In the offbeat British crime drama Life on Mars, grizzled Mancunian police detective Gene Hunt parks his prized Ford Cortina and snarls at a nearby group of children, “anything happens to this motor, and I’ll come round your houses and stamp on all your toys!” The threat works: The car remains unharmed, and he rewards them with a hail of loose change. Germany’s Federal Network Agency, the Bundesnetzagentur, seems to have taken DCI Hunt’s methods to heart: following an earlier prohibition on certain “smart dolls,” the agency recently issued a blanket ban on children’s smartwatches that offer an audio link, and ordered parents to destroy any watches they had already bought.
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Image credit: Kārlis Dambrāns