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Wireless isn't magic! beware snake-oil ...

How would you like a foolproof device for tracking a young child, anywhere in the world? As long as they are outdoors, not locked up in a van or a shed or a cellar, and with their hands free, GPS is bound to work ...

Professor Kevin Warwick of Reading University was recently pilloried on these pages for implanting a chip into an 11 year old girl "to keep her safe from abduction" - we pointed out that without a battery, this chip was just an inert lump under scar tissue.

Of course, you can fit a child with a tag - equipped with Global Positioning System, too. And it can be given a GSM phone circuit, too; so if the child panics, all they need to do is press two buttons and - in America - the phone dials 911. And you can't easily cut it off, either.

The Wherify device is based on American legislation requiring mobile phones to be locatable (such phones aren't available in regions outside the US and Canada).

It needs to be noted: this will work just fine as long as the battery isn't flat, the wearer is able to get a "fix" on enough GPS satellites, is in coverage of an American PCS cellular phone mast, and has both hands free. In other words, cruel though it may be to spell this out, a child gagged and bound in the back of a van or in a cellar, will be as completely untraceable as any other child; and a dead body buried under two feet of earth with one of these tags on will quite possibly remain there until scavengers smell decomposition and dig it up.

Wireless only looks like magic.