Would an implanted chip help to keep my child safe?
Pastor Dale Morgan
Big Brother and The Police State*
May 17th, 2007 7:36 AM
*Would an implanted chip help to keep my child safe?*
In the wake of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, every type of
child monitoring device is in demand
Carol Midgley
If your child could wear an implant – a microchip that could tell a
computer where he or she was at any time to within a few metres – would
you buy it? After the horrific snatch of three-year-old Madeleine McCann
from her bed in Portugal, the answer from many parents seems to be “yes”.
Professor Kevin Warwick, who developed the technology that made it
possible for the first child in Britain to volunteer to be “chipped” in
2002 – after the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman – has been
bombarded with e-mails over the past few days from parents desperate to
keep tabs on their children. As we talk, another e-mail drops into his
inbox from a mother of two young children who says that she is deeply
anxious about Madeleine’s disappearance and wants to know more about the
chip technology.
It works, in theory, by sending a signal via a mobile-phone network to a
computer that can identify the child’s location on an electronic map.
But there was the concern at the time over the ethics of tagging our
children’s bodies – some groups, including Barnardo’s and Kidscape as
well as sections of the media, said that it was a neurotic overreaction
that would not benefit children in the long run. So Warwick, Professor
of Cybernetics at Reading University, did not continue to develop the
project nationally. “It caused such a backlash that we had to step
back,” he says. “There were ethical concerns, and as a scientist you
have to listen.” But he adds that the point about chipping is not that
you would use it to track your children 24 hours a day – only in a
worst-case scenario. “You would hope that it never gets used,” he says.
There are, however, many other child-tracking devices on the market that
will almost certainly have a surge in sales over the next few weeks.
They range from pay-as-you-go tracking services that follow the SIM card
in your child’s mobile phone to electronic wristbands and specially
tagged pyjamas. Some companies have shied away from such gadgets,
fearing legal actions from parents should they fail for any reason, but
others believe that the gadgets are destined to become part of normal
parenting.
A Lancashire company, Connect Software, recently launched Toddler Tag, a
child-safety monitoring system in which a tag smaller than a domino,
which can take the form of a badge or bracelet or may be sewn into
clothing, is allocated to each child.
The active Radio Frequency Identification tags work in conjunction with
a reader to monitor child movement, raising the alarm when the child
moves beyond a certain range. A typical package costs between £500 and
£1,000. Chris Reid, the company’s commercial director, says that several
readers could be used by a parent to create a “virtual ringfence” that
triggers an alarm if the child goes beyond the boundary or towards
potential hotspots, such as kitchens or stairways. The company has also
designed toddler “Smartwear” – bibs, T-shirts, dungarees, hats and
jackets – which comes ready-tagged and, says Reid, may be useful not
only to nurseries but to give parents an “electronic pair of eyes” when
taking children to theme parks or on holiday.
Globalpoint Technologies, based in Newcastle, offers a “personal
companion” that uses a combination of mobile phone and GPS technology to
enable you to track your child by computer to within a few metres (cost:
£400-£500). It picks up locator signals from satellites and sends them
as a text message or via the mobile-elephone network to a website, and
is based on technology developed by the Ministry of Defence. It is
currently used by companies such as the Royal Mail to track mailbags.
Ian Rycroft, a company spokesman, says that it is lightweight, about the
size of a small Nokia phone and can be placed unobtrusively in a shirt
pocket, jacket or satchel or worn as a necklace or on a wristband. He
believes that the market for the devices will expand significantly.
For older children there are established products such as Kids OK mobile
phone tracking, i-Kids and Teddy-fone – a phone with a parent-activated
child-monitor option that enables parents to listen in to what is
happening around their child, an SOS button and a child-tracking service.
The drawback with all these products, of course, is that an abductor
could quickly dispose of mobile phones, satchels, clothing or
wristbands. Wherify, an American company, offers a GPS locator watch
that it claims is lockable and tamper-proof and may act as a visible
deterrent (it works only in America). However, some parents may be
uncomfortable about a highly visible device that an abductor would be
desperate to remove.
The question that must also be asked is: should we be tagging and
monitoring our children to such an extent? Is there a danger that we may
lose perspective and fill our children with suspicion and fear? Indeed,
could we become overreliant on technology and consequently more blasé
about basic supervision? Michelle Elliot, director of the child
protection charity Kidscape, says that she opposes the idea of
micro-chip implants but understands why many parents want to use
phone-tracking devices or wristbands.
She worries, however, that such devices might hamper children’s
development of a sense of independence. “It doesn’t teach them what to
do in a problem situation – eg, if you are lost, go into a shop”, she
says. “Having children relying on a parent getting to them and finding
them doesn’t encourage independence.” Of implants, she says: “We don’t
know what the physiological effects – and a child isn’t giving informed
consent to what is a minor operation on their body.”
But when children are abducted from bed and even from the bathtub (as a
girl in the North East was recently), a nonremovable permanent chip is
something that some parents would welcome, regardless of the ethics.
“We have 11 million children in the UK,” says Elliot. “For the past 25
years between five and seven children have been abducted and killed by a
stranger each year, and that has not changed.
“Are we becoming paranoid to the point where we give children the
message that life is so dangerous that they have to be tagged? There is
no guarantee of your child’s safety. But the chances [of something like
this happening] are so remote that you have to think about the message
you’re giving them.”
But Professor Warwick says that if there was sufficient demand from the
public and the initiative was backed by child-safety groups, it would
not be difficult to make chip implants – about an inch long – available
nationally in a relatively short period of time.
He says that further work may be needed to determine how best to
recharge the device but, because it would be in “sleep mode”, it would
need only very low power. “It might be that once a year the child has to
hold his arm up to a charger,” he says.
He can see no serious health implications: the chip would housed be in a
silicone capsule and it would be little different from having a cochlear
implant.
And what of Danielle Duval, who, five years ago, at the age of 11,
volunteered – amid huge media coverage and with the consent of her
parents – to become the first implant “guinea pig”?
At the family home in Reading, Danielle’s mother Wendy said that she did
not want to comment on the issue in relation to Madeleine McCann. Her
daughter had eventually backed out of the scheme because of intense
media interest and had never had the implant fitted.
© Copyright 2007 Times Newspapers Ltd