So many of today's media seem oblivious to what GPS and tracking really is. This just irks me no end, since in many cases GPS has been around longer than the writer-reporter has been, the writer probably has more education than I have, and, at the practical level, GPS is just not that hard to get. Anyway, rant switch off, here's a news team who did a good job:
http://www.wbir.com/news/news.aspx?storyid=23766
Many people think GPS has been tracking prisoners for years. truth be known the 'ankle bracelets' so popular and widely known for years are just proximity devices. The bracelets send signals to a base station, normally mounted near the monitored person's phone. If the monitored person leaves the proximity of the base station, the base station dials the monitoring agency and provides them the incredibly useful news that the monitoree is no longer there.
If a person came to me with a business plan to build and sell such a limited system I'd fall out of my chair laughing .. it's about as useful as a two-wheeled tricycle. real GPS devices like the WBIR news team profiled actually track where people are ... seems somewhat more useful to law enforcement from a non-law enforcement person's perspective.
The TV report clearly illustrates web-based monitoring, including the use of a GPS-related technology called "geofencing". law enforcement can draw a 'fence' around places that the monitoree should not be (like maybe schools for sex offenders) and around places that a person should be, like perhaps work places for a work-release monitoree (or a school for parents to monitor their teens, but he that is a different rant).
Very nice job by the WBIR team and if this post mostly seems like Chinese, you should visit the link and see how well it's explained.
Dave
http://www.satviz.com/
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