Children are not animals. While they may wander it is a parents job to keep careful watch over them and teach them how to behave correctly. I don't think it's necessary to have a computer chip implanted in your child. Yes, it may be beneficial if the child gets lost, or in the horrifying case that the child is kidnapped. But do parents really need to have a chip in their kid when they are playing in the park or are at the grocery store? They should be responsible enough to watch their own kid, therefore I don't believe there is a huge benefit to it. The risk would be if someone that you didn't want knowing your child's location locked on to their GPS. Someone could easily track your child if they were after your child, or thiefs could easily associate your schedule and when your house is empty with the location of your child (for example, identifying when you're at the park so they know your house is vacant). In this day and age of computer hacking that could be very very possible. I wouldn't support a bill for this because, as stated earlier, I believe it is the parents responsibility to monitor their child and a GPS chip in children under five would just encourage neglectful parenting.
On the other hand, I would support the idea of having some sort of GPS device on seniors that might need it for their own safety. I still think that someone who has a habit of wandering should have proper supervision, be that by family or by being in elderly housing, but having a GPS device in a shoe or on a necklace could be very beneficial. One could run into similar problems though with thiefs tracking someone's activity, which could be an even bigger threat to the elderly because if they live home alone they wouldn't be able to fight of a burglar. As a whole though I do think that for elderly citizens the benefits outweigh the risks.
I agree with you that the risk that the system could be hacked on the child's GPS runs way to high that the government should not be allowed to do that. Then we are doing more harm than good just so are able to track when our child is on their way home from school. Typically, children go through everyday life very benign and if we, as parents, put on the right restrictions we should not have to worry about their whereabouts.
ReplyDeleteI am also concerned how their bodies would react to a computer chip being placed inside their bodies. That is so unnatural and foreign I don't think our bodies are equipped to handle such technology, especially when inside of us. I think there would be very dangerous side effects that should not be risked by children.