Followit

Ever since my first outdoor cat, Otis, spent the night outside, I've been wondering about tracking pet whereabouts. Seems like someone else has been, too:

"A Swedish moose hunter has invented a matchbox-sized device that can trace just about anything that moves. Using mobile phone text messages and satellite navigation technology, the surveillance gadget can reveal its location to an accuracy of 10 ft in 140 countries... Called Followit, the £700 device was invented by Olaf Lundberg, a Swede who lost his dog while moose hunting. Mr Lundberg's brainwave was to find a way of squeezing the workings of a GPS satellite navigation receiver and a mobile phone with a battery and two aerials into a box that he could strap to his dog's collar.

Richard McPartland, director of Tel Trak Technologies, based in Winchester, Hants, who developed the device with Mr Lundberg, said that after using it to track his dog, Mr Lundberg decided to sell it to other hunters. 'At first he sold it through hunting magazines, but then he found it was being used by truck companies to monitor the movement of their drivers through Sweden,' he said."

Tracking pets, prey, people, what's the difference? There oughtta be a law, and one day there might be. You can lump it in with the problems that ubiquitous cameraphones present in lockerrooms and private residences ... instantaneous distribution of someone's image or location against one's wishes may not be illegal now, but that's because the average joe hasn't had his whereabouts posted on the web yet.