Putting GPS Chips in Children & Teens

[ita]

WizardOfAtlantis: Knowing exactly where your kids are doesn't necessarily prevent them from getting access to things like teen sex, drugs and alcohol, unless you know exactly what the kids are doing in any given moment. The tracker might show their position to be at a perfectly legitimate place, like school, but how can you be sure that they're not buying weed or moonshine from some business-minded classmate? :ninja:

[WrathOfDeadguy]

Point one:

 

There are too many questions. Just because technology exists does not mean it can be responsibly used- gps tracking will likely not be used half as much to find missing children as it will be to track their every move and keep them from getting into the sort of "trouble" that goes along with growing up. Parents worry about their children. They should; that's their job. However, a large part of becoming an adult is learning to exist independent of your parents. Learning to be responsible when you're not under supervision is a necessary step towards maturity, and knowing that you're always under supervision would be terribly detrimental to that process. As I like to say, a person not trusted to be responsible will never feel the need to be.

 

Point two:

 

Chipping your pets is one thing- pets do not have rights. Domesticated pets have lost most of their survival instincts and if they run away or get lost they are likely to die. If they lose their collars they cannot be identified by a stranger when they are found; they cannot tell anybody who their master is or where they live.

 

Chipping a human being? Being a parent gives you the right to make most decisions on your child's behalf, but permanent medical procedures usually require the consent of both the parent and the child. Implanting an RFID or GPS chip is a permanent procedure; allowing it to be forced on a child without their consent would establish a dangerous legal precedent beyond the issue at hand here. What about other procedures- plastic surgery for example?

 

Nevermind what happens when the child reaches majority- do they have to be informed about the chip, or can a parent have it implanted when they're too young to voice an objection or understand what's happening? Is there a way to remove the chip, and if so can the implanted individual insist on having it removed at their parents' expense... or do they have to eat the bill if they no longer want to be tracked everywhere they go?

 

Point three:

 

Better crime-prevention technology only makes smarter criminals, it does not stop crime. In fact, it often makes it harder to prevent crime when that technology fails. Stick a GPS chip inside a metal cage and it stops working. Install such a cage in the back of a panel van and all of a sudden getting a victim off the grid is as easy as forcing them into the vehicle.

 

Technology breeds complacency. People who have remote car lock keyfobs don't check their locks as long as they hear the beep. People who use navigation systems get lost when they have to take a detour that isn't on the map. I'm willing to bet that there are quite a number of parents out there who would implant GPS chips in their children and abandon the notion that they should actually supervise their kids- perhaps rather than walking their 10-year-old to and from school, they'd let the kid go alone and keep tabs on their location via the family computer? After all, Junior must be safe as long as we know where he is!

 

Some technology is good. I agree with giving a child a phone to carry in case of emergency. I do not believe that implanting children with GPS chips is a good next step. Not only has the law not caught up with the technology, its implementation given current societal trends could be downright dangerous because of the complacency it could feed.

[myrmaad]

While I have my own doubts about this, this is no permanent medical procedure. The chip can be easily removed and the RF signal only lasts about 20 years anyway. It doesn't even necessarily leave a perceptible scar. I have a big vaccination scar on my upper right shoulder. Big deal. If I was locked in the trunk of some killer's car, I'd be thanking my lucky stars i had such a chip.

 

 

I assume most of you who are horrified still live at home.

 

Here's some more of my very special angel spam.

 

http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c117/SeaBlossom/Family/th_lucy15months1.jpg

[ginnyfizz]

I assume most of you who are horrified still live at home.

 

Yes I do, actually, after all I am only (almost)fifty, and have a mother with Alzheimers who is apt to wander, but I would be horrified at the idea of her being Big Brother chipped. It is mine and Dad's responsibility to look to what she is doing and keep an eye on her, actually spend time with her. I would be equally horrified at the idea of kids and teens being chipped and I cannot see that it would be productive to do so. After all, as other posters have said, it would lead to complacency rather than vigilance.

[bben46]

@Ginnyfizz

Chips are already used on Alzheimer's patients. However in a diferent way, Usually instead of being implanted they are worn on a bracelet that cannot be easily removed and an alarm is set for when they wander out of a specific area. The boundry can be the front door, or the end of the yard.

 

The purpose is not to control their every move, but to allow an overworked caregiver to know when their charge has wandered beyond a preset boundary.

 

My grandmother had senile dementia, similar but somehow different from Alzheimers. several times she wandered off up the street where she had lived most of her life and got lost within a block of her home. Twice she was picked up and brought home by the police when my aunt - who was working in another part of the house and didn't even know she had left the house. A GPS of this type would have prevented that.

 

I can see putting a GPS bracelet on a toddler when you have them is a place where they could get lost - such as a large park (devices like this have been around for about 10 years now) But if you keep it on as they get older, once they get old enough to know better they will resent it. And that will lead to them finding ways to defeat the device as they get older. - Another side effect might be to accelerate their problem solving skills in figuring out how to defeat it. :tongue:

[CommanderCrazy]

After reading what Bben wrote, I still dont like the idea of an implanted chip, but the idea of a small, difficult to remove bracelet with a chip in it could be a good idea.

 

It would allow you to keep tabs on them, but it could be made to look like any ond piece of jewelry. After all, technology is getting smaller and smaller every day.

Edited March 17, 2011 by CommanderCrazy

[WizardOfAtlantis]

Wouldn't it be great if the debate forum was actually used to debate facts? Apparently that is way too much to ask and why I will never take a debate here seriously, this thread is a prime example of why. Don't want to spoil your party, but the chip would not be put into their brains. If you're going to attempt to debate something, couldn't you at least debate the reality and not some far-fetched rumor?

 

My dogs actually have these same gps chip devices inserted just beneath their skin in the fatty tissue on the back of their necks. The day your child is abducted you might think about it a bit differently. Certainly that's my own worst fear, but does it justify chipping a human being.. I just don't know.

 

In a human this tiny grain-of-rice sized microchip is inserted by an authorized medical practitioner or surgeon in the fatty tissue below your right tricep.

 

http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c117/SeaBlossom/th_baby.jpg

 

My animals have the chips, too, so I for one know where they are in them. A drug-addled sociopath/kidnapper might not, and that's without them hearing about some rumor that the chips are at times put into people's heads (whether it's true or not of course). Off-kilter people do off-kilter things. Who knows?

 

WizardOfAtlantis: Knowing exactly where your kids are doesn't necessarily prevent them from getting access to things like teen sex, drugs and alcohol, unless you know exactly what the kids are doing in any given moment. The tracker might show their position to be at a perfectly legitimate place, like school, but how can you be sure that they're not buying weed or moonshine from some business-minded classmate? :ninja:

Lol, moonshine. That's a good one. http://www.thenexusforums.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/laugh.gif

You couldn't, of course. I was only illustrating the reasoning behind such thinking. "Oh, you were at Billy's house last night, huh? You told me you were at Shelly's. Well, obviously you have something to hide, so you're grounded, young lady, for three months!" kind of a thing. I don't agree with it, of course. I don't agree with chips or cybernetic implants or anything like that, personally (for healthy people).

 

Speaking in Gamma World terms, I vote for Pure Strain Humans...though I would personally still be friends with mutants.http://www.thenexusforums.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/yes.gif

 

 

I assume most of you who are horrified still live at home.

What's that supposed to mean? I'm almost 40 years old and I live at home. My home, 10K miles away from where I was born.http://www.thenexusforums.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/tongue.gif

 

Bben46 brings up a good point. I kind of like the idea of chips hidden into clothing somehow is a clever adaptation of the idea for where it's appropriate. Shoes, shirtsleeves, stuff like that.http://www.thenexusforums.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/thumbsup.gif I just don't like the idea of them being IN people.

[myrmaad]

That's simply supposed to mean that the majority here probably aren't looking at this from a parental perspective, strictly from a demographics standpoint.

[WizardOfAtlantis]

That's simply supposed to mean that the majority here probably aren't looking at this from a parental perspective from a demographics standpoint.

It is a rough issue when you're talking about your kids, I totally agree with you there. The whole implant thing just creeps me out, strikes me as *wrong* in some fundamental way.

 

 

As to what can be done with a chip in someone's body...military technology is far, far ahead of what gets dribbled-down to the civilian sector, and tha'ts not a theory. I have no idea what could be done. Inserting a chip that could release nanotech-like hormones, dopamine, whatever, into the bloodstream isn't far-fetched, for example. Not to say that this is "real" or anything like that, just to point out that the possibilities for mischief are great, indeed.

[ginnyfizz]

I hear what you're saying, bben46. Dad and I are certainly overworked carers. But in my experience, both old folks with dementia and kids are capable of getting into just as much bother when they are right under your nose, as they are when they go a-wandering. GPS tech couldn't stop the old love putting the electric kettle on the ceramic hob and switching it on, it would make no difference to the child who is abused by a person known to them. Nor would it stop naturally curious Junior from playing with Daddys power tools, playing Batman and leaping off the garden fence - things that I have caught my nephew doing.

 

No-one is denying that children and young people do get abducted and attacked. But we tend to emphasise stranger danger when, in fact, the danger is more likely to come from closer quarters.