Most GPS devices tell you where you are and how to get where you're going. But there are other uses for global positioning technology - such as keeping track of other people and safeguarding your possessions.
Consider the gadget I've been testing for the past few days. It is a bit smaller than a paperback book, and if you hide it in the trunk of your car - or someone else's - you can log onto a Web site and call up a map showing exactly where your car is. Or where it has been, and how fast it was going at the time.
It is no surprise that the manufacturer calls the device "GPS Snitch." That is exactly what it does, and remarkably well, if you are willing to part with $400 for the Snitch itself and at least $15 a month for the privilege of snooping with it.
You can use the Snitch as a security device to alert you when someone tries to make off with your car - and then track its location while you call the cops. That makes it a competitor to the LoJack, a radio-based anti-theft gadget that has been around for years.
Anxious parents can use the Snitch to track a teenager's comings and goings ("Don't tell me you were at the library, kid. The Snitch says you drove to the pool hall. And you were speeding on the way!")
If you have a particularly nasty turn of mind, you have made the next logical connection - the Snitch is the perfect high-tech snooping tool for suspicious husbands, wives and lovers. And for narcissists who want everyone to know where they are, there is a social networking component that allows friends to locate one another's Snitches on demand.
At this point, I'll concede a certain ambivalence about this gadget. I have no qualms about using it to help recover stolen property, or to keep track of a forgetful, elderly relative's car.
But its very name - Snitch - sounds like a New York Post headline about an informant inside the Gotti family. If nothing else, the name implies that we are so used to having our privacy invaded that we are willing to invade someone else's without a second thought.
And with that in mind, and in hopes that if you buy one of these devices it is for the right reasons, I will continue.
Manufactured by Blackline GPS Inc. of Calgary, Alberta, the Snitch occupies the intersection of two technologies. One is the Global Positioning System - the array of U.S. government satellites that enables people around the world to locate themselves precisely with cheap receivers, including some cell phones. The other technology is the cellular telephone network itself.
