No, thanks, Sprint: Not for my family

Maybe it’s the fact that my children — 4-year-old triplets — are too young to leave the house alone, never mind find trouble on the wrong side of town, but spying tools such as Sprint’s Family Locator Service just give me the creeps.

Sprint was to formally unveil the GPS-based service today and is reportedly the first wireless provider to offer its own flavor of this tool for the worrywarts and paranoids.

“It’s not about tracking.  It’s not about monitoring,” Dan Gilmartin, Sprint’s marketing manager for location-based services, told the AP.  “It’s about giving parents and caregivers peace of mind that they’re able to find their children’s location.”

Sorry, Dan, but that’s the stuff you don’t want to step in when visiting a farm. It’s all about tracking and monitoring. It’s all about spying on young children.

And can’t you just imagine the false-positive problem here. Little Johnny goes to Billie’s house instead of Jimmie’s house: Crisis ensues. The school bus has to take a detour: Call the cops. Use your imagination.

Seems to me this is a classic case of our parents being better off for not having had such advanced technologies.

Right, right, right: Check back when my kids are teens — maybe I’ll be singing a different tune. I sure as heck hope not.