Cell Phone Warns About Sexual Predators

There’s no argument from here that this world can be a dangerous place. When you’re a parent, you want to know where your children are at all times; sometimes technology can help fulfill that goal. Kelli Kennedy of the Associated Press (via The Seattle Post-Intelligencer) writes:

When 11-year-old Jessica Lunsford was kidnapped and murdered last year, Joe Dawson immediately began gathering signatures to enact stricter penalties for registered sex offenders. Now, Dawson is teaming up with a California-based technology firm to introduce the first cell phone that uses the Global Positioning System to alert parents when a child is walking near a sexual predator’s home.

CATS Communication Inc. allows parents to build a “geofence” around every listed child predator that lives within their ZIP code. The phone alerts parents through an e-mail, text message or pager if their child enters that zone, said the company’s vice president, Jon Kudla.

Linked with the Family Watchdog’s national database of registered sex offenders, the phone will update with new zones every time the a new name is added to the database.

“It’s important for parents to know when their children are interacting near those people,” said Kudla, a father of three.

The feature, which hits the market in the next 60 days, costs $19.99 a month for the first phone and $9.99 for each additional phone. It’s part of Cat Trax, a Nextel wireless phone CATS introduced last year with capabilities to track kids with a GPS chip…