https://gizmodo.com/spider-man-s-pri...lee-1849346834Court-ordered ankle monitors bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in the U.S. every year. Law enforcement uses the devices to monitor more than a hundred thousand people every day, a number that’s expanding rapidly. They play a key role in American criminal justice. For such a crucial technology, though, they began in an unlikely place: a lowly Spider-Man newspaper comic from the 1970s.
The Amazing Spider-Man comic by Stan Lee and John Romia ran in newspapers across the country throughout the late 1970s. One storyline that lasted from August of 1977 into September featured the evil Kingpin, who attaches a tracking device to Spider-Man. You can blame Spider-Man for planting the seed in a judge’s mind.
Judge Love was himself the first person to wear the Goss-Link as an experiment, putting the ankle monitor on his own leg to see how it operated. A newspaper article syndicated by UPI in 1983 quotes the judge about the experience.
“It put me on a very, very short leash,” Love said at the time, even claiming that he wore the device in the shower.