Cell Phones and Privacy Assignment 3b

I don't think prepaid phones should be banned. There are plenty of legitimate reason for them to be used. I currently use one im my household for my son. It is an easy way to make sure he doesn't go over his minutes every month and it is also a way for me to budget our finances by know exactly what we will be spending on voice services for the month. I'm sure plenty of other parents or cell phone users use pre paid phones for these types of reasons.

They are also used by people who have bad credit that need phones in order to live their daily lives. There are also many organizations that rely on donations in order to function which use them. Some are even used for battered women in order to call authorities in emergency situations. I feel the legit users of prepaid phones far out weighs the bad users and they should not be outlawed without coming up with viable options for those who use them legitimately now.

Location tracking Assignment 3b

The thought of location tracking for children is an interesting idea to say the least. I have a 3 year old daughter and the thought of losing her in a crowd or having her kidnaped is quite scary to think about. Though it is not quite scary enough for me to support or put my support behind any legislation requiring tracking chips to be placed under her skin. I have seen much simpler solutions (or my wife has shown me a few) that are far less intrusive. One of them being jewelry that she can wear when we go out which has a tracking device in it. The device can be located with a hand held device the parent can carry on their person. This could also be useful for children with parents that suffer from Alzheimer's or even their caregivers.

Besides the simpler solutions I aso don't believe having a device permanently implanted is a good idea for anyone this day in age. Simply due to the opaque nature of agents of our own government. The NSA seems to have no problem violating its own citizens rights so who's to say what they would do with the information gained by having tracking devices implantes in the general population? They seem to have the anonymity to get away with anything they would like to do now with minimal resistance. I think the possibility of an agency like that having access to your where abouts 100% of the time is a bit scary.

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I'm posting this for my CS408 class at the University of New Hampshire. You can read more about the class here if you like. Enjoy my future rambling...