Trusty old rover, man’s best friend, now can be tracked, recorded, monitored, and analyzed.

So much for trust and friendship. Love of pets apparently will soon include a feature-rich surveillance system.

A company called SNIF is leading the charge, according to the NYT:

The tags contain computer chips to detect a dog’s motion inside and outside the house. “When the dog is out,” said Noah Paessel, chief executive, “the computer on the tag is running and collecting information on walking and trotting, and storing it in memory on the dog’s tag.”

When the dog returns home, the data stored on its collar are beamed by radio to a nearby receiver connected to a home computer and then to the company Web site for analysis and display.

The tags can also be used for networking. (The company’s name, by the way, stands for Social Networking in Fur.) If dogs wearing the tags meet, the chips on their collars exchange identifying signals, Mr. Paessel said, and a record of the meeting can be kept on the server. If they wish, the owners can then contact one another, too.

Nearby receiver, eh? Sounds like someone could easily track their entire pet-owning neighborhood. On a positive note, if the system has non-repudiation and data integrity controls your dog can be proven innocent more easily.