| XI. | The Spread of Human Microchip Implants: Children |
| Posted: December 8, 2003 |
| A. | " 'Anti-Abduction' Implant for Children": England: BBC News: September 2, 2002 |
| Parents are asking to have tracking microchips implanted under their children's skin in response to fears about abduction. |
| Parents afraid that their daughters could be abducted are asking a British scientist to implant a tracking microchip under their skin, so that they can be found quickly. |
| Cybernetics expert Kevin Warwick said he had received requests for the procedure from "a number of families" following the deaths of 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. |
| One girl, 11-year-old Danielle Duval, will have a device implanted in her arm sometime during the next few months. |
| Mr Warwick said the system could work by using a mobile phone network or global positioning system, to pinpoint the person on an electronic map via a signal from the implant... |
| The procedure would involve putting a small transmitter about one inch long into a child's arm or stomach. |
| Kevin Warwick "A potential abductor wouldn't know the child had the device and it could be switched off to sleep mode when it wasn't needed to conserve its battery," the Reading University academic said... |
| "But if the general trend in Britain is in favour of such an operation it will be ready to go by Christmas"... |
| Danielle Duval's mother, Wendy, decided to let her daughter be a guinea pig for the project following the discovery of the bodies of Holly and Jessica, from Soham in Cambridgeshire. |
| Former school caretaker Ian Huntley, 28, has been charged with their murder and his girlfriend, Maxine Carr, 25, with attempting to pervert the course of justice. |
| Mrs Duval, from Reading in Berkshire, said: "I think it's just to make sure your children are safe. |
| "It's a shame you have to go to these lengths to keep your children safe but I would rather do that than have anything happen to her." |
| She compared the device to the tracking systems fitted to cars and said many of her friends were interested in protecting their children, including boys, in the same way. |
| Danielle also said she was happy to have the tag fitted. |
| "I'll feel so much safer - I'll know my mum knows where I am," she said... |
| Commenting on the Duval's decision he said: "I think they were looking for piece of mind that if anything did happen to Danielle that within a few minutes we would be able to locate them."253 |
| B. | Global Positioning System (GPS) Implant Chip for Children Doesn't Exist: The Register: September 2, 2002 |
| John Lettice, writing in The Register, indicates that human implant chips are not a GPS device and suggests that current publicity serves the purpose of "softening public opinion." |
| Following the recent abduction of ten year olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, the Mirror reports that Wendy and Paul Duval have decided to implant their daughter, Danielle, with "a microchip to track her every move. "If she was kidnapped her exact location would be discovered via a computer"... |
| The chip "emits radio waves through a mobile phone network and beams its exact location to a computer. If Danielle went missing, her location would be marked by an X on a computer map.... It will be inserted in her arm by a GP using local anaesthetic. It costs about £20 and will be invisible." |
| Well then, how does that work? [Reading University Professor Kevin] Warwick's experiments in chipping himself haven't gone as far as GPS, at least publicly, and any communications aspect to them has been decidedly short range. An "invisible" device that handles both GPS and mobile phone communications, and doesn't need its batteries changing every five seconds would however clearly make him a large fortune, if it existed. |
| Which manifestly it doesn't... |
| So the "invisible" chip is not a GPS device, and must perforce communicate with a real GPS device secreted somewhere about your person... |
| However even if you've got a concealed mobile phone with GPS, then what use is the tag? The phone rig does all this already, so for as long as you can hang onto the phone, you're trackable, and if you can't, you're not. After that the chip could help them identify you if they find you, and if for some reason you're not in a position to tell them yourself. Again, we're in VeriChip territory here, albeit a somewhat grimmer variant thereof. |
| So it's complete hokum, and under the circumstances pernicious. The Holly and Jessica case has generated much concern, and some hysteria in the UK, and stories such as the Mirror's serve only to fuel that hysteria by deluding parents into thinking that technology can somehow protect their children. And by pushing positive aspects of tagging, even years before it's actually feasible, they're softening public opinion up for the days when it can be widespread, and when its application can be more sinister... |
| So in the light of recent tragic events the correct course of action for parents has to be the fitting of a manifestly useless tagging device to their child. "The technology exists," says Warwick, "it's affordable and accessible." No it doesn't, no it's not...254 |
| C. | "Girl To Get Tracker Implant": England: The Guardian: September 3, 2002 |
| Professor Kevin Warwick of the cybernetics department at Reading University says that an 11-year-old girl will have a microchip implanted in her arm "in the next few months." |
| The parents of an 11-year-old girl are to take the extraordinary step of having her fitted with a microchip so that her movements can be traced if she is abducted. |
| Danielle Duval will have the device implanted in her arm in the next few months, the scientist [Professor Kevin Warwick of the cybernetics department at Reading University] assisting the plan claimed yesterday. The miniature chip will apparently send a signal via a mobile phone network to a computer, which will be able to pinpoint her location on an electronic map. |
| The parents, Wendy and Paul Duval from Reading in Berkshire, said they had decided on the step after the abduction and murder of the schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.255 |
| D. | "Microchip Tag Bid To Thwart Perverts": England: The Reading Evening Post: September 3, 2002 |
| Professor Kevin Warwick, cybernetics expert at Reading University has designed an implantable microchip that will be used to trace a child's microchip readings on a computer map. |
| A Reading youngster is to be microchipped in a hi-tech bid to thwart perverts and kidnappers. |
| Danielle Duval, 11, will have the chip implanted in her arm so she can be traced by computer if she is ever snatched. |
| Her parents Paul and Wendy made the decision following the deaths of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman from Soham, hoping that 'tagging' Danielle will go "a long way" to protecting her... |
| Mrs Duval added that the family, and Danielle, would be reassured she could be found using the chip Ð which emits radio waves through mobile phone technology Ð if there were an emergency. |
| It has been designed by University of Reading cybernetics expert Professor Kevin Warwick... |
| Prof Warwick said Danielle's microchip readings would be traced on a computer map to locate her.256 |
| E. | "Tagging Girl 'Is Assault' ": England: The Reading Evening Post: September 3, 2002 |
| The Reading Evening Post reported that an electronics expert was fighting to stop Reading University's Professor Kevin Warwick from implanting a tracking microchip in a child. Bernard Allbrecht, the electronics expert, contacted the General Medical Council, the police in Reading, the Reading Borough Council, and the Wokingham District Council. |
| An electronics engineer is fighting to stop cybernetics professor Kevin Warwick from tagging an 11-year-old Spencers Wood girl. |
| Bernard Allbrecht, a London-based electronics expert, has spent the past two days calling the General Medical Council, social services and the police in a bid to persuade the authorities to prevent the "experiment" from going ahead. |
| Reading University's Professor Warwick has developed a microchip which emits a signal and could be implanted under the skin as a tracking device... |
| He [Allbrecht] said: "From what I was told by the GMC I understood there could be a case for assault if the operation went ahead so I spoke to the police in Reading but I didn't have any luck with them. |
| "They felt that if the parents gave consent it would be all right, but I believe there are wider legal principles at stake here."257 |
| F. | "Kidnap Chip 'Untested' and May Not Work": England: Sunday Herald September 8, 2002 |
| Stephen Naysmith, Science Correspondent for the Sunday Herald reported that the technology for implanting a tracking implant in a child may not work. |
| The scientist [cybernetics professor Kevin Warwick] who gained world wide publicity for his plan to implant a tracking device in a schoolgirl's arm in the wake of the Soham killings has admitted he has not tried the technology and cannot guarantee it works. |
| Other experts in mobile telecommunication do not believe any such tracking device exists.258 |
| G. | Growing Interest in Tracking Children: England: The Observer: September 8, 2002 |
| The Observer reported a growing interest in tracking children electronically, whether via an external GPS-enabled watch, or via an implanted locator. |
| Moves to introduce child trackers are gaining momentum. The Personal Locator, made by Wherify Wireless, will this week begin nationwide trials in the United States. The company has said that it is preparing to sell them in Britain next year. |
| Reading University scientist Kevin Warwick is also trying to develop a locator that would be implanted into children... |
| It was the temporary loss of his two children at a zoo that led Timothy Neher, head of Wherify, to develop his Personal Locator. 'I looked at a menu to order lunch and when I looked back they had gone,' he said. |
| His locator - which costs $400, plus a monthly service charge - consists of a wristwatch receiver that picks up signals from global positioning satellites. The wearer's location is automatically transmitted via cellphones to a central receiver. Parents can then look at a website to see their children's location. The locator wristwatch can be locked on to a child's wrist and is fitted with a panic button so that he or she can alert parents and police if danger arises. |
| The company says it has already sold thousands of devices over the last two months, with delivery beginning this week. Their popularity is not an American phenomenon: a survey carried out by nVision, the online database of the British think tank Future Foundation, has revealed that 75 per cent of British parents would like such a device.259 |
| H. | "Beckhams Consider Micro-Chipping Sons": England: The Reading Evening Post: November 11, 2002 |
| The Reading Evening Post reported that a celebrity couple, ("Spice Girls") Posh (Victoria Beckham) and husband soccer star Becks (David Beckham), is considering having their sons security chipped. |
| Posh and Becks are planning to have their two sons micro-chipped using technology being pioneered by a University of Reading professor. |
| The celebrity couple are considering the move, according to a Sunday newspaper, following the arrest of five people on suspicion of planning to kidnap Victoria Beckham and her children. |
| The Beckhams are reported to be planning to consult Professor Kevin Warwick, who hit headlines earlier this year when a Ryeish Green couple asked him to security chip their daughter, following the murder of the two teenage girls, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in Soham.260 |
| I. | "Kid-Chips: Parents, Activists Debate How Far We Should Go To Protect Children": Gannett News Service in Norwich Bulletin: November 18, 2002 |
| Mary Challender, Gannett News Service, reported on implanting tracking microchips in children. |
| When eight young girls were abducted and murdered in a span of just seven months in the United States, a number of terrified parents considered investing in $400 personal locators that children can wear like a bracelet. |
| When a pair of 10-year-old British friends were found slain two weeks after disappearing from their hometown in eastern England, the efforts to protect children went a step further -- too far, many believe. |
| Kevin Warwick, a cybernetics professor from the University of Reading in England, is in the process of developing a tracking microchip for children... |
| Legal and ethical issues will prevent it from becoming available in the United States any time soon, however, predicts Cheryl Erwin, an assistant professor of family medicine who specializes in biomedical ethics and medical humanities at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine in Iowa City. |
| Because the chip would be an experimental product, its creators would be required to follow certain guidelines, she says. Normally that entails years of testing in animals first to make sure the procedure doesn't cause more harm than good, then incorporating children into the research only after it has been proven safe in less vulnerable populations. |
| For the chip to get a green light in this country, the benefits would need to outweigh the risks, Erwin says. In this case, that means weighing the miniscule threat of a child being abducted against the chance of hurting a child by implanting an unknown, untested, unproven device in his or her body. |
| "I think this is totally unacceptable," Erwin says. "I think this would never happen in this country -- at least not until we have a good deal more information on this sort of thing."261 |
| J. | Children and the Implications of a Human Tracking System: Mohan Tanniru, Professor of Information Systems, University of Arizona: The Boston Globe: May 20, 2003 |
| Boston Globe Correspondent Angela Swafford reported on the reflections by Mohan Tanniru, University of Arizona Professor of Information Systems, on the implications of a human tracking system. |
| Businesses already use technology to track their products around the world, but we should stop and think about the implications before starting a human tracking system, cautions Mohan Tanniru, professor of information systems at the University of Arizona. |
| I am not going to put a chip on my kid thinking that she could be kidnapped," he says, "unless I know the chip will be activated only if I report that my kid is lost. But how do I know that the police are only going to activate it when I say so, and not when they feel like it? You can't just say that technology is bad just because it is there. So it is a matter of deciding what trusting agency should be given that responsibility." |
| Tanniru actually thinks that human tracking might be welcome in certain cases, such as following criminals on probation or making sure foreign nationals don't overstay their visas.262 |