Japan plans emergency cellphones for kids
Looks like there's no stopping the growing trend of using cellphones to keep tabs on children. In the latest take, 12,000 kids in Tokyo's Shinagawa neighborhood will be given egg-shaped emergency cellphones. Unlike America's Firefly phone, which lets kids make and receive calls from a preset list of numbers, the Japanese emergency phone allows calls to just two numbers, and also has an emergency function that is automatically activated when a pin is pulled from the phone. When that happens, the local police are automatically alerted, along with the child's parents and the 20 closest participants in a network of 2,000 local citizens. Sounds great for Japan, where social obligations are taken seriously; we can't help but assume that the first 20 people on the scene in the U.S. would be a motley assortment of lawyers, tabloid journos and scanner freaks.
[Via textually.org]
