People-tracking phones

If you'd like to know more about global-positioning-enabled phones, SafeKids.com's Larry Magid surveyed the scene for the New York Times. He looks at the various child-tracking phones and services from Verizon Wireless, Sprint, Disney, and Wherify, as well as social-mapping services by Helio and Loopt that are very cool but not really for kids because they actually map users' physical location (with the users' permission). But on the flipside of this tech marvel is a story out of Australia illustrating the privacy concerns involved in countries where consumer privacy isn't a top priority. Australia's national security agency and "law enforcement agencies will be able to track the movement of people through their mobile phones secretly, without obtaining a court warrant, under new laws, legal and civil liberty groups are warning," Australian IT reports. Meanwhile, in the US, on the Web, and as privacy concerns grow, search engine companies are tightening their privacy policies, the Washington Post reports.