Meet the 21st century ball and chain

So, is this a vital and valuable law enforcement tool, or an Orwellian device that will lead to greater abuses of privacy and authority?

Sandy company makes modern ‘ball and chain’

By Paul Foy
The Associated Press

On his computer screen, Randy Olshen traces the movement of Lisa Nowak, the fired NASA astronaut facing charges of trying to kidnap a rival for a space shuttle pilot's affections. ''She may have been at the mall. She goes to the mall occasionally,'' said Olshen, president of SecureAlert, a Sandy company that deployed the GPS tracking device Nowak was ordered to wear pending a trial scheduled for September.

''It looks like she's going home. This is her neighborhood. She's traveling down this road,'' said Olshen, zooming in on Nowak's tidy Houston-area subdivision. ''She's back in her neighborhood right now. She's at home.'' SecureAlert, a division of RemoteMDx, says the sky's the limit for sales of its ''21st century ball and chain.'' The so-called TrackerPAL combines global
positioning system transmitter, cellular telephone, computer processor and earsplitting alarm that triggers when offenders go astray. It can be activated for two- and three-way communication, and permits active monitoring 24 hours a day.

'They're fantastic, the best on the market,'' said Tom Eberly, jail and justice director for the Mecklenburg County, N.C., sheriff's office, which is renting 85 TrackerPALs. ''We can see in real-time where they're at. It's pretty cool. You can buzz them at any moment and talk to their ankle: 'Hey, what are you up to?'''

http://www.securealert.com/Newsroom/article.php?id=103

I mean, your cell phone needs to know where you are, so that you can be charged for roaming.

But you can turn your cell phone off.

My understanding is that some phones keep the GPS locator on even when allegedly powered off.

But it would seem to me that that would require a fair amount of power to do so, and would be a drain on your battery. And at the end of the day, you still have a choice as to whether or not you carry your cell phone with you.