Wherever the Chips May Fall Originally posted in Unzen Koans on September 3, 2002

Following what appears to be a recent spate of child kidnappings and murders, some British parents have begun to express enthusiasm for a proposal to implant digital identification and tracking devices in their children [CNN, September 3, 2002] that could begin as soon as the end of this year. The surface appeal is clear: pop a computer chip in your child, and you can have peace of mind knowing they’ll be quickly and easily tracked down before they come to harm in the event of kidnapping.

If only the answer to a parent’s ultimate fear – having their child stolen by a stranger – was so simple. It strikes me that in seeking a “quick fix” in our busy, socially isolated, computer-saturated and increasingly agoraphobic world, parents are unwittingly overlooking the unprecedented legal and social implications of such measures.

Let’s play ‘devil’s advocate’ for a moment, and look at the issue on a purely practical level. Child abductors may be sick and evil, but let’s not make the mistake of thinking that automatically makes them stupid. Criminals also follow the news. While a national ID implant program might deter the casual or impulse offender, couldn’t a determined abductor also obtain a scanning device - like those used to identify lost animals with implants - to quickly detect the presence of a tracking chip in a child’s body?

A resourceful kidnapper could probably locate, extract, and destroy the chip within minutes of abduction, then proceed with the crime. If a criminal is capable of stalking, raping, torturing and murdering a child, what is there to stop them from cutting the implant out of a child’s arm, leg, collarbone or anywhere else? All we are left with forensically are possibly some traces of blood and tissue; then again, if the kidnapper is careful, maybe not even that. In such a scenario, the chip’s usefulness in tracking down a child falls to virtually zero.

Then, consider who will have access to your child’s tracking information? Will it be solely you as the parent? Will it be your local police department, or a new or existing governmental agency – or as market trends indicate - a private ‘rent-a-cop’ security contractor? Remember: computer-savvy criminals could also get their hands on tracking data and use it to locate your child. The media is filled with stories of digital information getting into the wrong hands: identity theft, confidential personal data being sold for marketing purposes and so forth, and there is no reason to believe similar abuses would not occur here.

We may begin ‘chipping’ children out of simple parental fear for their safety, but why not then implant chips in the handicapped or Alzheimer’s patients, so we can track down Grandma or Grandpa if he or she wanders away from home? This method also seems like it would be a simple, cost-effective way of keeping track of convicted felons’ whereabouts; far cheaper than boarding them in overcrowded prisons. More disturbingly, in the wake of 9/11 proposals are being bantered about for using implanted ID chips in place of INS “green cards” to track foreign nationals’ movements, ostensibly to prevent future terrorist attacks. There is no evidence that this measure would have the desired effect, since the identities of both the September 11 terrorists and passengers on board the doomed jets were clearly known, and there is no computer chip available yet that can track bad intentions. Thank goodness.

Additionally, there is a crucial moral and ethical difference between implanting identifier chips in pets and expensive gadgets and in using that technology on human beings. The possibilities are wide-ranging and alarming, and far too involved to discuss in detail here. Nonetheless, we should – and must – discuss the possibilities, before they are someday forced upon us, most likely with little fanfare or forewarning. Overall, the benefits of ID chip implantation are far outweighed by the potential for negative misuse.

What is most worrisome about these scenarios is how easily fear can make us collectively lose our better judgment, and how parental and patriotic instincts can be manipulated to potentially allow governments to adopt measures rivaling our wildest dystopian nightmares. It may not happen in the United States first, but events in the U.K. predict that within a few years, we could have the advent of sanctioned digital tracking implants in a major Western country.

Sounds like conspiracy-theory paranoia? Alarmist dogma? The technology to begin such a program exists today, and fifteen or twenty years from now mandatory ID “chipping” may not seem like such an alien concept, but rather a ubiquitous “reality of modern life” like driver’s licenses or ATM cards. Folks on the vanguard might actually enjoy having the latest high-tech toy that lets them pay for purchases by scanning a ‘tagged’ body part. We may even come to welcome implanted ID devices for their convenience or security, as history has repeatedly shown that over time people forget and can adapt to almost anything. Beginning to use a new technology and enacting laws to make that use widespread are relatively simple: it’s stopping when things go too far that becomes far more difficult.

Those frightened U.K. parents need to realize that in trying to secure their children’s safety through radical new technologies, they could be robbing their children and grandchildren of some of the freedom and dignity they themselves enjoy today. Here, in a nation where freedom is our most cherished value, we mustn’t let sensationalist headlines and the glittering promises of new technology blind and veer us away from common sense, into the grasp of an intolerable future.

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