Kindgo
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Nov. 5, 2002
Debatable microchips may keep Big Brother watching
Child-tracking devices spark concerns about safety and infringement of civil liberties.
When eight young girls were abducted and murdered in a span of just seven months this year in the United States, a number of terrified parents considered investing in $400 personal locators that children could wear like a bracelet.
When a pair of 10-year-old British friends were found slain two weeks after disappearing from their hometown, the efforts to protect children went a step further.
Some question whether it’s a step too far.
Kevin Warwick, a cybernetics professor from the University of Reading in England, is in the process of developing a tracking microchip for children. If the technical details are worked out — and if the necessary medical ethics committees approve — he plans to implant the device under the skin of an 11-year-old volunteer before the year is over.
Warwick’s proposal sparks much debate over how far parents — or society — should go in the interest of safety.
To Paul and Wendy Duval, whose daughter, Danielle, is slated to become the first recipient of an implant, the chip makes about the same amount of common sense as a safety belt or a car seat.
Others view it as the trapdoor to an Orwellian society conveniently hidden behind a nation’s fears for its children.
Charles Ess, director of the Interdisciplinary Studies Center at Drury University, thinks the potential for loss of freedom should be a critical concern for parents who might consider such a device.
And the professor of philosophy and religion doesn’t think that occurs to Warwick, who Ess met last December when he attended a computer ethics conference in England.
“He’s a very interesting guy and he means well, but he is also far more enthusiastic about using technology to sort of save us from ourselves than others would be,” Ess says.
“In the current climate, if I were a parent with a kid living in a big city, I might think about it pretty hard. But also in the current climate, because of the sort of losses of civil liberties we’ve experienced, I would worry about this kind of technology being used in ways that are not so free or democratic,” Ess says.
Whether parents would place a tracking bracelet on their child, or choose an implant, “there’s always the possibility for abuse,” Ess says.
Perhaps Warwick’s idea isn’t so frightening among European societies, where checks and balances may be stricter than in the United States, he suggests.
“But Americans, as a group culturally, tend to embrace technology more uncritically than other folks. An uncritical embrace of technology does open the door to abuse from all sides,” Ess says.
The idea of an implanted microchip device isn’t far-fetched. For years, tracking devices have been used in cars and for tracking prisoners.
Implanted microchips also have been around for years. Pet owners long ago embraced implanted microchips so a lost pet could be identified if found. And current technology allows microchips to convey medical information.
In the United States, Applied Digital Solutions Inc., a 9-year-old company specializing in technology miniaturization and data collection, recently announced that it had been awarded a patent for “Passive Integrated Transponder Tag with Unitary Antenna Core.” The patent covers “sub-dermal, radio frequency identification” technology — in other words, a chip that goes just under the skin and broadcasts information using radio frequencies.
The commercial application called VeriChip is being tested as a definitive form of personal identification for humans. In May, a Florida family became the first consumer users of the VeriChip — to store medical data. This chip, which is about the size of a grain of rice, can hold six lines of text information. The current generation of the VeriChip can’t be read at much distance.
Part of what bothers people about a tracking microchip is that it would actually be implanted under the skin of a child’s arm or stomach.
It wouldn’t necessarily require a surgical procedure, however. Microchips used to identify pets are injected under the skin, similar to a vaccination. It’s uncertain whether the same method would work for Warwick’s child-tracking microchips, expected to be about an inch long — twice the size of those used for pets and many times that of the VeriChip.
First, the English scientist has to develop a working chip. The chip he proposes will emit radio waves through a mobile phone network and beam its location to a computer.
If Warwick or others are successful, it probably won’t be long before parents on this side of the Atlantic are clamoring for it.
Legal and ethical issues may prevent it from becoming available in the United States any time soon, however, predicts Cheryl Erwin, an assistant professor of family medicine who specializes in biomedical ethics and medical humanities at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine in Iowa City.
And the benefits would need to outweigh the risks, Erwin says. That means weighing the miniscule threat of a child being abducted against the chance of hurting a child by implanting an unknown, untested, unproven device in his or her body.
“I think this is totally unacceptable,” Erwin says. “I think this would never happen in this country — at least not until we have a good deal more information.”
Many civil libertarians, child safety experts and even parents view the tracking microchip as a massive overreaction to a numerically small problem.
According to FBI statistics, the number of reported child abductions by strangers has dropped from 134 cases in 1999 to 93 in 2001. In the first half of this year, there were 46 child abductions reported nationally.
But Danielle Duval, the 11-year-old who is signed up for the first implant, appears to be all for the idea.
“I think it’s going to be really good,” she told CNN. “It will make me a lot safer than I would be without it.”
Sheila Wegenka has three children ages 2 to 8. She’s cautious about anything new, but doesn’t completely dismiss an idea or technology that could keep kids safer.
“I always welcome new research like this. But I would really have to see all the research on it and have a lot more information,” she says.
Still, Wegenka says she isn’t really all that concerned for her children’s safety in Springfield.
“Springfield is one of the safest places to live,” says Officer Matt Brown, spokesman for the Springfield Police Department.
“The fear factor isn’t as big here, as if you were living in a larger city where the crime rate is a lot higher. I think if we were to see an increase in (child abduction), we might hear a bigger outcry that we need something else.”
He’s skeptical about anything implanted under a child’s skin. And it would need a well-proven track record before law enforcement would give it a stamp of approval, he says.
Brown doesn’t think parents in this area would go to such extremes. And as a father, he wouldn’t consider it for his young children.
What if it ended up in the wrong hands, he asks.
“How are we to know that the bad guys can’t access that tracking device also? They’d have to guarantee that it’s a dedicated system and couldn’t be invaded upon.”
That’s exactly Ess’ point.
Though it’s hard to quarrel with anything that can save children’s lives, he says, “As an engineer, (Warwick) doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about all the possible implications of his work.”
Warwick, who has a reputation for being a maverick, seems less an advocate for his device than devil’s advocate.
“There is an infringement of the liberty of the individual, but some children have died and some children are still missing,” he told CNN. “If this technology can help save a few lives, if you’re the parent of a child who is affected, then you would want such an implant. If you were the child yourself, you would want this. The technology is with us. Why shouldn’t we use it?”
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God bless,
Kindgo
Inside the will of God there is no failure. Outside the will of God there is no success.
Posts: 4320 | From: Sunny Florida | Registered: Jun 2002
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