NEWS: Perverts Tracked by Satellite!

GEEK: Perverts Tracked by Satellite!

Sex offenders in my home town of Bolton in the UK are to be tracked from space as part of a new scheme launched today. The system will be used to prevent convicted paedophiles -- who will be wearing a satellite GPS tagging device -- from going near playgrounds and schools.



The system will alert police immediately if an offender enters an exclusion zone. The system also tells the police the exact location of the offender 24 hours a day.

good idea fuck them guys.

seems like a small step from forcing pedophiles to wear these to making everyone who's some kind of risk, dissident or otherwise unwanted to wear one.

wouldnt it be more respectfull to create some kind of system that just warns when they get in range of a playzone rather than tracking them 24/7?

[Edited on Sep 06, 2004 11:28AM]

Wow, what an unbelievably creepy and useless idea.

So the UK criminal justice system has this little faith in itself?

It's hard to find much sympathy in one's heart for sex offenders, particularly those of the pedophiliac variety. But it doesn't take a whole lot of imagination to see how this could rapidly become a really, really bad idea.

It also sort of flies in the face of the whole idea that once they've served their time, a criminal has paid his or her debt to society. I don't know if that's the way punishment is viewed in the UK, but at least in the US we pay lip service to it. But being subject to a form of constant surveillance seems to me to be a continuing, indefinite punishment (not to mention an incredible invasion of privacy.)

Eight year-olds, Dude.

The surveillance is part of probation and/or parole, meaning that the offender is still in the process of serving their time.. they're just not locked up behind bars anymore.

Did anyone here about the pervert who tracked his ex girlfriend with gps and a cellphone under her car? So they always run into each other? And he was only caught because he had to change the battery on the phone and she saw him doing it. The lengths these hi-tech pervs will goto now a days. Whatever happened to the good ol' telescope and hand lotion?

No, exclusion orders are, or can be permanent. The UK system of Parole and probation is not the same as ours. Regardless, the idea that they're still in the process of serving time is rather disingenuous. Parole is not punitive, it is preventive. It is using the excuse of past transgression to modify and monitor future behavior. We pretend that its some sort of reward or privilege but that not true in practice. Every criminal court judge knows how to calculate actual time served. This is disturbing because it is using the emotional response to the currently most reviled members of our society as the emotional nexus as the foot in the door to erode liberty. Note the title of the thread is "perverts" not batterers or juvenile delinquents. What the use of this technology does is merely create the means to more efficiently round up the usual suspects. What is going to happen is not the police intervening in a sexual predator kidnapping. What is going to happen is "Someone stole a car radio on Main Street, bring in all the punks who were in the area for questioning."

[Edited on Sep 06, 2004 by reprobate]

I'm all for this idea. That pedophile is an incureable disease has been proven enough times that I personally believe a convicted pedophile has eliminated a great deal of his/her rights.

Basically, this boils down to protecting the rights of convicted felonies, or protecting the innocence of children.

In my book, there is no question who should be protected in this scenario.

Didn't read the article, did you?

You know how many false positives this kind of surveilance is going to generate?

Sounds like a waste of money.

that make me giggle. it would totally rule if they got a numbing shock when they wanted to go near a playground.

only problem is that those poor pedos would never be able to swing on a swingset again!!!

While I agree that pedophiles (and I mean true pedophiles, not some guy who picked up a girl at a bar, only to find out she's 16) are the worst, lowest rung of humanity, and deserve any punishment they recieve, this is a horrifically bad idea. This is getting into a really scary form of crime prevention. Tracking the whereabouts from space of a certain group of people, no matter how disgusting they are, is plain and simple the grossest invasion of privacy I've ever heard of. If you really think that it will stop at preventing pedophiles from going near schools or playgrounds, you're kidding yourself. I doubt it will take too long before it delves into more serious forms of tracking. I mean, maybe it's just me, but I don't want the government knowing when I go and buy porno.

Not that keeping them in jail wouldn't be a better idea but bravo! If america did this well that would be an excuse to raise taxes!

well depending on the type crime that was commited I would agree a better system needs to be implemented.

because in the united states the sex offender registration deal isn't cutting it the offender can just simply not register after the intial one and get away with it in most cases.