Monday, July 23, 2007

GPSing your wandering hubby?

Keeping track of your teenager and the family car? Keeping control of which employee can get into a security room? What on earth could go wrong?

...the news that Americans had, for the first time, been injected with electronic identifiers to perform their jobs fired up a debate over the proliferation of ever-more-precise tracking technologies and their ability to erode privacy in the digital age.

To some, the microchip was a wondrous invention — a high-tech helper that could increase security at nuclear plants and military bases, help authorities identify wandering Alzheimer's patients, allow consumers to buy their groceries, literally, with the wave of a chipped hand.

To others, the notion of tagging people was Orwellian, a departure from centuries of history and tradition in which people had the right to go and do as they pleased, without being tracked, unless they were harming someone else.

Chipping, these critics said, might start with Alzheimer's patients or Army Rangers, but would eventually be suggested for convicts, then parolees, then sex offenders, then illegal aliens — until one day, a majority of Americans, falling into one category or another, would find themselves electronically tagged.

Gee, I wonder if Cheney has stock in this company too?

2 comments:

Steve Bates said...

This gives new meaning to Arlo Guthrie's famous "inspected, injected, detected and selected."

ellroon said...

What if your chip is rejected? Are you nul and void?