How ironic :D
How ironic it is that these devices, designed to spy on children, grooming them into accepting surveillance as a normal part of their lives, coming across as a way to "protect" them in a way that no generation of children before them needed in all the thousands of years past, actually puts them more at risk.
I honestly thought this was a joke. A device designed to track and spy on kids? No child before them has been subject to such horrible invasion of their privacy. You could argue that devices like these will help keep kids from getting lost from parents at a theme park etc where there are lots of people, the devices could help the kids and parents narrow in on each other. That seems fine. But tracking and listening in on them and whoever they happen to be with (or simply nearby) is plain creepy.
I personally know someone who came to me saying that he thought it was very creepy that Microsoft was watching his own kids internet access and emailing him reports on what his son had been up to every week. He works with me in IT.
These devices need to be banned. They should be offered out by the police to help tack and trace celebrities children following messages from a stalking fan etc, not available to the general public. They never get made correctly anyway. We live in a world of bluetooth enabled baby monitors that allow any device to connect from the street, letting them monitor (or even talk to) the kiddies or even to attempt to see if the house is empty and ripe for a rummaging.
We dont need our kids to be carrying around internet connected microphones that condition them to accept tracking as "normal" while allowing anyone to listen in on anything in the vicinity.
I can imagine so many plots for films where there is a scene where the parents send their kid to next doors kids party and use this device to listen in on the neighbors to prove they did indeed steal the giant light up snowman as a way to get back for breaking their lawnmower. Or where a kid is given a fiver to go stand next to those business men looking innocent and cute while Jason Borne gathers some intelligence from their conversation...