GPS tracking sneakers?!

Status
Not open for further replies.
F

FieroCDSP

Member
Joined
Nov 12, 2006
Messages
2,146
Location
Wooster, Ohio
I think this is more of a BIG Brother issue, but I'm sure after they hit the mainstream, it'll end up with legal rammifications.

http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a/gps-sneakers-can-track-people-in-trouble/20070209105509990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001
GPS Sneakers Can Track People in Trouble
By KELLI KENNEDY
AP
MIAMI (Feb. 9) - Isaac Daniel calls the tiny Global Positioning System chip he's embedded into a line of sneakers "peace of mind."


The adult version of the GPS sneakers cost $325 to $350. An upcoming plug-and-wear version will let people transfer the GPS device from an old pair to a new pair of the shoes.

Talk About It: Post Thoughts

He wishes his 8-year-old son had been wearing them when he got a call from his school in 2002 saying the boy was missing. The worried father hopped a flight to Atlanta from New York where he had been on business to find the incident had been a miscommunication and his son was safe.

Days later, the engineer started working on a prototype of Quantum Satellite Technology, a line of $325 to $350 adult sneakers that hit shelves next month. It promises to locate the wearer anywhere in the world with the press of a button. A children's line will be out this summer.

"We call it a second eye watching over you," Daniel said.

It's the latest implementation of satellite-based navigation into everyday life - technology that can be found in everything from cell phones that help keep kids away from sexual predators to fitness watches that track heart rate and distance. Shoes aren't as easy to lose, unlike phones, watches and bracelets.

The sneakers work when the wearer presses a button on the shoe to activate the GPS. A wireless alert detailing the location is sent to a 24-hour monitoring service that costs an additional $19.95 a month.
Click to expand...

How soon before those sneakers jump up to bite us in the A**?
 
If it's small enough to put in a shoe, it's small enough to put in a grip,
buttstock or foreend. Have a flash-track feature so the battery isn't
always on. Disabling it, gets you a felony, just like removing a serial #.

Remember, ppl, it's for the kids.
 
Well for this case, sounds like a good idea. Should be a waring though to us that some crazy bug brother type ideas could actually be possible. For example, remeber the "Running man" movie. Skip the primitive thing around the neck in the movie. Put the thing in inside the persons body. If they are not suppossed to be where they are suppossed to be, that little bit of explosives next to heart goes off. Put them in everybody. No one breaks curfew and lives to tell about it.
Creepy, isn't it?
 
Actually, a friend of mine has a teenager with Down's syndrome. Kid isn't all that high functioning either. Can't really talk, etc.

But he likes to go for walks, and loves to swim. The swimming part isn't that much of a problem - they have their own pool. Problem is that they've got to seriously lock down their house at night, or he'll wake up and go wandering... Something embedded (or able to be locked-on - the kid does NOT like bracelets or necklaces) would be a definite plus.
 
Yer Kidding, Rite?

. . . how would this be any different than an engraved
serial number?
Click to expand...

Let's pretend for a moment that this is a serious question.

A serial number will allow you to determine when something was made, by whom, and if the item has been registered, who owns it.

A GPS transmitter will allow you to determine where the object is at all times. A digital track map of the item's movements would be trivial.

Probably the greatest invasion of privacy of all time, short of implanting a GPS xmitter into the actual person.

Of course, this would require serious monitoring and database infrastructure. At great cost. Huge. And a monster staffing requirement. Paid for with the taxes you pay. Which would essentially double.

So, what's the difference?

Lemme think. No, hold on, I'm thinking . . . I'm thinking . . .
 
Man, some of you guys are just way too paranoid. Not everyone is out to get you, believe it or not. Sometimes these things actually help catch bad guys. It would be nearly impossible, and highly illegal, for the government to track anyone, or their guns, against their will. Remember, GPS's require batteries. That means they won't be attached to your gun. Ever. Do you think they'd make a law that says you must change the batteries in your gun every 30 days so that it can be tracked? Hardly. As it is now people who are on perole with GPS tracking can cut them off and throw them away at any time...and then they disappear.

And what, exactly, are you doing that you're so afraid of someone finding you? I couldn't care less if someone was tracking me. That would be a really boring job.

Most new cell phones already have a built in GPS, by the way...better go put on a foil hat.
 
Let's See

And what, exactly, are you doing that you're so afraid of someone finding you?
Click to expand...
  • Smoking.
  • Eating trans-fats.
  • Crossing the street in NYC with headphones/cellphone.
  • Standing in a bar that you think is a restaurant.
  • Standing "suspiciously" near a school, eating your lunch.
  • Waiting to pick someone up at the airport.
  • Meeting fellow gunnies at the cafe -- next to a bank.
And, of course: something that hasn't even been dreamed up yet, but which will criminalize an activity we all take for granted today.

By the way, you do know that GPS provides more than just position? You can get a vector from it. That includes speed. Now there's a new dimension in speed traps.

Famous last words: Well, if you don't have anything to hide, why would you worry?
 
Smoking.
Eating trans-fats.
Crossing the street in NYC with headphones/cellphone.
Standing in a bar that you think is a restaurant.
Standing "suspiciously" near a school, eating your lunch.
Waiting to pick someone up at the airport.
Meeting fellow gunnies at the cafe -- next to a bank.
Click to expand...

A GPS has no way of knowing WHAT you're doing, only where. :rolleyes:
 
You're right

That's what the camera up there . . .
. . . yeah, right up there, on that pole . . .​
is for.

And, if you're standing "suspiciously" close to a school, a cluster of you are "next to a bank" Federal Officer Friendly won't know and will therefore have to come check on you. Just in case.

And, of course, when they review the GPS records after something bad happened within a hundred yards of where you were standing, you waste an afternoon explaining to the gendarmes what you were doing there.

Of course, government never does stuff like that.

Ever.
 
Not That It Matters . . .

It probably won't impress anyone here, but one of my little specialties in the world of information is something called "data warehouses" and the processing of the data stored therein.

Data warehouses are repositories for whole gobs of data that mostly just sits there until someone comes along with a bright question of the form: "Hey, I wonder if there are any interesting relationships among data barn A and data barn B as they relate to shopping habits?"

And then we embark on a kind of digital safari, called "data mining" to see what we can discover.

One day, in Phoenix, the boss handed me a summary report from [large hotel chain] corporate office and said, "there's about $3 million in discrepancies between these two summaries; see what you can find." It took me three days to figure out which data was involved. It took one afternoon to craft a Perl script that could ask the questions. It took less than a minute for the script to run, against more than 30 GB of data, and determine the location and cause of the error. This was a relatively routine chore given to a relatively mediocre contractor (me). They reserved the "heavy guns" for the more urgent and important stuff.

It would bother me a great deal to know that a collection of my coordinates with timestamps were stored in a repository of this sort, along with those of 50 million other gun owners, waiting for the day that some bright agent walks in and and poses a bright question.

Fortunately, I've discovered that copious layers of tin foil will interfere with the processing of large quantities of data like this.
 
My day

Thinking about this thread got me to thinking about the electronic footprints I left today.

I awoke to a cell phone call at 7:10am.
Entered an entry code at my storage place at 12:20pm.
Entered exit code at 12:35pm.
Paid at Family Dollar at 12:48pm with debit card.
Paid cash at video monitored convenience store at 1:13pm.
Made cell phone call at 2:20pm, 2:49, 3:50, recieved 2 cell calls between 4 and 4:45pm, all from home.
Clocked in at work at 5:15pm.
Every delivery run I made (pizza delivery) is clocked in and out, with addresses I went to computerized.
Clocked out at 9:10pm.
Logged onto computer at 9:45pm.
Since then, every keystroke retrieveable.

All that monitoring of my movements available on an island of 7,500 on a slow day. I can only imagine the monitoring in a big city with cameras in every business, traffic cameras, etc.!

Thankfully, my new job, that starts in 2 weeks, will require me to be totally off the grid for weeks at a time in the backwood swamps of SC!
 
Quote-

"It would be nearly impossible, and highly illegal, for the government to track anyone, or their guns, against their will."

But, unless you have a Nokia or a Siemens, they can already do it through your cel phone. Learned that on THR.

Since we now have the Patriot Act, and the War on Terror to contend with, wouldn't the Gubment just cite one of those as justification? Seems to work for small town cops who want to search your car, right?
 
And what, exactly, are you doing that you're so afraid of someone finding you?
Click to expand...

<>

Read history books. They are replete with examples of people who were mass murdered by their own governments. I am sure that many of these people thought there was no reason to fear their governments until it was too late. Think how much more effective the Holocaust could have been if the Nazis had had access to GPS.

It is not a tinfoil hat thing, its a history thing. History has a way of repeating itself. <> Do you consider it impossible for genocide to occur here?

Now certainly, I do not believe that voluntary placement of GPS devices is a threat. The problem is that over time, more and more products will contain them, and sooner or later some benevolent politician will decide it would be best for us all if their use became mandatory.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
For the moment, let's assume that in the name of benevolence, all manner of common, everyday items can be tracked, one way or another. RFIDs, GPS, and total interconnection of data-transmision systems. E.g., Wal*Mart's scanner-cameras and computerized systems are all connected to some federal data bank, as well as all other stores--plus the on-street cameras. You Will Be Safe.

Okay. Time marches on as time is wont to do, and we morph into the sort of government that does the abuse of power thing as spoken of in the Preamble as the original reason for the Bill of Rights.

How does any protesting group deal with some future version of a KGB?

It's one thing to view such a future as "unlikely" or "highly unlikely" but I get nervous when anybody says, "Can't happen."

There is a reason why we should be involved, personally, in the political process--far beyond just griping on the Internet. If we are, we don't have to worry much about abuses of power.

Art
 
Based on experience with my mother, who had Alzheimer's and had a strong tendancy to wander off in the blink of an eye, I think there could well be some valid applications for this device.
 
Remember Seatbelts?

Racing drivers used them for two reasons:
1) they got faster lap times since the belt held them in their seat,
2) certain accidents were more survivable with them.​

I listened to an interview with one of the first drivers in racing to use a belt. The other drivers laughed at him, called him a sissy.

He turned in a faster lap time, and attributed it to the stability of his driving platform, due to the belt. Suddenly it wasn't about the safety any more, it was about lap times. Everybody wanted a belt.

Safety was good. Safety is always a nice bonus.

And then auto makers offered them. And they were a good idea. And many people had them installed.

I had a set installed in my 1964 Ford Zephyr. With bench seats, it was the only way to get an edge on those tricky little English back country roads.

But, since anything that's a good idea is worth making compulsory, we had to have a law about it.

Now you can't buy a car without belts. Or airbags.

If I took the time, I could probably come up with a list of "good ideas" that are now compulsory.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this isn't liberty or freedom as originally envisioned.

But, as a nice socialism/fascism coctail, it does okay.
 
Last edited:
Incrementalism. Usage creep. Non engineered applications.
No matter what euphemism you use technology invariably gets drafted into uses for which the designers never intended. GPS tracking abilities is one that has grave ramifications for freedom. If the government always knows where you or your car or your guns are they can use that information against you.

Knowledge is power, the government wants to know everything about you and your property. They then intend to apply that power to further their goals at the expense of freedom.

Government is like cancer, it can't help but grow at the expense of the host body. Unless you cut out the cancer, a painful and risky endeavor for sure, survival of the host body is unlikely. We the people of the US are the host body. Washington is the cancer. We are fast approaching the terminal stage of our illness. History shows that a society that cannot control the actions of those that govern are condemened to be ruled instead of governed.
 
Now you can't buy a car without belts. Or airbags.
Click to expand...

I don't like having an explosive device sitting in front of my face. I tried to find a car shop to remove mine, but none will do it. Not only that, but if I do it myself, it will trip the "check engine" light on my vehicle, which is an "automatic fail" for the mandatory yearly inspections required by the DMV.

I love living in a free country!
 
:rolleyes: Oh this is good. Now what about the ID chip the socialists want injected in every person in America. In my area, you buy an animal from the pound, you don't get the chip option, because it's not an option.

It's for my health records in case I get into an auto accident, wink, wink. Oh yes, we can track your every move, but that's not what this is all about...wink, wink.

As a voluntary item sure, for the wandering kid, alzheimer patient who can't find his way home, even for my dog that may get out of the confines of the back yard, sure. But as a mandatory issuance on every person in America, yeah right, why'd my cellphone just do that, that code is not in the book.....eegads, where did all those black helicopters just come from, I'm only cleaning this AR rifle and you guys just kicked my door in. How did you know I was out of ammo, so kind of you to drop by...:rolleyes:

To think our government is benevolent is just wrong and the cancer analogy mentioned is spot on. I remember freedom, my grandpa use to talk about what it was really like. Just because your not paranoid does not mean they are not out to get you.
 
For those who say that "mandatory" won't or can't happen, I just note that some twenty or thirty years back I'd never have believed we'd have the Patriot Act or the TSA.
Click to expand...

Bingo, Art, and with the current AG, the fedgov can just argue that there's
nothing in the Constitution against tracking of firearms (GPS or otherwise)
and it does not infringe on the right to keep and bear arms anyway.....

Replacing 10 year lithium batteries in a stock, grip, or foreend would be like
renewing a CCW/FOID card. BTW, these things wouldn't need an "always On"
feature to be effective. There could also just be gateway/scanner activation.

Fed Officer just drives around beaming his scanner at your car, house, etc.
It would all be legal, of course, under an Executive Order or Presidential Signing
Statement.....;)
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

L
  • Locked
Good Grief. I hate my State.
2
Replies
29
Views
1K
Standing Wolf
S
M
  • Locked
GPS Tracking of Suspects Requires Warrant, Court Rules
Replies
2
Views
627
FedDC
F
J
  • Locked
Using Satallite Tracking to Tax Drivers in Oregon....
2
Replies
30
Views
2K
Fatcat
F
P
  • Locked
A personal version of "Big Brother"?
Replies
6
Views
586
Futo Inu
F
N
  • Locked
Ban Assault GPSes NOW!
Replies
4
Views
1K
Blackhawk
B
Back
Top