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PORTABLE TRACKING
DEVICES are quite possibly the next big frenzied,
change-the-world-kind-of-thing, although for all you literalists in the
audience, implanting a global positioning system in an actual living being
isn’t quite possible — yet.
Perhaps soon. In
the meantime, there are several businesses poised to cash in on the media
hysteria that has proclaimed this the “summer of kidnappings.”
One news report this week recounted the story of a
single mom on Long Island who’s received a patent for a seven-ounce
portable tracking system she initially invented to fit in her pet’s collar.
“There’s LoJack for cars,” inventor Jennifer Durst told a
reporter, “so we should have LoDog.” If her prototypes for tracking people
get off the ground, there could even be LoChild — never worry about losing
your kid in an amusement park or Costco again! And should your little
loved ones stray, your beeper or cellphone will illuminate with their
geographical data.
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 How the kid tracker
works
Then, there’s the business of
stopping the bad guys before they strike.
The state of Florida is currently testing passive GPS units from a
company called ProTech. While sex offenders on house arrest might wear an
electronic anklet that alerts police if the offender has traveled say,
outside the home, the passive devices record an offender’s movements and
are uploaded to a central system every 24 hours. |
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Richard Nimer at the state Department of Corrections said that such
technology could help law enforcement agents figure out whether any
convicted felons were at the scenes of crimes in a particular
area.
“It eliminates suspects,” he said.
“Now you can tell if any of those offenders were there at those times.”
Nimer is hoping to get federal funds to
test the program beyond the 600 units the state currently has deployed;
the cost is three times that of the old-fashioned radio frequency units
that first revolutionized the industry.
“We
think this has national implications,” Nimer said.
A public relations flack recently solicited me to write about ISecureTrac, another company that
make portable GPS systems for parolees and those under house arrest.
Illinois is testing their units. But, according to the ominous pitch
letter, “23 states don’t have the means of “monitoring the whereabouts of
dangerous criminals.”
By getting national
press attention for his client, the flack is hoping to persuade those
errant states to buy the company’s GPS units so they can monitor the
movements of their released criminals.
Company president Jim Stark told me they plan to hire lobbyists,
too, perhaps a more effective way of changing the rules of criminal
justice than through the news media. |
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The device, made available three months ago, is apparently just
under 23 ounces. (The previous iteration was literally a “ball and chain,”
company president Jim Stark told me — an actual laptop
computer.)
The bad guy (or gal) wears the
electronic anklet and a corresponding beeper-like device on his or her
hip. The unit is put into a charging station and downloads activity for
the day. That activity is monitored by law enforcement
officials.
The psychological effect of being
monitored in and of itself acts as a deterrent, said Stark.
“Say they’re supposed to go to work at 102 Maple
Street from eight to four. If they don’t go to work at the time they’re
supposed to, it’s recorded a violation,” he said.
Seven out of ten crimes are committed by repeat
offenders, but monitoring parolees and those under house arrest obviously
takes work. Both law enforcement officials and businesses seeking to
capitalize on the problem see portable GPS systems as a compelling
anti-recidivism tool. Industry groups like the American Probation and
Parole Association caution against leaning too much on such technology,
however, and making sure it’s used as just one component in
crime-fighting.
Nevertheless, Stark’s
publicly traded company continues to work with GPS.
“There’s probably more investment in how to fry French fries
than in this area” of high-tech crime fighting, Stark lamented.
Experienced crime fighters like Nimer in Florida have
seen many changes since the advent of the electronic anklet in the
mid-eighties. Those worked using phone lines and radio frequencies; now,
the location-specific mapping allowed by global positioning systems offers
new possibilities — especially as the technology’s size and price tag
shrink. “GPS does have some major significance,” Nimer said.
“We’re trying to attack the problem, because we have
overcrowding in prisons,” Stark said. “No one is capping the amount of
crimes that can happen.”
Except in the
fantasy world of Steven Spielberg, that is. Until someone finds a way to
wipe out crime entirely, at its root, or until we all come equipped with a
GPS microchip, it’s good to know technology is being tested in this way
for crime-busting.
 Alter: Who's taking the
kids?
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GPS
devices that fight crime
