Point - Counterpoint: Digital Angel in your Children Personal Commentary9/6/2000; 10:27:09 PM You may recall the Digital Angel. Dan Gillmore engaged in a point-counterpoint debate with a collegue about whether or not they would put one in their child:

• Mike Langberg: I would do it in a minute as a way to protect my child.
• Dan Gillmor: Electronic leash would undermine our values.

I side 1000% with Gillmore.The generation gap of the sixties is nothing compared to what this would cause. Children can't be kept on a leash; can you imagine what will happen when a generation of parents seriously tries? It's always dangerous to guess what sociological effect something will have, but this seems plenty plausible to me.On a more practical note, why not fight parental fear with parental fear: Will your child really be more safe with this perfect location data floating around the computer networks... or will pedophiles, kidnappers, and internet stalkers thank you now that picking a child to attack is a simple matter of running a query on the data to see what children are alone when and where. (They will get this data, even if it means getting a real job doing something legitimate with this data. This data will be leaked, it's too valuable to protect.)You must understand that destroying these devices will be possible. A well-designed device should be effectively unspoofable (although don't bet the child on the first ten or twenty iterations of the technology), but they will always, always, always be able to be silenced.Now, you've given the attacker a big pointed arrow straight at your kid, and the attacker has destroyed that arrow behind him. Where's your gain?