Here's some information suggesting that fear of sexual predators online might be out of hand. According to them, it's not that random or unavoidable.

A while back we were hearing stories of teens setting ringtones to frequencies that most adults couldn't hear. Now the tables are turning and there are some people who are using the same technique to chase young people away!

While very funny and an ironic twist on the ultrasonic ringtone idea, it has some legitimate drawbacks that are leading some to call for the devices to be banned.

The £500 Mosquito device has been installed at some 3,500 locations across the country since it first went on sale in January 2006. It emits an irritating, high-pitched sound that can only be heard by children and young people up into their early twenties, forcing them to move on.

(H/T to Slashdot for the link)

I've built several bears with my kids, but I always balk at the part where they're supposed to put in their information. They just don't need that much personal data about my kid. Instead, I put in MY personal e-mail address so that if it did get "lost" and recovered, they would be able to e-mail me at the least, though we'd probably just replace it anyway…

Nothing like treating people like animals to be tagged and tracked. Of course, it's much easier to start by tracking kids because they don't have much choice in the matter and when they grow up, they'll be less resistant to the practice. Enter surveillance society…

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. They portray the tests as successful, but as Bruce Schneier points out, "So now it's easy to cut class; just ask someone to carry your shirt around the building while you're elsewhere."

Or how about, "it's easy to get someone you hate in trouble by wearing their uniform for a few minutes while vandalizing the teacher's lounge."

Or "We had no idea that constantly bombarding students with radio frequencies in closed spaces during their formative years would lead to these kinds of mutations! Mrs. Johnson, you can't honestly expect us to pay to have Timmy's third arm removed can you?"

I love how companies start implementing RFID without any thought to the consequences.

Well this is different. I knew that posting online can have severe negative effects on the poster, but I hadn't considered the effect on the parents.

"Whether we're talking about dad's work secrets or problems between mom and dad with their relationship," Sgt. MacDonald said.

We asked him to show us just how easy it is to find incriminating posts. It didn't take long.

"Not only do I have to live with my nagging mom, my dad does drugs. This person, Tara, says her parents are lazy alcoholics," reads Sgt. MacDonald.

He says it's not hard for police, or employers, to uncover the identity of teens from the details in their profiles

While those people might deserve to get fired (if the teen poster is telling the truth and not just venting), the article lists another example of a mortgage broker finding out that one of his customers lost his job.

Privacy is starting to become harder and harder to protect, but also more important at the same time.

(H/T to Digg.com for the link)

In case you haven't been paying attention, kids are just as likely to be ID theft victims as adults, even more so. Because they don't have any regular financial activity and no one would ever think to get a credit report for their kids (since they shouldn't have one), the theft can go on for much longer without detection.

For those who were wondering, there were almost 30,000 sex offenders on MySpace who were computer literate enough to use the service, but dumb enough to use their real names. How many are still there using fake names I wonder.

I thought that retailers were done making sex objects out of children after that last fiasco, but apparently, I was wrong.

Though the article states that the sizes are for 18 month olds and up, the actual size chart only goes down to roughly 3 year old size (according to a pediatric growth chart I found).

That aside, there's several problems with this. First: what kind of stupid sleazy retailer values money so much that they would make suggestive articles like bikinis for kids? Second: what parent in their right mind would buy this stuff?

And you wonder why I'm a proponet of industry regulation…

Ars Technica reports on a proposed law in NC that will require parents to sign up for social networking sites (like MySpace) and become age verified before their kids would be allowed to sign up.

This is probably the best way I've heard of to prevent under-age kids from signing up and had the added benefit that the parents will have to know that their kids are using the sites. That way, parents are held accountable too.

Some of the consumer groups have published a new report documenting some of the marketing practices aimed at kids. Like this one:

KFC used a high-pitched tone as a promotional “buzz� device for a recent “interactive advertising campaign.� The MosquitoTone™ was embedded in TV commercials to launch KFC’s new “Boneless Variety Bucket™.� In its press release, the company explained that the popular cell phone ring tone “is too highpitched for most adults to hear because most people begin to lose the ability to hear high frequency tones starting at age 20. This is a fact not lost on young Americans who seek the sound for clandestine ring tones that don’t turn the heads of nearby adults.�

For those who don't realize how desperately the business world wants to connect to your kids, snare, and keep control of them, wake up! Many businesses will pull any dirty trick they can to make money.

Myspace was originally criticized for not doing so when first asked, but has now decided to cooperate. I have no problem treating repeat sex offenders as sub-citizens (because they are), but what's to stop them from just re-registering under false data?

(H/T to Privacy.org for the link)

This stuff drives me crazy. I really, really hate companies who target kids in this way.

Tantrum turns to police record.

She flailed away at the teachers who tried to control her. She pulled one woman’s hair. She was kicking.

Unless the kid has a knife or some other kind of weapon, nothing they can do could be counted as dangerous.

Desre’e was charged with battery on a school official, which is a felony, and two misdemeanors: disruption of a school function and resisting a law enforcement officer. After a brief stay at the county jail, she was released to the custody of her mother.

So your kid has a felony and two misdemeanors on record from the time they're 6? What was wrong with the normal way, calling her mother? So now this poor girl, her mother, the community, and most of the Internet all have less respect and trust for police officers. Great work Florida.

(H/T to Schneier for the link)

This is new.

Boyd writes: "By breaking up through MySpace comments, the heartbreaker is attempting to assert their view for everyone else to see so that they cannot be accused of saying something else in private."

Makes sense to me. Less emotionally involved, less likely to say or do something you'll regret. Still pretty cold though.

It now seems that the ones with the most tech smarts are the most effective bullies in schools these days.

If you thought it was hype and paranoia, you were wrong. Not only CAN they create a sensor network to track people with RFID, but they're doing it right now. Denmark's Lego Land puts bracelets on kids that lets them be monitored by the park's many sensors.

Says Katherine Albrecht of spychips.com:

On the safety side, we can't help wondering why parents would let children wander off by themselves armed only with only a tracking device, rather than watching them with their own eyes. If a child is so young or irresponsible that his parents want to fit him with an electronic nanny, what he probably really needs is for those parents to hold his hand and pay attention to him instead. Alienating, authoritarian technologies only contribute to an alienated, cowering populace, whether the setting is an amusement park, a school, a
hospital, a birthing center, or a home.

Obligation Inc. is documenting the exploits of BusRadio, a company that is producing programming intended for play on school busses. From the Obligation.org page on the issue:

These men realize that once on a school bus, children are a captive audience. Any captive audience can be exploited by forcing them to hear advertising. So Steven Shulman and Michael Yanoff developed BusRadio and were greatly aided by the venture capital moneyman Robert Davoli of Sigma Partners. As far as I can tell, this is the first time Sigma has chosen to financially back a very controversial company.