With Google’s Latitude, parents will be able to swoop down like helicopters on their children, whirr around their heads and chase them away from the games arcade and back to do their French verbs. When children swear they are having a quiet sleepover with a friend, parents will be able to plot their progress from bar to pub and send them a stroppy text.

All children need to do is to turn on their mobile and once again they will be attached to their mothers through an invisible umbilical cord. The only information parents can’t access is how many sweets or cigarettes their offspring have had after they’ve left the school gates. Until, that is, their children work out that they can leave their phone in their classroom and go sledging. Any would-be abductor could do the same, ditching the mobile in the gutter so they leave no trace. And given that children are more at home with technology than adults, who’s to say that teenagers won’t use Latitude as a convenient early warning system to prevent their parents catching them misbehaving.

Google suggests that the device is also convenient for family and friends. Every time you are near a relative’s house they can see you on their mobile radar and insist you come in for a cup of tea. Friends can find out who has stayed in for the evening and who has been invited to which party. Hostesses will have to beware.

Businesses will be able to track employees down to the hairdressers in the middle of the day. Wives could divorce husbands for switching their device off.

However Orwellian it sounds, don’t worry. The police and security services can already track you down from your phone without any help from Google, so extending the privilege to your family will only complicate your personal life, not curtail your fundamental freedoms.

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