A piece in yesterday’s Sunday Times (Sept 8 2002 – page 1.24) deals with the creepy subject of children having computer chips implanted into them, so that their parents can keep track of them and stop them being abducted and murdered by mad sex-fiend serial killers. The technologist at the centre of this is Professor Kevin Warwick of Reading University, and maybe we ought to plant a chip in him to keep track of him, because he’s a rather strange person himself by all accounts.
On the face of it, planting chips in people is a clear violation of liberty, fraught with the danger of many further violations of liberty, especially when governments start planting chips in criminals, and then in people suspected of being criminals, and then in people, and then finally (checkmate) in all people.
But I don’t think that’s the whole story. I don’t think children nowadays have nearly as much freedom of movement as they might have. They are now mostly expected to show up at the same place, day after day for months at a time, whether that makes sense or not.
Time was when schools really were educational institutions first and surveillance operations only incidentally, but that balance is shifting all the time. Put it this way: if there were a massive year-long strike by the teaching profession, which of their contributions to society would be most missed? Their teaching of children or their mere keeping of tabs on children. Parents and other responsible adults want children to be “educated”, but what they really really want is to know where their children are and that they aren’t getting into evil company, if not second by second then at least hour by hour.
This is surely why portable phones are now so popular as gifts from parents to children. But they’re hardly foolproof for this job. Portable phones can be stolen by other children. They can just be lost. And there can’t be a great missing child panic every time that happens. (A wrist watch portable phone might work better, and no doubt the techies are working on that.)
To put it another way, the choice for children is not so much between children being kept track of by some kind of electronic communications device, or not; it is between children being kept track of, or being made to stay put in one or a few known-in-advance locations. And being made stay in fixed places is not exactly what we libertarians call “freedom”. Paradoxically, childr-tracking technology is what may make freedom of movement for children much more common in the near future.
Of course this kit can be used by parents and teachers to drive children crazy. But children are already at the mercy of adults. For those adults who want children to have freer and happier lives than they do now, this sort of kit, used with humanity and with common sense, will surely be part of the answer.
Maybe Professor Warwick isn’t such a creep after all.
I’m going on the radio this (early) evening for a few minutes to talk about this stuff, and happily they’re not expecting me to come crashing down on only one side of the argument. The radio station is Ondacero International, which is basically Spanish but which also does English language broadcasts for Anglo expatriates living in Spain, of whom there are at least a million. I couldn’t find any hint of English at the Ondacero website, but maybe you can. If you do contrive to tune in by some magical means or another, the show goes out at 7 pm Spanish time, which is 6 pm London time, and whatever that might be your time. Who knows? – maybe some Samizdata readers are themselves Anglo-Spaniards within regular radio range of this. I’m fixed to be on for a few minutes at around twenty past the hour. My thanks for making the contact to my good (and good libertarian) friend David Botsford, who’s been on this show several times himself.
Actually, prof. Warwick already *has* a chip in him. He volenteered to be the first to try out a prototype locator chip earlier, and now has an implant attatched to the nervous system of one of his arms as part of another trial.
I think this is his second or third chip — I’ve seen a guy on BBC a couple of times in the last few years.
ID chips will become “mandatory for modern convienience” — for everything from toll roads, to entering your high-paying business premises, etc.
WITH a GPS locater. Optional at first for low cost credit card ID verification, as the tech bugs get worked out.
The Big Nanny state, starting by keeping track of Alzheimer’s patients, etc., very desired and voluntary today, will inexorably expand.
Kinda frightening.
(Good picture of Adriana — where’s the Brian foto?)
Professor Warwick has a reputation for making grandiose claims over at the Register. He seems more interested in publicity than science.
On the serious side: I have an autistic son who is mentally retarded and functionally non-verbal. He knows his first name, but won’t say it. He doesn’t know his address or other information though we are working on it. He also won’t wear any tags or a bracelet.
I can’t wait for the chips to become more useful.
I know a chip won’t magically protect him from harm but I do expect it to increase his freedom; caregivers will be more likely to take him places because *they* feel more comfortable doing so. This could have a great impact on his long term placement options.
As for the slippery-slope issues: I’ll slide when I get there.
from UF-2, a fictional story that’s not.
All through Humanity’s History, some man or men have tried to exert their control over others. The Vikings, the Celts, Pharos, Romans, Hitler, Cesar…, The names of individuals and countries changed but it was and still is the same through the history of mankind and even those not of man. If I remember my history correctly America issued every American a social security number when they started gainful employment. Then they issued social security numbers at birth saying it was for tracking population. I think it was after a war or maybe I’m mistaken, I don’t recall but American leaders said the nation needed a national identity card for each individual. They said it would stop terrorism.
Are we starting to figure out the problem yet? All bad ideas start out with someone calling them good ideas and the masses buy into the hypocrisy. The national identity card was accepted and then came the microchip implants. Everyone would be able to have instant information about their health was the guise that idea was sold under. I guess it worked because most everyone bought into it. Some said the microchip implant was the ‘Mark of the Beast’ and no one saw it coming because everyone had expected the numbers 666 to be imprinted on them somehow. The individuals who refused the implants were ostracized by the business world and the government. They weren’t driven into caves like the bible said unless one takes the meaning as to say they were denied public facilities and transportation.
Man’s adventure to the stars was what saved him from domination by a select few. If one was a bible reader then I guess that could have been the ‘Second Coming’. In space free individuals no longer submitted to a microchip implant. Children were born who were freemen. Eventually the numbers in space out numbered those on earth. Money or the lack of it has put men in bondage and freed him depending on the use and the need for it. Those on earth realized if they wanted an exchange of the wealth flowing among the traders in space; they would have to give up the law everyone had to have a chip implant before doing business with earth.
No chip implant for me thank you!