Sprint Nextel and the Kansas City, Kan., public school district are thinking of the children. The two organizations worked together to install GPS-enabled mobile phones in the school district's fleet of school buses, which can now be monitored in real-time via computer. Cool or creepy?Citing the safety of the children as its top priority, Kansas City, Kan., Public Schools (KCKPS) outfitted its 157 buses with Motorola i265 GPS handsets. The GPS system wirelessly transmits the location of the bus in real-time to the dispatch center. With ActSoft's Comet Tracker software on the phones, the district's transportation office is able to see the location of each bus and communicate with it via the phone's walkie-talkie. The information also can be analyzed to fine-tune the efficiency of the busing operations.

GPS is the true harbinger of Big Brother. Before long, it will be in every single cell phone and many other devices. As any watcher of CSI or Law & Order knows, cell phone signals already can be triangulated to provide general location information, but GPS tells you (or law enforcement officials, the private investigator your spouse hired, etc.) exactly where you are. We'll be able to follow our loved ones via computer screen as they walk around the block or drive to work. Invasive? Maybe.

But the safety of children outweighs any privacy concerns. Parents can already choose to use a number of different services offered by the mobile operators to keep tabs on their kids through mobile phones. Granted, when I was a teenager, I would sooner have chucked my phone into nearby Lake Ontario than be tracked by my parents, but kudos to KCKPS and Sprint for taking a step to protect its students.