Cost considerations aside, would you want your loved ones to have a GPS locator implant?

If, IF there could be a way so that nobody outside the family could use a device to track someone… like if someone in our family held the sole, singular tracker thingamajig, then sure, I don’t see the problem with it. Except someone would find a way to Big Brother the whole thing… it’s a slippery slope.

a.) It’s a slippery slope, see above :)
b.) It plants the seeds of distrust (i.e. cheating spouses, kids being where they’ve been told not to go)

I have a dream that one day we’ll all chip our babies to protect them by encoding identification and medical information. I have a dream that one day that chip will also include GPS tracking and our banking information so that never again will we become lost or fear that our wallet or identity will be stolen. I have a dream that once our lives and livelihoods are implanted on that chip that the government will be able to increase local and national security by shutting down the chips of criminals, terrorists, and political dissenters who threaten our values and the very fabric of our society.

If someone kidnapped someone of whom I deeply cared, I would WANT them to have something inside their body, so the FBI could instantly find them.

I have already told those who are closest to me, that should something like that ever happen to me, to NEVER pay any ransom, or try to locate me.

They have assured me that doing those things would never enter their minds.

August 31, 2008, 3:26 PM EDT

@Kev: Are you being serious, or sarcastic? Because in a utopian society where we actually have gasp some form of privacy from the government, most of that doesn’t sound half bad.

I would LOVE to see REGISTERED SEX OFFENDERS “chipped,” and have it done in such a way (while the RSO was unconscious) that the s/he would not know WHERE the chip had been implanted.

August 31, 2008, 3:28 PM EDT

With all the nutjobs in the world, I would love to get gps on my kid. They have those lame watch gps, but your fucked if they take the watch off, and you know the one day that you forget to put it on them will be the same day a freak decides to take your kid…

The only effective locators would be those that were surgically implanted, and made to look like an appendectomy scar, so the kidnappers would not know the loved one was “chipped,” and if the child is a toddler, the child should not know that s/he has a chip implanted, so s/he wouldn’t/couldn’t tell the kidnappers about it, and its “location.”

August 31, 2008, 3:38 PM EDT

I like Jack’s idea, about LoJacking sex offenders. That’d solve some of the problem of them not registering like they should, etc.

I could see it being useful for kids, in the case of abduction, getting lost, etc. However, I feel like adults chipping their spouses is a bad idea. There has to be some trust in the relationship.. I mean, once you start checking on them, you begin to check on them more, then what happens when they are somewhere they didn’t tell you about? I see it as obsessive and unhealthy.

To a man like me, a wife or GF (or a mistress) is very precious, and I would try to reassure her that such a device would only be used, if she was kidnapped, and for no other reason.

Besides, the husband or BF could not track her, anyway. There would have to be a provision that only a law-enforcement agency could track someone like that, and only if that person was suspected of being a kidnap (abduction) victim.

August 31, 2008, 3:53 PM EDT

Maybe if a private company held the locator, and it’s default mode was “off”, to be turned on only in a reported emergency. If law enforcement (government) held the locator, it would be too easy to slide down the aforementioned slope.

One has to weigh privacy concerns, against ones concerning the safety of the person you love.

With me, there’s no contest.

Love “wins,” every time.

August 31, 2008, 7:52 PM EDT

Yeah, some will cry “invasion of privacy!”, but I think the benefits would far outweigh the “risks”.

You say that, until you somehow find out that you’re being tracked when you’re perfectly safe at home in your bed.

Yeah, I’m bound to trust the authorities are not gonna abuse it, huh?

That’s why I said that I agree to it if the family held the tracking device, and the authorities didn’t have access to it.

Great solution!

lol I said that way ^^ up there.

why does it matter if they know where you are? If your not doing anything bad, who cares?

Cheeb, that’s exactly what I tell my conspiracy theory friends!

And I think to myself… What a wonderful world.

Yes, it is.

kevbo – got to take the bad with the good huh?

Hey Stratman!

As someone asked the Executioner: “How are they hangin’?”

a little low, and to the left, thanx for asking. You?

Doing well, Sir.

I’ve been looking for this nude photo of a guy who was executed several years ago, because a client asked, “Was he hung?”

Oooooo! nice one.

That’s what my client thinks, but she needs confirmation.