Putting GPS Chips in Children & Teens

[Fatalmasterpiece]

@marharth

 

Hide it where? A predator could just ditch all a child's clothing and then what good is the tracker you hid in their shoe or bracelet? I've worked as a mechanic, hardware retail and construction to name a few, and a bracelet that's supposedly "hard" to take off is a joke. It took me only 10 minutes to cut through a hardened round puck style padlock with a half inch bolt.

[marharth]

@marharth

 

Hide it where? A predator could just ditch all a child's clothing and then what good is the tracker you hid in their shoe or bracelet? I've worked as a mechanic, hardware retail and construction to name a few, and a bracelet that's supposedly "hard" to take off is a joke. It took me only 10 minutes to cut through a hardened round puck style padlock with a half inch bolt.

It shouldn't take you 10 minutes to notice your kid is missing...

[Fatalmasterpiece]

@marharth

 

Hide it where? A predator could just ditch all a child's clothing and then what good is the tracker you hid in their shoe or bracelet? I've worked as a mechanic, hardware retail and construction to name a few, and a bracelet that's supposedly "hard" to take off is a joke. It took me only 10 minutes to cut through a hardened round puck style padlock with a half inch bolt.

It shouldn't take you 10 minutes to notice your kid is missing...

 

I'm guessing your not a parent, so you may not have a lot of experience in the matter :rolleyes: . While I would love to spend every waking moment with my daughter, both her mother and I do have lives with both work and play. We do only leave her with people we trust, but of course, we cannot possibly screen every last person who may come in contact with her. It's completely possible that someone could take her when she is not with me, be gone, I be contacted by who ever was watching her that something was wrong and 5-10 minutes could go by. By the time I actually contacted the police and hauled ass to wherever the GPS told me she was? Hell, 30 minutes to an hour could have gone by, by then.

 

I'm not worried about someone taking my child when I am watching her, because I always carry a weapon and wouldn't hesitate to put down anyone who tried to harm her. What I worry about is when she is with my family, or at school, in a place where people who I don't know are around, where minutes can make a huge difference.

[marharth]

@marharth

 

Hide it where? A predator could just ditch all a child's clothing and then what good is the tracker you hid in their shoe or bracelet? I've worked as a mechanic, hardware retail and construction to name a few, and a bracelet that's supposedly "hard" to take off is a joke. It took me only 10 minutes to cut through a hardened round puck style padlock with a half inch bolt.

It shouldn't take you 10 minutes to notice your kid is missing...

 

I'm guessing your not a parent, so you may not have a lot of experience in the matter :rolleyes: . While I would love to spend every waking moment with my daughter, both her mother and I do have lives with both work and play. We do only leave her with people we trust, but of course, we cannot possibly screen every last person who may come in contact with her. It's completely possible that someone could take her when she is not with me, be gone, I be contacted by who ever was watching her that something was wrong and 5-10 minutes could go by. By the time I actually contacted the police and hauled ass to wherever the GPS told me she was? Hell, 30 minutes to an hour could have gone by, by then.

 

I'm not worried about someone taking my child when I am watching her, because I always carry a weapon and wouldn't hesitate to put down anyone who tried to harm her. What I worry about is when she is with my family, or at school, in a place where people who I don't know are around, where minutes can make a huge difference.

Ok then so if people commonly start putting chips in their kids kidnappers will know to disable them after kidnapping them.

 

Then someone has a useless implant in them for the rest of the life.

[Fatalmasterpiece]

@marharth

 

Hide it where? A predator could just ditch all a child's clothing and then what good is the tracker you hid in their shoe or bracelet? I've worked as a mechanic, hardware retail and construction to name a few, and a bracelet that's supposedly "hard" to take off is a joke. It took me only 10 minutes to cut through a hardened round puck style padlock with a half inch bolt.

It shouldn't take you 10 minutes to notice your kid is missing...

 

I'm guessing your not a parent, so you may not have a lot of experience in the matter :rolleyes: . While I would love to spend every waking moment with my daughter, both her mother and I do have lives with both work and play. We do only leave her with people we trust, but of course, we cannot possibly screen every last person who may come in contact with her. It's completely possible that someone could take her when she is not with me, be gone, I be contacted by who ever was watching her that something was wrong and 5-10 minutes could go by. By the time I actually contacted the police and hauled ass to wherever the GPS told me she was? Hell, 30 minutes to an hour could have gone by, by then.

 

I'm not worried about someone taking my child when I am watching her, because I always carry a weapon and wouldn't hesitate to put down anyone who tried to harm her. What I worry about is when she is with my family, or at school, in a place where people who I don't know are around, where minutes can make a huge difference.

Ok then so if people commonly start putting chips in their kids kidnappers will know to disable them after kidnapping them.

 

Then someone has a useless implant in them for the rest of the life.

 

According to you a 14 year old could just cut it out so I don't see why they would need to have a useless implant the rest of their life. It could easily be removed when the kid was 16, 18 or whenever. And I'm sure lots of kidnappers have sophisticated technology needed to disable a gps chip located -somewhere- within a persons body. /sarcasm.

 

However most adult men I know have a pair of bolt cutters, die cutters, tin snips, hack saw or similar device available to easily cut through even the most heavy duty bracelet short of a medieval manacle.

 

So they could disable this chip IF they could find it of course right? But wait let me guess, any kidnapper worth his salt will have one of those handy dandy xray scanners the TSA uses to tell right where the chip is, so they can find it and disable it. Or maybe they will just cut it out like you would when you were 14, no big deal? Then again by that point they might have just blasted off in their space ship seeing as how these kidnappers seem capable of anything which makes this gps chip worthless, or hell they could have just killed the kid by this point and done away with the body.

 

Wow, a lot of my post is ridiculous isn't it? The reason might be, because your reasons for disagreeing with me are ridiculous. Point being, you don't have a child and imply with your previous posts that if someone wanted something like this they -must- be a bad parent omg! This topic doesn't effect you, wouldn't hurt you and in fact wouldn't hurt anyone. I would have had no problem with having such a chip in me as long as it wasn't mandatory, was removable and had no negative side effects, none of which said chip would have. So I really don't see what your beef is. :thumbsup:

 

Want to keep watch of your baby? Be a parent and don't let them wander off. It is really that simple.

 

How about popping one out yourself and raising it for a couple years before you go and give people advice about how to be a good parent?

Edited March 29, 2011 by Fatalmasterpiece

[marharth]

@marharth

 

Hide it where? A predator could just ditch all a child's clothing and then what good is the tracker you hid in their shoe or bracelet? I've worked as a mechanic, hardware retail and construction to name a few, and a bracelet that's supposedly "hard" to take off is a joke. It took me only 10 minutes to cut through a hardened round puck style padlock with a half inch bolt.

It shouldn't take you 10 minutes to notice your kid is missing...

 

I'm guessing your not a parent, so you may not have a lot of experience in the matter :rolleyes: . While I would love to spend every waking moment with my daughter, both her mother and I do have lives with both work and play. We do only leave her with people we trust, but of course, we cannot possibly screen every last person who may come in contact with her. It's completely possible that someone could take her when she is not with me, be gone, I be contacted by who ever was watching her that something was wrong and 5-10 minutes could go by. By the time I actually contacted the police and hauled ass to wherever the GPS told me she was? Hell, 30 minutes to an hour could have gone by, by then.

 

I'm not worried about someone taking my child when I am watching her, because I always carry a weapon and wouldn't hesitate to put down anyone who tried to harm her. What I worry about is when she is with my family, or at school, in a place where people who I don't know are around, where minutes can make a huge difference.

Ok then so if people commonly start putting chips in their kids kidnappers will know to disable them after kidnapping them.

 

Then someone has a useless implant in them for the rest of the life.

 

According to you a 14 year old could just cut it out so I don't see why they would need to have a useless implant the rest of their life. It could easily be removed when the kid was 16, 18 or whenever. And I'm sure lots of kidnappers have sophisticated technology needed to disable a gps chip located -somewhere- within a persons body. /sarcasm.

 

However most adult men I know have a pair of bolt cutters, die cutters, tin snips, hack saw or similar device available to easily cut through even the most heavy duty bracelet short of a medieval manacle.

 

So they could disable this chip IF they could find it of course right? But wait let me guess, any kidnapper worth his salt will have one of those handy dandy xray scanners the TSA uses to tell right where the chip is, so they can find it and disable it. Or maybe they will just cut it out like you would when you were 14, no big deal? Then again by that point they might have just blasted off in their space ship seeing as how these kidnappers seem capable of anything which makes this gps chip worthless, or hell they could have just killed the kid by this point and done away with the body.

 

Wow, a lot of my post is ridiculous isn't it? The reason might be, because your reasons for disagreeing with me are ridiculous. Point being, you don't have a child and imply with your previous posts that if someone wanted something like this they -must- be a bad parent omg! This topic doesn't effect you, wouldn't hurt you and in fact wouldn't hurt anyone. I would have had no problem with having such a chip in me as long as it wasn't mandatory, was removable and had no negative side effects, none of which said chip would have. So I really don't see what your beef is. :thumbsup:

 

Want to keep watch of your baby? Be a parent and don't let them wander off. It is really that simple.

 

How about popping one out yourself and raising it for a couple years before you go and give people advice about how to be a good parent?

 

Its really quite annoying when people act like you need to have experience as a parent to know everything that happens with kids, that is not true.

 

You have a kid, I know. Saying "Well I am a parent so I know better" is not a valid counter argument.

 

You don't have to remove a GPS chip to disable it. There are many ways to stop the signal. Not to mention that chip locations are pretty commonly known.

 

If I was a kidnapper I would check the hands first, then the skin on the neck, then the feet. Probably over 50 percent of the time I could find the chip.

 

Not to mention a lot of cases of kidnapping will result in murder, and a chip won't help much in that case.

 

Plus the odds of your kid getting kidnapped are very low if you teach them about it.

 

Also a teen could cut it out, but it would be unsafe if a doctor did not do it, and a doctor would cost money depending on where you live.

 

If your kid is in a good school they will be watched at all times, and they will not be getting kidnapped.

 

If your doing it for babies and toddlers, I disagree with it but it shouldn't be illegal. Its completely understandable why parents would worry about losing their kids.

 

If your doing it for older kids and teens hell no.

 

I also think that it would be the legal right of the child to have it removed upon request. The age for that could be discussed.

 

 

 

In short, I don't think experience as a parent is that big of a deal in certain cases, I think the chip is OK for babies and toddlers, even if I disagree due to long term effects, and I think if a chip is put in there should be a age where the child could have it removed upon request.

[myrmaad]

While I would love to spend every waking moment with my daughter, both her mother and I do have lives with both work and play. We do only leave her with people we trust, but of course, we cannot possibly screen every last person who may come in contact with her. It's completely possible that someone could take her when she is not with me, be gone, I be contacted by who ever was watching her that something was wrong and 5-10 minutes could go by. By the time I actually contacted the police and hauled ass to wherever the GPS told me she was? Hell, 30 minutes to an hour could have gone by, by then.

 

I'm not worried about someone taking my child when I am watching her, because I always carry a weapon and wouldn't hesitate to put down anyone who tried to harm her. What I worry about is when she is with my family, or at school, in a place where people who I don't know are around, where minutes can make a huge difference.

 

This, this, this!

 

Especially because we currently share custody with her mother, who has, let's just call them "a lot of issues".

 

And Marharth, being a parent is much different than thinking about being a parent, even with the best of intentions.

 

And besides that, you're still quite wrong. An ID chip would help immensely if my child becomes a jane doe. At least I would have answers.

 

My husband reminded me last night that our dogs' chips are so tiny they were put in with a syringe.

[BlackBaron2]

It's still not a good idea for older kids or teens, if you think about it from the perspective of the child in the potential "Mommie Dearest" scenario. Babies and toddlers, yeah, but not an older kid--the potential for crazy parents (think "Tiger Mother" and paranoid fathers who want their daughters to be pure and marriageable) misusing it is still extremely high, not to mention it's kind of nuts to stick an ankle tag on a completely non-criminal teenager.

[bben46]

These tiny chips are not used for tracking, but as an ID device. The range is no more than a few feet, yards at most. A transmitter that small just doesn't currently have the power to be a true tracking device - maybe in a few years. Those implantable chips you hear about (the real ones anyway) are not GPS transmitters, but RFID passive chips that respond to an external signal to send a digital string of characters. These can be used to encode the ID of the chip, and have enough info for a very short medical history - Identifying a life threatening allergy or that the carrier is a diabetic. However, they are not (yet) gps devices and need a nearby transmitter/receiver to read them. By having enough of these short range transmitter/receivers (millions?) all networked together you could possibly locate some one, but not very likely.

 

I don't want the 'but they have tiny tracking devices in cell phones' argument because those do have an associated rechargeable power supply, antenna and support chips attached. Do you want to have to recharge your kid before allowing them out each day?

 

They are good for making sure your child or Alzheimer patient parent does not wander beyond a certain range. But not for the highly overrated and media over hyped possibility of kidnapping.

 

Here is one report of the prevalence of kidnapping in the US over one year (2007) :

"According to NCMEC, just 115 children are the victims of what most people think of as "stereotypical" kidnapping, which the center characterizes thusly: "These crimes involve someone the child does not know or someone of slight acquaintance, who holds the child overnight, transports the child 50 miles or more, kills the child, demands ransom, or intends to keep the child permanently."

 

It turns out the overwhelming majority of 'kidnappings' reported are when the other parent in a child custody dispute take the kid, the kid wandered off (lost) OR a misunderstanding of where the kid is supposed to be. Almost every time the kid is found quickly (within a few hours) and returned with no harm. The media makes such a huge deal of every real kidnapping that you would think taking children is a major industry. The upside of making a huge deal is it actually cuts down on the real kidnappings which is a good thing.

 

And so I recommend a difficult to remove bracelet which can have a more powerful transmitter, and be easy to recharge instead of the implantable low power chip which would be good for identifying a lost or recovered kid, just as it is used to identify lost or stolen dogs.

 

And before I hear about ' You have to have kids to understand ' I raised 3 and now have 9 grandchildren. :happy:

 

For those who do want a GPS child tracking device. This is the state of the art right now. It's about the size of a large wristwatch, pager or smaller cell phone (Depending on the model), and needs to be recharged regularly. http://www.brickhous...s-tracking.html

[marharth]

These tiny chips are not used for tracking, but as an ID device. The range is no more than a few feet, yards at most. A transmitter that small just doesn't currently have the power to be a true tracking device - maybe in a few years. Those implantable chips you hear about (the real ones anyway) are not GPS transmitters, but RFID passive chips that respond to an external signal to send a digital string of characters. These can be used to encode the ID of the chip, and have enough info for a very short medical history - Identifying a life threatening allergy or that the carrier is a diabetic. However, they are not (yet) gps devices and need a nearby transmitter/receiver to read them. By having enough of these short range transmitter/receivers (millions?) all networked together you could possibly locate some one, but not very likely.

 

I don't want the 'but they have tiny tracking devices in cell phones' argument because those do have an associated rechargeable power supply, antenna and support chips attached. Do you want to have to recharge your kid before allowing them out each day?

 

They are good for making sure your child or Alzheimer patient parent does not wander beyond a certain range. But not for the highly overrated and media over hyped possibility of kidnapping.

 

Here is one report of the prevalence of kidnapping in the US over one year (2007) :

"According to NCMEC, just 115 children are the victims of what most people think of as "stereotypical" kidnapping, which the center characterizes thusly: "These crimes involve someone the child does not know or someone of slight acquaintance, who holds the child overnight, transports the child 50 miles or more, kills the child, demands ransom, or intends to keep the child permanently."

 

It turns out the overwhelming majority of 'kidnappings' reported are when the other parent in a child custody dispute take the kid, the kid wandered off (lost) OR a misunderstanding of where the kid is supposed to be. Almost every time the kid is found quickly (within a few hours) and returned with no harm. The media makes such a huge deal of every real kidnapping that you would think taking children is a major industry. The upside of making a huge deal is it actually cuts down on the real kidnappings which is a good thing.

 

And so I recommend a difficult to remove bracelet which can have a more powerful transmitter, and be easy to recharge instead of the implantable low power chip which would be good for identifying a lost or recovered kid, just as it is used to identify lost or stolen dogs.

 

And before I hear about ' You have to have kids to understand ' I raised 3 and now have 9 grandchildren. :happy:

 

For those who do want a GPS child tracking device. This is the state of the art right now. It's about the size of a large wristwatch, pager or smaller cell phone (Depending on the model), and needs to be recharged regularly. http://www.brickhous...s-tracking.html

So in that case what I was saying doesn't really matter.

 

If your kid does get kidnapped they will only have a ID device, and tracking them would still require a lot of police work.

 

I still wouldn't want to put a chip implant in my kids. I don't like the idea of having a chip in them for the rest of their lives, most parents probably wouldn't even tell the kids they have a chip.

 

I think if you have a baby or toddler and you want to implant a chip, I still disagree due to long term effects. It should never be done for older kids and teens.

 

If this is about GPS wristwatches and ID chips then this is a bit different.

 

I have no issue at all with a GPS watch.