Big Brother Is Watching You (Really.)

The state of Delaware (with a federal grant of $346,619) begins use of GPS tracking to keep tabs on juvenile offenders under house arrest. Saving anti-surveillance pundits the trouble, the company selling Delaware the tracking services is actually named Big Brother Monitoring.

Comments

[Jim Walsh]

Finally, truth in advertising!

-JW (expatriate Delawarean)

[The Lonewacko Blog]

I'm having trouble getting outraged about this particular scheme. I'd be more worried about things like Laidlaw and Geospatial Technologies equipping schoolbuses with fingerprint scanners, especially the bit about how the school district hopes to get a Homeland Security grant to implement this wacky plan.

[kmw]

"There are just populations in every state that GPS is not good for," Welch said. "An offender who failed to pay child support is not a good fit, but a convicted sex offender is."

Hmm, I'm glad there is such great judicial oversight on the use of these devices.

What happens when we start using these for tracking foreign visitors? Anti-war protesters? Where does the line get drawn for legitimate and illegitimate purposes?

What happens when it becomes impossible to use contraband without the gov't knowing about it? We already have over 2 million inmates.

This looks like one of those slippery slope hypotheses that are frequently bandied about. I?m not sure what to make of it.

[Warren]

The problem, is that everybody loves Big Brother.