Naviblogger says... Verizon and Sprint are pathetic

* A recent CIO article mentions US mobile leader Verizon has decided to start a charming new GPS service called "Chaperone" (Chaperone (SM) to be precise, just in case someone stole the name). Just look at the young girl above, so eager to be "Chaperoned" by mum and dad.

So what does the service do? Well, very simple, it uses your child's phone as a locational signal (or GPS) transmitter to find your child's location at any one time. Other US mobile phone major Sprint, not to be outdone, stressed in another article that they were really "the first to launch these services". Sprint Nextel spokesperson David Gunasegaram summed it up in a nutshell: "today's technology can be very helpful in keeping tabs on everyone"... Geez! For a minute there I thought you were talking about the NSA wiretapping.

These services are the kind of paranoid applications of technology that are the exact anathema of locational/GPS systems; these should be about finding your way easily, allowing people to share information and expression across time, space and data. Instead, husband spies on wife, girlfriend on boyfriend, parents on kids. Security industry booms? No wonder. No-one knows what it means to trust each other or entrust our children with common sense so that they can learn to take care of themselves. You got a mobile, call them. Stop this sneaky big brother stuff. We should create a Parent Alert, that warns you when your GPS phone-toting parents are about to return home on a Saturday night to find the apartment full of you and your friends partying, or warns you that your parents are still a quarter of an hour away when you're playing that really difficult level on that online game you just have to finish.

Japanese mobile phone major NTT Docomo released the same sort of application on Japan networks earlier this year under the anodyne name "Kids keitai" [kids mobile], but this time the service name just got to me, reeking of homeland insecurity. Chaperone? Give me a break. How about learning to respect, educate and give your kids a breather? Then you won't need a GPS phone to find your kids. They'll find their own way back to you. Some people call it True North. I call it Trust.