Resistance Is Futile: You Will Be Microchipped 'It's 10 p.m. Do You Know Where Your Children Are?'
Pastor Dale Morgan
Resistance Is Futile: You Will Be Microchipped** 'It's 10 p.m. Do You
Know Where Your Children Are?'*
Business New Haven
01/21/2008
by BNH
Parents worry about their little ones being abducted. Later they worry
about their not-quite-so-little ones driving too fast and then stopping
to hang with the wrong crowd. "Sandwich" generation parents also get to
worry about elderly parents wandering off or injuring themselves.
Microchips have been implanted in more than one million pets, and now
humans may be next. While it may smack of Big Brother, people may soon
be scanned like bread at the supermarket. Teens, too, can be "watched"
using GPS technology as parents are alerted when junior exceeds the
speed limit and/or goes to an unapproved location. There are infant
protection systems - wearable RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags
for mom and baby - designed to prevent infant abductions and inadvertent
child mismatching. Parents can also find out everything their kids say
and do online. One can track them by their cell phones, and read their
text messages.
Remember "It's 10 p.m. Do you know where your children are?" Now you can
- to the exact geographic coordinates. At least five companies - Disney
Mobile, Guardian Angel Technology, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and Wherify
Wireless - have built GPS tracking into cell phones. With Verizon's
Chaperone, for example, the parent can determine the location of the
child's cell phone from the Internet or from his or her own cell phone.
The child's location information will be displayed as a nearby address
and on a detailed map.
Chaperone also allows the parent to establish geographic boundaries
around such locations as home or baseball practice. When the child
arrives near or leaves the vicinity of a predetermined location, the
parent can be notified via a TXT message.
In 2004 the FDA approved an implantable chip for use in medical
applications. The microchip, the size of a grain of rice, is inserted
below the skin. The chip carries medical records that can be read by a
scanner ' information such as blood groups, conditions, allergies, and
details of medications. The same company that offers this
human-implantable RFID microchip (Delray Beach, Fla.-based VeriChip)
also offers wander-prevention technology for long-term care facilities.
And Big Brother (or Big Mother) can now occupy the back seat of the
family vehicle, at least digitally. Real-time GPS vehicle tracking
allows parents to monitor their teen's driving habits. You can determine
the vehicle's speed and location by viewing the car on a map from any
computer with Internet access. The date, time, address, speed and
direction are displayed. If you can't get to a computer, the phone can
also provide the teen's last updated location and, if moving, vehicle
speed. If your little darling has a different take on what occurred in
the past, historical driving information can be saved.
(Naturally, these types of technological applications bring with them a
whole set of privacy issues. Just this month a plan by a Rhode Island
company to test a tracking system by placing computer chips in
grade-schoolers' backpacks was blasted by the ACLU as invasive and
unnecessary.)
You can even remotely lock and unlock the car door from your computer,
and you can disable the ignition. How humiliating would it be to your
teen driver if you flashed the lights or blew the horn to get his or her
attention? It simply requires the push of a key on your computer.
(There's no reason this couldn't work on a spouse as well.) Another
feature auto-notifies when your teen driver has exceeded a predetermined
speed limit or drives to a restricted address.
How many of us would have had our privileges yanked if these
technologies had available when we were kids? I know my mom would have
used all of these tactics and more - if she could have figured out the
directions.