Implantable Identifiers (Should We Track Our Children with Chips?)

     Veterinarians implant computer chips into pets and farm animals to identify and track them if they get lost. Some people suggest doing so for children. Discuss the privacy implications of such proposals. What are the risks? Do the benefits outweigh the risks? Do parents have the right to have the chips implanted in their young children? How about in their teenage children? If the government proposed legally requiring ID chips in children under the age of 5, would you support it? Why or why not?

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            In this century, there are lots of inventions in technology that are able to cope with humans' daily problems. We no longer need to bring a paper-map to travel around a region or a new place. Instead, most of people these days have google map in their smart phones. This phenomenon leads today's trend into a question: Are we able to track humans like we track locations in google maps? More and more working parents are worried about their children when they go to work. In 2015, at least twice a day, a parent called Brickhouse Security, a Midtown salon of surveillance to ask if it was possible to implant a tracking microchip in their children (Taylor, 2015). 

             Nowadays, the same thing is applied in pets. More and more people are eager to try attaching a small chip to their pets' ears, so that they are able to track them when they go missing. However, here the case is not that simple. In Observer Business and Tech, it is stated that microchips put behind puppies' ears are just barcodes to identify their identities, and it is not a GPS tracker. In order to implant a GPS tracker in kids' body, not only do we need to put a microchip under their skin, but also a GPS receiver and battery. Personally, if I were one of those kids, I would never agree to have those devices inside my body.
        Nonetheless, from the perspective of parents, bearing in mind that the number of missing children has been climbing up lately it is crucial to have such technology to prevent something bad from happening to their children. Do parents have the right to have micro devices implanted in their children's bodies? I believe the answer is both yes and no depends on the situation of their children's mind. For example, it is not easy to be parents of children with special needs like autism. Some children with autism are not even able to take care of themselves. It becomes even more though if their parents should work to support their lives. This case might lead the answer to yes, parents have right to do such tracking. Nevertheless, for normal children, I believe they deserve space to be alone and enjoy their privacy.          

         If the government proposed legally requiring children under the age of five regardless their well-being condition, I would not support it because in my opinion, I believe humans do not have authority to track other humans. Apart from that, doing that might cause another problem related with their children's mindset that they are being control by their parents, and not able to have their freedom and privacy. In certain cases, if the government agreed to have special devices to track children with autism and children with disabilities without implanting anything in their bodies, I would probably agree. The case is we never know if those tools put inside humans' body would have side effect that will affect humans' health.

Source

               Taylor, J. (n.d.). Can we microchip our kids to prevent kidnapping?. In Observer Business & Tech. Retrieved March 18, 2015, from http://observer.com/2015/03/can-we-microchip-our-kids-to-prevent-kidnapping/