There exists today a technology to implant a locator chip into a living body so that, if the subject should become lost, the subject can be located by the use of a special electronic tracker device.

These chips are currently used primarily for pets. In my own neighborhood, someone has posted a "Missing Cat" poster that mentions that the cat has an AVID chip installed. You might think that this is, in and of itself, an advertisement against locator chips because it obviously isn't working in this particular case. But, alas, there are two issues here: one, the cat was chipped in California, whereas the cops in our area don't use that technology, and two, the cat was run over by a car and crushed repeatedly by the continuing stream of traffic. Bad news for the chip. And the cat. And the owners, who weren't aware of the dangers of letting their cat roam the busy streets of crazy downtown Redmond. Etc.

As a science fiction writer and a political philosopher, I've given great thought to the implications of "chipping" people. As soon as I heard this technology was being made available for pets, I figured the next logical step was children (to protect against kidnapping), and then eventually to citizens and visitors of our fine emerging police state. ("Obviously, if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about by getting chipped....")

I was not a parent when I'd first heard about this technology, but now that I am, it takes on a different resonance. Would I sign up to chip my child if the technology had been proven useful in finding kidnapping victims and runaways?

I used to always believe that I'd never do such a thing, but now that I actually have a child of my own... I'm not so sure. The potential benefits (protecting one's child) may seem more immediate and more... personal than the potential long term problems. Things don't always turn out as bad as they could. The fact is that social security cards haven't quite become the Orwellian tool that many folks in the days of FDR had feared.

There's a great deal to be said against chipping children and citizens and foreign nationals, etc. The potential for abuse is HUGE. And yet, it's hard to resist the lure of at least one short-term benefit.

Want to put an end to all the hostage-taking and decapitations in Iraq? Very quietly begin a program of "chipping" any American who travels to Iraq. The chips should not be active all of the time -- that would be begging for trouble -- but have some mechanism whereby a person with a chip can easily activate it in case of emergency. Equip the local Military Police to be able to locate these tracking devices, and then rescue the hostages, capture the terrorists, and bring them to hard, hard justice.

How many of these terrorist cells would you have to capture and dismantle before the wave of kidnappings and decapitations come to an end? I don't think it would take very many. And yes, this solution would do nothing about the suicide bombers, but at least you'd remove one more tool from their bag of tricks, and maybe take a few terrorists out of the game, in the meantime.

Food for thought.

--Allan