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“Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.”


Thursday, February 22, 2007

I Am Not A Number!*

There's a story out of Maryland which hopefully won't take off in the rest of the country. If this is true, I'm home-schooling my kids:

Let's say your teenager is a habitual truant and there is nothing you can do about it. A Washington-area politician thinks he might have the solution: Fit the child with a Global Positioning System chip, then have police track him down. "It allows them to get caught easier," said Maryland Del. Doyle Niemann, D-Prince George's, who recently co-sponsored legislation in the House that would use electronic surveillance as part of a broader truancy-reduction plan. "It's going to be done unobtrusively. The chips are tiny and can be put into a hospital ID band or a necklace."

The idea is to track truant kids the same way we do real criminals. But it won't stop there. There are already plans to track children--innocent children--using GPS in their sneakers.

When children are teenagers, they might switch shoes with a friend, change into shoes without the GPS system or simply decide not to wear them so their parents won’t know where they are.

“That’s just the teen years,” Geiger said. “It will work the rest of the years.”

It’s the cost that might be enough to keep Chambers away from the shoes.

But she admits that the idea is smart.

“I think there is a desire for parents to be able to track their kids down,” Chambers said. “That’s all of our worst nightmares: not knowing where they are.”

Man--those kids might go around barefoot! You know what's a good solution? Putting that GPS right in the body.

It starts with a GPS monitor in the kids' shoes or a bracelet; it ends with you and me being forced to get the chip to prove we're good citizens.

We live in a paranoid society. (Yeah, I'm aware that this post sounds paranoid too--sue me.) You know what? Kids have been murdered, abused, abducted and raped since the beginning of humanity. Given that the majority of perpetrators are relatives or family friends, a GPS system isn't going to keep your kids safe. All it does is make people more willing, even grateful that they're always being watched.

Remember--Big Brother Loves You. (Now irony-free!)

*I'm sure you know the rest... BTW, I have pictures of the Village from my honeymoon :)

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posted by Mary, 10:37 PM