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Bully for the states that have banned coercive implantation of RFID chips. But the conduit for popularizing this technology won’t be employers; it’ll be parents. This is the loophole in all anti-coercion legislation: The most coercive relationship, and the one no legislature would dare challenge, is the one between parents and children. The motives feel so benign. You’ve heard stories about pedophiles everywhere. You want to know where your child is at all times. You want to be able to find her instantly if she disappears. Forget the clothing label, the cell phone, or the phone number you told her to memorize. For real security, the subcutaneous chip is the way to go.

It gives me the shivers, but it’s going to happen, and the government won’t stop it.

How far do these chips "broadcast"?

My older dog is microchipped, and you really can't read the chip unless you scan an inch or two above his shoulder blades. Presumably current chips have a BIT more range, but do they have real radio transmitters that allow you to locate someone? Because otherwise it seems like a lot of invasiveness for not a lot of benefit--you wouldn't be able to actually TRACK anyone unless they were passing by/through scanners. I always assumed that the microchip wouldn't so much help me FIND my dog as help to prove he was mine when he WAS found--if he was ever lost, which in 10 years he hasn't been.

I wonder if getting your chip removed will be one of the things you do on your 18th birthday, like buying lottery tickets and porn.

Yeah, my little bit of googling seems to show that they aren't currently long-range. This tidbit from Wikipedia (so take with a grain of salt) is interesting:

>>Security experts are warned against using RFID for authenticating people due to the risk of identity theft. For instance a man-in-the-middle attack would make it possible for an attacker to steal the identity of a person in real-time. Due to the resource-constraints of RFIDs it is virtually impossible to protect against such attack models as this would require complex distance-binding protocols.<<

It seems to suggest that extending the range might be a bad idea... what if a pedophile could snatch your kid's information (name, address?) from a distance?

I don't think you are conservative enough to be allowed to use the term "bully".

Why not just give the kid a cellphone?

It's a cool idea but what happens when the abductors start to cut the RFID chips out of children? Unfortunately RFID chipping our children may result in an adverse reaction: instead of brining them back safely with moderate to severe physical and mental harm they may endure even extreme physical harm to remove the microchip. Look for a boom in production of hacking tools to identify placement of the chip. The dilemma would be to either standardize placement of the chip therefore risking the pedophiles and abductors knowing exactly where they are and taking them out or to randomize the location of the chips and risk the pedophiles cutting up children to figure out where they are. This could cause an escalation in physical harm violence that would otherwise not occur without the possibility of a child being chipped.

The RFID chip can be a useful tool for medical information and personally if they could grantee my information be secured I would go for it. Working in the computer industry I know that no information on electronic media is almost ever completely safe and the idea of some "RFID Warscanner" hacker finding out all my personal and medical information is a rather scary idea. Then again, is any of our information safe these days? My vote "No."

RFID devices are passive (unpowered) and will never be able to broadcast the location of a lost child or wandering Alzheimer's patient. You need a cell-phone to find a child, like one these home-arrest remote prisoner locating bracelet gadgets. Cell-phones are getting smaller and smaller, and single chip cell phones have already been developed, but I doubt that a powered subcutaneous device would be practical.

The only practical combination would be an external cell phone with GPS keyed to a subcutaneous RFID device, programmed such that when the cell phone no longer detects the RFID, it broadcasts an alarm. In other words, if a kidnapper grabs the child and then takes away her cell phone, the cell phone would issue an alarm, reporting the last location in which it detected the RFID. This would not be particularly useful, because the child would be somewhere else by that time. It would also go off whenever the kid leaves her cell phone at a friend's house or playground, and it would tell where the phone is. You could accomplish the same thing with less invasive methods, such as a small piece of jewelry.

YOU WON'T TAKE IT OUT,YOU WILL HAVE TO KEEP IT IN TO BUY OR SELL,TO GET INTO WORK OR SCHOOL, OR THE HOSPITAL ! CASH TRANSACTIONS ARE BEING DISCOURAGED ALREADY, EVEN BEING MADE FUN OF IN COMMERCIALS(SEE NEW CREDIT CARD COMMERCIAL) EVEN BUYING A DOLLAR CUP OF COFFEE THEY ARE MAKING FUN AT PEOPLE ! THE YOUNGER GENERATION IS BEING PREPEARED FOR IT AS A COOL THING TO GET. PREVENT IDENITY THEFT,PROTECT YOUR KIDS,SECURITY AGAINST TERROISM. YOU WILL LOVE IT & SO WILL YOUR PARENTS BECAUSE YOU ALL ARE CHILDREN OF THE BEAST !!! AS CHRIST SAID, YOU REAP WHAT YOU SOW,ONLY THE ONES WHO FOLLOW CHRIST WON'T BE DECIEVED BY THE DECIEVER !!!!

Thanks, Jed--that's what I thought. Seemed impossible to use a chip to track.

Who let Crazy Pants in? He can't possibly be serious. I laugh either way. I am a child of the BEAST? I'll tell my mother next time she's in town.

It would be impossible to track a kid who got abducted from a house and left in a kiddie porn dungeon, maybe.

But if a kid is walking into various store fronts at a mall, chances are he'll be passing next to an RFID reader.

If your kid gets lost in the mall, you would know instantly which store he was last in.

Boom... suddenly, you've cut the number of witnesses you need from the 10,000 in the mall that day to the 10 in the right store at the right time.

You could also embed hidden tag readers into the roads. If a car drives over the tag reader with stolen goods or stolen kids, bingo.

Obviously, if you're going to track a kid, there's easier ways than RFID. But with a little imagination and a lot of government collusion, it could work.

I know the passage of the bible he is refering to.

Revelation 13

16He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, 17so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name. 18This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man's number. His number is 666.

Whether you believe the bible or no, this is a plain description of tyranny. Hitler tested it in the concentration camps, putting bar codes on jews. Hitler was not the first man who wished to be feared and made himself look like the anti-christ. He will not be the last. Even if the coming tyrant who pulls this shit isn't the antichrist, he'll be a big fan of the anti-christ myth.

the world is not that much more dangerous now than it ever was. it's just that more people are aware of it because we don't live in isolated little spots anymore. so i don't see the need for any more surveillance of kids than we ever did. i don't like the idea of tracking them with cell phones either.

when i was a kid, my mom knew where i was because she took me there. and picked me up. or was over a house with another adult that she knew and trusted and they dropped me off. or picked me up. i know not everyone has the ability to supervise their kids 24/7 ( i blame at least part of this on the shoddy school system we have that lets kids out way before parents will be home... i never got that), but chances are the ones that are so overprotective and overanxious about their kids DO have that ability.

so why don't we teach people to pay more attention to their kids. to not let them be free to run off anywhere they want. teach them to respect you so that they won't lie to you. and, hey, it's your kid that you raised.. i bet if you really pay attention, most of the time you can tell when they are lying. kids and parents aren't naturally inimical. society perpetuates that myth.

Hi Will,

Well, having just completed a workshop on how to avoid having your child abducted sponsored by one of the leading experts in NY State and in preparation for the birth of our twins (and, of course, having a three year old) I’m inclined to ask: scarier than losing your child?

The statistics are really scary and the methods used by the abductors terribly subtle and dark. I’m no fan of embedded chips but I can’t help thinking about the one set of parents I know whose child was abducted and the thought of managing three kids when you’re outnumbered. It’s (of course) every parent’s nightmare. Statistically it’s likely to be someone close to the family or who has had some form of casual contact.

I watched a video of parents using all the techniques taught in the seminar to train their children not to open doors, the use of password phrases, techniques to avoid being led to people by pets or candy or money when their older children and then watched those same kids let a UPS uniformed or FEDEX or other official looking person walk right into their homes within an hour.

Yeah, parents will drive it. They’ll drive it because we’re scared to death that tragedy is random and real and too terrible to contemplate and really, something it’s much harder to control than we like to imagine.

I don’t know Will, I fear the advent of such technology too, but any parent that’s been separated from their child in a park or mall knows that chilling feeling that it can’t be—can’t be—that. But it can be.

Chips are scary but are they as frightening as the possible alternatives? Can you imagine having a chip in your car and losing your child and torturing yourself with the terrible irony of that? [Shudder]