"Paige White was surprised when her parents figured out soon after she started driving last year that she'd gone 9 miles to a party, not 4 miles to the friend's house she'd told them she was visiting. It seemed to her almost as if her car was bugged," writes the San Francisco Chronicle. "It was."
The story covers a number of monitoring technologies:
SmartWear Technologies in San Diego plans to take GPS monitoring to another level in the fall, offering radio-frequency tags for children's clothing. Already in many items because major retailers use them to track inventory, the tags can be encoded with identification and even a child's medical history. A GPS component will be available next year, said company President Bob Reed.
It also includes online tracking:
Internet safety consultant and Bay Area police Officer Steve DeWarns particularly likes software that goes beyond Web filters, which keep children off objectionable sites. Newer software allows parents to track their children's Internet use remotely and can copy instant messages and online chats into e-mails that are sent to parents.
DeWarns knows a father who was tracking his 14-year-old daughter's online correspondence when he learned, while out of town, that a 24-year-old man she'd met online had bought her a bus ticket to visit him out of state. The father thwarted the plan by calling his wife and telling her not to let their daughter out of her sight.
