- For unfaithful spouses and errant employees, things may
never be the same again. A Swedish moose hunter has invented a matchbox-sized
device that can trace just about anything that moves.
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- 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.
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- Hidden in a briefcase or under the dashboard of a car,
it threatens to blow the cover of anyone who wants to keep their movements
secret, giving its owner the kind of snooping powers previously seen only
in James Bond films.
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- Called Followit, the £700 device was invented by
Olaf Lundberg, a Swede who lost his dog while moose hunting.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- "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.
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- In a demonstration seen by The Daily Telegraph, the device
tracked the position of a car to the street in Winchester where the car
was parked, even giving details of the nearest house number.
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- Followit is now being sold to parents who want to keep
tabs on their children, pet owners, private investigators, car hire firms,
yacht owners, haulage companies, and travellers concerned about losing
their luggage. It is also being offered to lone workers, such as community
nurses, who can use its panic button if they are attacked.
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- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2003.
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- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/08/
19/wfind19.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/08/19/ixworld.html
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