The issues include both who will do the monitoring and who will pay for the program, whose costs are conservatively estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Via NBC11.com.

Over the past year or so, I’ve seen more reports of school districts using GPS for tracking school buses. I’ve often wondered what the benefits are — more efficient fleet management, improved route development, etc. But after last week’s deadly wildfires in Southern California, we see a new use.

GPS-equipped school buses can be used to shuttle emergency responders such as fire fighters, and evacuate those in need, including nursing home residents…

As reported on CNN, Heather Storke of Oceanside, CA said the fleet of school buses that normally transport children in Poway “saved my grandma and hundred of other elderly and disabled people.”

“My parents went quickly to get my Gram. The closer they got to Poway the thick cloud of smoke turned the sky as dark as pitch black night. When they arrived, there was a fleet of school buses waiting to evacuate the center’s residents whose families were unable to get there,” Storke said.

More on GPS school buses for emergency response.

Along the way, she compares and contrasts state and federal treatment of radar detectors, how these devices could be used by criminals, the ability of government to outlaw tools that can be used in committing a crime, and public safety hazards associated with use of these devices.

Some basic points:

GPS detectors

It is not technically possible to detect a GPS receiver, only those devices which transmit your position.

GPS jamming devices

Apparently, these are not illegal in the U.S., though Ms. Brenner makes a case that they can (and should be) made illegal.

GPS spoofers

She also feels that spoofers, devices which can cause false location information to be received and therefore transmitted, also warrant outlawing.

…admonished Mercedes-Benz of North America for refusing to comply with a court order to activate the car’s standard Global Positioning System so that authorities might pinpoint the sedan’s exact location.

“It’s one of the most frustrating thing in my 35 years of law enforcement,” he told reporters.

A court order police obtained at 2:30 p.m. Friday was faxed to Mercedes-Benz North American headquarters in New Jersey and to the company that provides the global positioning satellite service, Irving, Texas-based Tele-Aid.

A second court order was rebuffed as well before Mercedes-Benz of North America complied. The car was recovered (but not the suspect) only after Mercedes complied with the court orders. Perhaps a more timely response would have yielded the suspect as well.

It makes you wonder what kind of policy companies have on releasing GPS tracking information to law enforcement officials. Personally, I am amazed that they refused to comply.

Via Digg.

UPDATE: A couple of submitted (but unpublished) comments caused me to publish a comment policy.

Related post:

• 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals okays surreptitious GPS tracking by police

John Desmond, director of Suffolk’s probation department, told his staff to stop recommending GPS devices as a condition of probation because the department does not have enough officers to supervise more accused and offenders.

“Additional cases at this time would pose a serious challenge to our ability to respond appropriately to alerts,” Desmond said in the March 9 memo obtained by Newsday.

Currently, 10 probation officers working in three shifts track the whereabouts of 50 criminals and defendants around the clock to ensure they don’t go where they’re not supposed to, Desmond said.

Monitoring criminals via GPS tracking systems is a costly endeavor, and one that is likely to be labor intensive if it is to be at all effective. This is a feel-good solution for politicians, who are able to put forth bills that make for great headlines, but too often are not backed up with the bucks (or the brains) to make for effective deterrents.

These are not perfect solutions. Monitoring is key. Remember as well, that GPS tracking devices can be cut off and removed. GPS tracking of criminals does have a place, but it needs thoughtful, not knee-jerk implementation.

Related posts:

• Lifetime GPS tracking unconstitutional?
• GPS tracking of sex offenders

The measure violates privacy rights and amounts to punishment and warrantless surveillance when applied to offenders who aren’t on parole or government supervision, the professors said in a letter sent to Corrections Secretary Matthew Frank on Feb. 3.

Another issue is that while offenders would be banned from certain areas (near schools, etc.) and authorities alerted if they enter those zones, nothing in the law gives police the authority to stop them from entering them. Weird.

GPS monitoring is seen as a panacea when it comes to child molesters, but it is far from perfect. The bracelets can be removed, GPS jamming devices concocted and, unless these are very high quality devices, they may not transmit indoors. I think that many politicians are looking for an easy way to appear tough on sex offenders, but they may be lulling the public into a false sense of security.

Related post: GPS tracking of sex offenders

…they are covertly planting Global Positioning System devices on the cars of convicted drunken drivers to monitor whether they are going to bars or liquor stores in violation of their probation or parole.

They are using other high-tech equipment as well, including night-vision goggles. Police say that the surreptitious placement of GPS tracking devices is permitted under parole and probation terms, but the ACLU says they are over reaching.

The GPS tracking is actually part of an aggressive program started four years ago that includes police watching and waiting outside bars and weeknight DUI checkpoints.

Technorati tag: GPS tracking

A transit bus was was idling and unoccupied at the St. Laurent Boulevard transit garage at 3 a.m. Thursday morning, when it went missing.

But police used the satellite tracking device, or GPS, and found it at 4:23 a.m., abandoned near the intersection of Leitrim and Hall roads in the city’s far southeast end.

OC Transpo security superintendent Jim Babe said the stolen bus was one of 750 in OC Transpo’s fleet of 900 that have been equipped with GPS since the city started installing the satellite tracking devices earlier this year.

Via The Map Room

Technorati tags: GPS tracking, GPS tracking of buses, GPS tracking and theft prevention

“This technology was something that used to be 1500-2000 dollars per bus and that information was not real time,” reveals Robert Lacey, Sprint/Nextel education account manager.

“With technology it brings it down to anywhere from $200 to $300 dollars per bus for the hardware. And, $1.00 to $1.50 a day for service fee.

Technorati tags: GPS tracking GPS tracking of school buses

GPS tracking of convicted criminals is gaining popularity rapidly, but does it really work? Wired News recently explored GPS tracking of sex offenders:

But there’s a hitch: The ankle bracelets — usually accompanied by digital-pager-size transmitters — are hardly criminal-proof. Convicts can easily cut the bracelets off and run away as their probation officer gets an alarm and tries to contact the local police. For health reasons, the bracelets aren’t designed to be permanent.

“GPS will not prevent a crime,” said Steve Chapin, CEO of Pro Tech Monitoring, a manufacturer of GPS tracking devices. “It’s a crime deterrent. It has proven to be a good tool, but you can’t oversell it — there’s no physical barrier that it creates that can prevent a crime.”

Here’s a little bit more of the story:

Donald Smith, an associate professor of criminology and criminal justice at Old Dominion University in Virginia, said it’s wrong to rely on technology instead of teaching children to be cautious. “People would like alarms to go off when pedophiles go near their children,” he said. “The real problem is that the pedophile is likely to be their brother, their uncle, their cousin.”

On the other hand, a new study of more than 75,000 Florida convicts found that both GPS monitoring and old-fashioned, house-arrest electronic monitoring (the kind Martha Stewart endured) made convicts more likely to toe the line.

“Our conclusion is that it does help protect public safety, that these offenders are less likely to get in trouble,” said study co-author Kathy Padgett of Florida State University.

GPS technology is “pretty reliable,” but conventional devices often don’t allow tracking inside buildings, said Richard Langley, a professor who studies GPS tracking at the University of New Brunswick in Canada.

Conceivably, sex offenders could head to an indoor shopping mall and get into trouble without anyone knowing exactly where they are. But cell phones may help triangulate people’s positions inside buildings, even to specific floors, and Pro Tech’s Chapin predicted that his company’s GPS devices will eventually allow tracking in buildings. For now, though, his goal is to make a “smaller, cheaper, lighter product.”

Technorati tags: GPS tracking of criminals, GPS tracking of sex offenders