Big Mother

Big Mother

Here’s another of those Has This Person Been Reading White Rose? pieces, this time by Jemima Lewis in today’s Telegraph:

Some pestilential scientist has invented a device that allows parents to trace their child’s location via his mobile telephone. This is the latest in a rash of new gadgets designed to make sure children never get a moment’s privacy. There is the tracker watch, which uses Global Positioning System satellites to pinpoint a child’s whereabouts (and which, once affixed around the poor blighter’s wrist, cannot be removed without alerting the police). There are similar devices that can be sewn into the child’s clothing or school bag, or – creepiest of all – surgically implanted under the skin. And last month we saw the unveiling of a gadget which, when installed in the family car, reports back to parents where, and how, their child is driving.

It seems extraordinary that, at a time when children’s rights are more loudly invoked than ever before, there is not an uproar over this invasion of their civil liberties. There is no statistical justification for it: children in Britain are no more likely to be abducted by a stranger now than in 1975. It can serve only to foster parental paranoia and make children feel more hounded than ever.

Who would want to be young in the reign of Big Mother?

Often one says at this point: read it all. But that’s all of it. It’s just a diary bit in a longer piece which is about lots of other things as well. So, no need.