John Dark from SPOT here.

For a more current example of how SPOT can be used to publicly track someone, check out how this team is using SPOT in a search for Steve Fossett's location. They use SPOT for public tracking, and as an archive of search locations. You can track them as they search in real time and it's very interesting to see the ground that they're covering. We have posted a note and link to it over at our blog: http://findmespot.wordpress.com/2008/07/17/spot-used-by-teams-searching-for-steve-fossett/