Loss of Privacy

Ford has a system in their Ford Focus cars called MyKey, which can keep track of what your children are doing. It can now also block them from listening to certain radio stations as well.

Starting next year, parents will have the option to block 16 Sirius radio channels from the car’s dial, among them Howard Stern, Playboy, and Hip-Hop Nation. Optional radio censorship isn’t the only new feature for MyKey, which allows owners to program a key to fit their specific level of paranoia — the new version allows parents to set top speeds between 65 and 80mph, instead of the previous fixed cap of 80mph.

Other controls carrying over from the original system include a chime that sounds at 10mph intervals, starting at 45mph, and an advanced notice when fuel levels are low. The new features will come standard issue on the 2011 Ford Taurus and Ford Explorer, and will eventually reach across both the Ford and Lincoln brands.

One way children can get around the blocks is simply by taking their parent’s key. System defeated.

If your child is old enough to drive, they should be old enough to take on the responsibilities of driving a car. If you do not trust your child with these responsibilities, then do not let them drive.

The service is optional, for now. Once insurance companies start giving major discounts for having it installed, it will become a defacto installation in cars for younger drivers.

I can see how this will eventually become standard on cars, but it’s a huge distraction. It’s going to cause a lot of accidents.

I wrote a little over a year ago about new Ford trucks that were available with ToolLink and RFID.  It allows owners to keep track of their tools via RFID.  Here’s a rundown on the costs.

Ford trucks now keep a running tally of what construction tools are back on board and which may have been left on the job site. It’s part of Tool Link, a $1,120 RFID tag option for Ford trucks. That sounds like a lot until you leave a $1,000 sliding compound miter saw on the job site overnight and it’s not there in the morning. Ford developed Tool Link with DeWalt. You get a 50 ID tags (in DeWalt yellow, of course) that you apply to tools, an RFID scanner and software for creating a database, and two RFID antennas that go in the truck bed and monitor what’s onboard and what’s missing. You monitor the tool status via the Ford In-Dash Computer. One button press brings up a screen that shows what’s missing that you had on board earlier in the day.

While it’s meant for construction tools, there’s no reason it couldn’t be used, say photo or video equipment. A carbon fiber tripod can cost $500-$1,000, a pro’s digital camera or HD camcorder many times that. You don’t think anyone could be so stupid as to leave a digital camera on the work site, when you bring two or three, those things can happen.

While it’s a lot of money for such a system, when weighed against constantly having your tools lost or stolen on a construction site, it might just be worth the investment.