Peace of mind when they ask to borrow the car

Some parents are adopting new technology, like GPS monitors, to track their teenage drivers.
The New York Times

The story "Peace of mind when they ask to borrow the car" published November 3, 2007 at 9:09 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

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[drifted]

Good idea....but

Am I the only one that is a little bit worried by all of this GPS tracking nonsense? While it seems like a good idea now, these devices have the potential to be seriously abused. The first problems are that companies are notorious at protecting their interests and not their consumers.

Case 1: imagine a customer forgets to pay his bill, or had a missed payment for whatever reason; he then tries to use his car to get to work and finds that his car has been 'locked down' because of a payment failure.

Case 2: The Bush administration has been secretly and overtly pursuing methods of continuously monitoring US Civilians. We don't need another way for the government to snoop on its citizens (telephones are a prime example!). Imagine mandatory GPS trackers....

Case 3: Insurance companies - besides being 'legal crooks' and hardly paying up as it is, imagine if all cars had to have mandatory GPS tracker units and not being able to get insured without one... Then the insurance companies start (no doubt already are) monitoring individuals driving patterns and gradually assessing who is an insurance liability. The insurers would be able to put all sorts of ridiculous conditions on your insurance, e.g. not being able to drive in certain areas because its a 'liability'....

Wake up and smell the coffee people. Orwell was right (read 1984 by George Orwell to know what i'm on about). We are all going to wake up one day and wonder where did all of our liberties go?

[fiyyazp]

totally agree

i totally agree that there is great potential for abuse....but that doesnt mean steer clear of this technology..just be cautous of what your government is doing. Vote Ron Paul 2008..

[wp enterprises]

Arif

If you hate american way of life so much why are you here and speculating and whining about it? Go back to arabia

Perhapse if the big bad bush administation would have had GPS monitoring on the airplanes, we would have noticed they were off route in time to start evactuating the towers, or shoot down the planes

Are you actually a US citizen? Or do you consider yourself a US civilian? Or do you only consider yourself a US civilian when its conveniant and other times a foreign national?

What proof do you have that the Bush administration has been "secretly and overtly pursing methods of continuously monitoring US Civilians" ? The only case where this might be true is such a case where unfortunately a terrorist or islamic extremist has come to find himself or herself in the position of a US civilian, this indeed is the governments fault, fore it is their responsibility to protect the good of all citizens from the threat of islamic ji-had.

When speaking of liberties, what is more important, the good of the one whacked out terrorist, or the good of the great united states. United We Stand, God Bless Us.

[Dab12]

dat's bullshit

you must can't trust your child if it adds up to all that and when your child finds out they are going to flip on you i hope u know that and that's all u got 2 say

[sadchild]

great for toddlers, elderly, autistics, alzheimers

great for toddlers, eldery, autistics, alzheimers etc.

if you bring 4 kids to a mall, use I-On-Kids Locating System.

if your grandpa lives with you and has alzheimers, use UBI-4000.

for pre-teens, use Gemtek GPS Child/Elderly Locating Device with 2 phone numbers you can program into it.