ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the impact of other technological solutions on safeguarding scenarios, and shows how legislation is perhaps not always the best place to provide requirements specifications. It looks at the compliment to filtering – monitoring. Monitoring has evolved from a school-centric technology to one that is also pervasive in the home and into the online familial ecosystem. Within the school setting, the basic Uniform Resource Locator/keyword monitoring has been superseded with other more active/pro-active platforms that can work at a far more sophisticated level. The concept of safety is interesting in this context – the justification for the use of increasingly oppressive monitoring is that it is needed to assure safety. Monitoring does raise some interesting tensions between safeguarding and children’s rights. The UK celebrity Jamie Oliver recently promoted the use of tracking technology, saying it was a “brilliant” way to ensure his children were safe when they were away from the family home.
