Corey was livid.
"I was shocked, I was angry, I didn't know what to think," Corey said of the incident, which occurred last summer. "I thought, 'What are they going to do next, put a camera in my car?'"
But Hill, a safety engineer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is unrepentant.
"He was running 60 miles per hour up Concannon (in Livermore) in a 35 mile an hour zone," he said. Data gathered by the device showed that Corey drove from school to friends' homes,Hill added, indicating that he was carrying passengers in violation of DMV rules for drivers under 18.
"Robbie had a major change of attitude," after learning he was being monitored, Hill said. "Bottom line, this tool made him a safer driver."
Law enforcement agents have used GPS tracking devices for years. But in the past year, a burgeoning number of businesses have begun offering the devices, with many marketing them to parents. Industry insiders predict GPS tracking devices will become almost as ubiquitous as cell phones in five years.
"GPS tracking is only touching about five percent of the market," said Brad Borst, founder and president of Rocky Mountain Tracking, the firm that manufactured the system Hill purchased. "It's taking time to realize this could make our lives a lot easier."
That's one side of the story.
Tampering with trust
While manufacturers and many parents describe the peace of mind the devices provide, others warn that GPS tracking could just as readily rupture trust between adults and their children — or anyone else unwittingly tracked.
"It turns the parent-child relationship much more adversarial, even when it's not intended," said Stephen Mintz, the co-chair of the Council on Contemporary Families, and an authority on child psychology. Mintz teaches at the University of Houston, and is currently on a fellowship at Stanford University.
"It leads parents to think there are technical solutions to human problems," Mintz emphasized.
GPS tracking also introduces yet another legal and civil liberties quagmire ushered in by high-tech advances.
State law tightly restricts the use of GPS tracking. The only person legally allowed to secretly hide a GPS tracking device in a car is the registered owner of the vehicle. All other uses constitute a misdemeanor.
But the opportunities for abuse are many, such as a doubting spouse monitoring the whereabouts of a husband or wife. "It's used as often for wayward spouses as anything," said Joe Ellsworth, founder of XDOBS and an engineer who helped develop GPS tracking technology. And in 2001, a man was arrested in Menlo Park for using a GPS monitoring device to stalk a woman.
Others are sounding the alarm over the distant threat that the devices could pose to civil liberties. Lee Tien, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, pointed out that the many hours of data recorded in the devices could potentially be used in legal proceedings. Nicole Ozer, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney, decried citizens ceding another form of privacy in the name of immediate benefit.
GPS tracking systems, usually about the size of a deck of cards, come with a range of features. The one Hill purchased is a "passive tracking" system, which lets a user retrieve data stored in the unit on a computer. Other GPS tracking systems are called "real-time," in which a person can remotely monitor the device through a cell phone or computer to get instant data. Real-time tracking requires the purchase of a monthly service plan, similar to cell phone plans.
The units come with features like built-in magnets which let them stick them to metal surfaces on a car. GPS satellites circling the globe then hone in on these devices though a series of signals, and the units log data such as speed of driving and travel routes.
More elaborate stand-alone GPS tracking systems can be connected to a vehicle's computer and programmed to monitor details such as seatbelt usage and which passenger doors were opened, added Borst, the Rocky Mountain Tracking president.
A somewhat less controversial use of GPS tracking is cell phones equipped with tracking software. In June, Verizon began offering in California its service, called Chaperone, and Sprint offers a similar one called Family Locator.
Unlike the stand-alone GPS devices, the cell phone systems usually offer no surprises for the person being tracked, as the monitored cell phone commonly issues notification of the tracking activity. Furthermore, mutual consent may be required. Sprint, for example, requires that a parent and a child both agree to the monitoring, a system Sprint calls "permission-based." To prevent misuse of the system, Verizon won't sell it online.
GPS tracking systems, whether passive, real-time or cell phone-based, share similar features. They all pinpoint the location of the device and will detect speed of travel, Real-time systems can also alert parents when the device — i.e., the person carrying it — has traveled beyond a restricted area, or "geo-fence."
"It's very reassuring"
Vicki Nodine of Redwood City signed on to Verizon's cell phone tracking system to keep tabs on Samantha Nodine, her 7-year-old daughter. Nodine works at Seton Medical Center as an office coordinator, and the device allows her to check that Samantha arrived safely after school at the home of Nodine's mother.
"It shows exactly where she is," Nodine said. "It's very reassuring. I can kind of keep my eye on her." It also alerts her
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if Samantha enters an area outside a zone established by Nodine.
Nodine said her daughter doesn't mind the device. "She kind of thinks it's cool, like 'you know where I'm at,' " Nodine said. "She gets her freedom, but she knows she gets some eyes laid on her."
Another new Verizon Chaperone customer is Patrick Wilson in San Ramon. He signed on for the system, which provides children a kid-friendly phone called a "Migo," to keep a virtual eye on his five-year-old son and four-year-old daughter.
While their children are often with them, he and his wife purchased them, "as a fun little thing to let the kids know that mommy and daddy know where you are, so you can feel safer. It's a quick check in without bugging them."
Wilson, a project manager employed by Contra Costa County, described the tracking devices "as yet another tool that as a parent you have in your arsenal."
He's not sure to what extent he'll use them as his kids grow older. But if he does keep electronic tabs on them in the future, he plans to explain why.
"This is a safety device," Wilson said. "It's not about me spying on them." Commenting on parents who use the device for surreptitious surveillance, he said: "They've lost faith or trust in what the child is saying."
For Hill, the Livermore stepdad, GPS tracking eased a troubling situation: He was seeking protection for Corey — as well as other drivers and his own financial security — from what Hill viewed as the teenager's dangerous driving.
For 20 years, Hill served as a volunteer paramedic on the East Coast. The experience left him with vivid memories that Corey's driving revived, such as the death of a 16-year-old who took a corner too fast in the Pontiac Trans Am he'd received hours before as a birthday present.
Hill also worried about his liability, recalling a friend in Virginia who sold his home in the mid-1990s to pay litigation costs associated with a teenage daughter's car accident.
"I was kind of worried about (Robbie) doing something stupid and someone taking the house and everything else," Hill said.
Hill continued to intermittently plant the device on the vehicle Corey drove, placing the magnetized unit in a wheel well, under the bumper or on a metal plate under the seat.
Laws curtail use
Both the state's civil and criminal codes contain language sharply limiting the use of GPS devices, A 2004 review of privacy and surveillance laws noted that California was one a handful of states with such laws. California legislators enacted the laws out of alarm that "the increasing use of electronic surveillance is eroding personal liberty" and that "electronic tracking without the person's knowledge violates that person's reasonable expectation of privacy," the review article noted.
In California, it's unlawful to track a person, regardless of age, without their consent, unless they're in a car owned by the person who planted the device on it. While the law is silent on the issue of informing the driver or passengers about the presence of the device, legal experts construe it to mean that consent isn't required when the unit is placed there by the car's legal owner.
The law also suggests that even minors have protection from secret surveillance by their parents, as it doesn't explicitly give parents the right to use GPS technology to monitor their children without their consent, such as dropping a tracking device into a child's backpack. No cases have been tried under these laws that would refine their interpretations, legal experts interviewed for this article noted.
Toned-down Teen
Ultimately, Hill found the device made a dramatic difference in Corey's driving behavior.
"It showed he wasn't using excessive speeds, and it showed he was going where he said he was," Hill said.
The teenager acknowledged that the GPS system changes his driving habits, although not initially. But when Hill kept confronting him with data showing he was speeding or driving outside of agreed-upon routes — Corey gave up his old ways.
"I just kind of do what he tells me to do," he said. Instead of driving during lunch — a violation of school rules — to the area with his favorite lunch spots, he began walking or riding with a friend. He also stayed at or near the speed limit, and only drove to destinations OK'd by his mother and stepfather.
Still, driving wasn't the same.
"I felt like someone was watching me all the time," Corey said. "It was uncomfortable and I felt paranoid about everything."
And his improved driving came with an emotional price. "It changed my behavior, but it didn't help the relationship any." Corey said he's still angry with Hill.
Did Hill realize the extent of Corey's resentment? "Very much so," he said. "He's a kid and he has a right to be mad," Hill added. "But he doesn't get his way."
However, Mintz, the child psychology expert, harbors deep reservations about the long-term effect of such tight monitoring by parents of children, particularly teens.
He advises negotiating the use of them. "That doesn't mean we talk and you agree what I want to do. It means we talk and we reach a mutually acceptable agreement." While Mintz recognized the value of the devices in providing a safety net for kids, he expressed continued leeriness with the monitoring aspect of the devices.
"These are meeting deeply-felt needs," Mintz said. "The challenge is to use them to not distort the relationship."
When Robbie Corey, 17, discovered the small GPS tracking device his stepfather planted under his driver's seat, he was shocked. "I actually thought it might be a bomb," said the Livermore teenager.
Corey switched off the small device, watching the LED light fade. He then later confronted David Hill, his stepfather, about the strange black box he found in his 1993 dark blue Saturn.
When Hill told him he installed the GPS unit to gather evidence on the teenager's driving habits and routes, Corey was livid.
"I was shocked, I was angry, I didn't know what to think," Corey said of the incident, which occurred last summer. "I thought, 'What are they going to do next, put a camera in my car?'"
But Hill, a safety engineer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is unrepentant.
"He was running 60 miles per hour up Concannon (in Livermore) in a 35 mile an hour zone," he said. Data gathered by the device showed that Corey drove from school to friends' homes,Hill added, indicating that he was carrying passengers in violation of DMV rules for drivers under 18.
"Robbie had a major change of attitude," after learning he was being monitored, Hill said. "Bottom line, this tool made him a safer driver."
Law enforcement agents have used GPS tracking devices for years. But in the past year, a burgeoning number of businesses have begun offering the devices, with many marketing them to parents. Industry insiders predict GPS tracking devices will become almost as ubiquitous as cell phones in five years.
"GPS tracking is only touching about five percent of the market," said Brad Borst, founder and president of Rocky Mountain Tracking, the firm that manufactured the system Hill purchased. "It's taking time to realize this could make our lives a lot easier."
That's one side of the story.
Tampering with trust
While manufacturers and many parents describe the peace of mind the devices provide, others warn that GPS tracking could just as readily rupture trust between adults and their children — or anyone else unwittingly tracked.
"It turns the parent-child relationship much more adversarial, even when it's not intended," said Stephen Mintz, the co-chair of the Council on Contemporary Families, and an authority on child psychology. Mintz teaches at the University of Houston, and is currently on a fellowship at Stanford University.
"It leads parents to think there are technical solutions to human problems," Mintz emphasized.
GPS tracking also introduces yet another legal and civil liberties quagmire ushered in by high-tech advances.
State law tightly restricts the use of GPS tracking. The only person legally allowed to secretly hide a GPS tracking device in a car is the registered owner of the vehicle. All other uses constitute a misdemeanor.
But the opportunities for abuse are many, such as a doubting spouse monitoring the whereabouts of a husband or wife. "It's used as often for wayward spouses as anything," said Joe Ellsworth, founder of XDOBS and an engineer who helped develop GPS tracking technology. And in 2001, a man was arrested in Menlo Park for using a GPS monitoring device to stalk a woman.
Others are sounding the alarm over the distant threat that the devices could pose to civil liberties. Lee Tien, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, pointed out that the many hours of data recorded in the devices could potentially be used in legal proceedings. Nicole Ozer, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney, decried citizens ceding another form of privacy in the name of immediate benefit.
GPS tracking systems, usually about the size of a deck of cards, come with a range of features. The one Hill purchased is a "passive tracking" system, which lets a user retrieve data stored in the unit on a computer. Other GPS tracking systems are called "real-time," in which a person can remotely monitor the device through a cell phone or computer to get instant data. Real-time tracking requires the purchase of a monthly service plan, similar to cell phone plans.
The units come with features like built-in magnets which let them stick them to metal surfaces on a car. GPS satellites circling the globe then hone in on these devices though a series of signals, and the units log data such as speed of driving and travel routes.
More elaborate stand-alone GPS tracking systems can be connected to a vehicle's computer and programmed to monitor details such as seatbelt usage and which passenger doors were opened, added Borst, the Rocky Mountain Tracking president.
A somewhat less controversial use of GPS tracking is cell phones equipped with tracking software. In June, Verizon began offering in California its service, called Chaperone, and Sprint offers a similar one called Family Locator.
Unlike the stand-alone GPS devices, the cell phone systems usually offer no surprises for the person being tracked, as the monitored cell phone commonly issues notification of the tracking activity. Furthermore, mutual consent may be required. Sprint, for example, requires that a parent and a child both agree to the monitoring, a system Sprint calls "permission-based." To prevent misuse of the system, Verizon won't sell it online.
GPS tracking systems, whether passive, real-time or cell phone-based, share similar features. They all pinpoint the location of the device and will detect speed of travel, Real-time systems can also alert parents when the device — i.e., the person carrying it — has traveled beyond a restricted area, or "geo-fence."
"It's very reassuring"
Vicki Nodine of Redwood City signed on to Verizon's cell phone tracking system to keep tabs on Samantha Nodine, her 7-year-old daughter. Nodine works at Seton Medical Center as an office coordinator, and the device allows her to check that Samantha arrived safely after school at the home of Nodine's mother.
"It shows exactly where she is," Nodine said. "It's very reassuring. I can kind of keep my eye on her." It also alerts her
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Advertisement
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
if Samantha enters an area outside a zone established by Nodine.
Nodine said her daughter doesn't mind the device. "She kind of thinks it's cool, like 'you know where I'm at,' " Nodine said. "She gets her freedom, but she knows she gets some eyes laid on her."
Another new Verizon Chaperone customer is Patrick Wilson in San Ramon. He signed on for the system, which provides children a kid-friendly phone called a "Migo," to keep a virtual eye on his five-year-old son and four-year-old daughter.
While their children are often with them, he and his wife purchased them, "as a fun little thing to let the kids know that mommy and daddy know where you are, so you can feel safer. It's a quick check in without bugging them."
Wilson, a project manager employed by Contra Costa County, described the tracking devices "as yet another tool that as a parent you have in your arsenal."
He's not sure to what extent he'll use them as his kids grow older. But if he does keep electronic tabs on them in the future, he plans to explain why.
"This is a safety device," Wilson said. "It's not about me spying on them." Commenting on parents who use the device for surreptitious surveillance, he said: "They've lost faith or trust in what the child is saying."
For Hill, the Livermore stepdad, GPS tracking eased a troubling situation: He was seeking protection for Corey — as well as other drivers and his own financial security — from what Hill viewed as the teenager's dangerous driving.
For 20 years, Hill served as a volunteer paramedic on the East Coast. The experience left him with vivid memories that Corey's driving revived, such as the death of a 16-year-old who took a corner too fast in the Pontiac Trans Am he'd received hours before as a birthday present.
Hill also worried about his liability, recalling a friend in Virginia who sold his home in the mid-1990s to pay litigation costs associated with a teenage daughter's car accident.
"I was kind of worried about (Robbie) doing something stupid and someone taking the house and everything else," Hill said.
Hill continued to intermittently plant the device on the vehicle Corey drove, placing the magnetized unit in a wheel well, under the bumper or on a metal plate under the seat.
Laws curtail use
Both the state's civil and criminal codes contain language sharply limiting the use of GPS devices, A 2004 review of privacy and surveillance laws noted that California was one a handful of states with such laws. California legislators enacted the laws out of alarm that "the increasing use of electronic surveillance is eroding personal liberty" and that "electronic tracking without the person's knowledge violates that person's reasonable expectation of privacy," the review article noted.
In California, it's unlawful to track a person, regardless of age, without their consent, unless they're in a car owned by the person who planted the device on it. While the law is silent on the issue of informing the driver or passengers about the presence of the device, legal experts construe it to mean that consent isn't required when the unit is placed there by the car's legal owner.
The law also suggests that even minors have protection from secret surveillance by their parents, as it doesn't explicitly give parents the right to use GPS technology to monitor their children without their consent, such as dropping a tracking device into a child's backpack. No cases have been tried under these laws that would refine their interpretations, legal experts interviewed for this article noted.
Toned-down Teen
Ultimately, Hill found the device made a dramatic difference in Corey's driving behavior.
"It showed he wasn't using excessive speeds, and it showed he was going where he said he was," Hill said.
The teenager acknowledged that the GPS system changes his driving habits, although not initially. But when Hill kept confronting him with data showing he was speeding or driving outside of agreed-upon routes — Corey gave up his old ways.
"I just kind of do what he tells me to do," he said. Instead of driving during lunch — a violation of school rules — to the area with his favorite lunch spots, he began walking or riding with a friend. He also stayed at or near the speed limit, and only drove to destinations OK'd by his mother and stepfather.
Still, driving wasn't the same.
"I felt like someone was watching me all the time," Corey said. "It was uncomfortable and I felt paranoid about everything."
And his improved driving came with an emotional price. "It changed my behavior, but it didn't help the relationship any." Corey said he's still angry with Hill.
Did Hill realize the extent of Corey's resentment? "Very much so," he said. "He's a kid and he has a right to be mad," Hill added. "But he doesn't get his way."
However, Mintz, the child psychology expert, harbors deep reservations about the long-term effect of such tight monitoring by parents of children, particularly teens.
He advises negotiating the use of them. "That doesn't mean we talk and you agree what I want to do. It means we talk and we reach a mutually acceptable agreement." While Mintz recognized the value of the devices in providing a safety net for kids, he expressed continued leeriness with the monitoring aspect of the devices.
"These are meeting deeply-felt needs," Mintz said. "The challenge is to use them to not distort the relationship."
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