"Spouse Tracker 1.0" (Divorce Balance, 502)

Divorce Balance

Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Spouse Tracker 1.0

James Bond got married at the close of the 1969 film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

But it's the opening scene — in juxtaposition to this — that intrigues me today. Gadget-maker "Q" introduced us to "radioactive lint." Placed "in an opponent's pocket," it lets you track their every move.

Is this the sort of comfort 007 needed before wedding Contessa Teresa as his intentional Mrs. Bond?

Admit it: Some of you are having fantasies right now about how life might have gone if you'd been able to track your own wandering (former) spouses.

Unobtrusively. Move by move. Real time.

Do such technologies exist?

You're skeptical. Oh, sure, the Cadillac XLR your honey bought did come with OnStar. But isn't that more of an emergency sort of thing, something primarily to reach for if you run out of gas in West Carrollton, Ohio?

But then "divorce" clouds appeared on your horizon. And the XLR, along with its driver, disappeared for unaccounted hours on end. So you called OnStar to see if your Caddy could play like a Q Branch Lotus Esprit.

"Hi," you start off, ever so innocently, when the operator answers. "I hate to bother you. Um, this is embarrassing. But I forgot where I parked my car.

"Could you tell me where it is?"

Nice try.

But not exactly the personal stickiness that gives radioactive lint its appeal. Consider the wily such-and-so who leaves their Toyota in the Lodi Township church parking lot, then closes their remaining tryst distance by other means.

"What about a cell phone?" you ask. Mr. Bond may leave his BMW 750iL in the parking garage, but that Ericsson JB988 is always on his person.

You're the same way. Which leads me to ask: Did you know that your own cell phone likely has a GPS locator chip already installed? Accordingly, your wireless carrier can locate your precise location at any time, "within 50 to 300 meters."

Gulp! We're no longer talking spy games here.

How could this be? Because "Phase II" of FCC wireless Enhanced 911 ("E911") rules established a four-year rollout schedule requiring this cell phone tracking capability, with a targeted completion date of December 31, this year.

But there are also villains now in the picture.

For example, The Sun Herald of South Mississippi reported last September that a "...businessman faces stalking charges that allege he attached a cell phone with Global Positioning System technology to his ex-girlfriend's car so he could track her every move and show up unexpectedly wherever she was."

In 1964, Q chided against homing device misuse in Goldfinger : "It has not been perfected after years of patient research entirely for that purpose, Double-0 Seven."

Additionally, don't forget that the famed Austin Martin DB-5 "with modifications" in that movie actually came with two homing devices. Only one followed the bad guy.

The other was used to pursue our hero.

As divorce tactics go, the person you married may already be subject to clandestine scrutiny.

And you may be, too.

—posted by Dell Deaton @12:01 PM EST 4/13/2005 [502]