Online magazine Salon has a fascinating roundup of recent developments in the burgeoning market for kid tracking. I didn’t realise that intrusive technologies are already on the market - from GPS trackers (obvious) to RFID tags sewn into pyjamas or school ID badges (sneaky). It doesn’t go into surveillance of the online experience itself which is very common - AOL has a "guardian" feature that lists:

• Web sites your child successfully visited.
• Web sites your child attempted to visit but was restricted from.
• The number of e-mails and Instant Messages your child has sent.
• Your child’s Address Book and Buddy List activity.

But at least AOL’s tools notify your kid that you are tracking them - many other addon ‘parental control’ programs do not.
Is anything permissible in surveillance as long as you are monitoring a child? The UN convention on the rights of the child includes a right to privacy. But two countries have yet to ratify it - Somalia and the US.

Update: The department’s own Prof Sonia Livingstone has written a book chapter defending a child’s right to online privacy in “Information Technology at Home” (edited by Kraut, to be published by OUP).

This entry was posted on Monday, July 25th, 2005 at 3:25 pm and is filed under Citizenship, Locative Media, Media Regulation, Privacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.