Should Criminals Be Microchipped?

There are pros and there are cons. But what if the criminal is a pro-con, is it microchip insertion time? The microchip debate beings. RFID (radio-frequency identification) chips steams up hot debate across the nation as not only the healthcare plan includes them as part of the policy (insertion or non-insertion), preschoolers in a California school have received them (non insertion). A breach in privacy to some, a way to cut the information chase to others.

In 2007 microchipping violent criminals went to the committee. The Senate approved, at that time, of microchipping criminals who have been convicted of 19+ violent crimes who spent at least 85% of their sentences behind bars. And as described in the Examiner-Enterprise report the U.S. Constitution posed a barrier.

4th Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. 8th Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. 14th Amendment enforces due process and equal protection (Section 1; ratified July 9, 1868). You can read the U.S. Constitution through the government's National Archives.

That was 2007, this is 2010.

Microchips are the next global trend. A recent Fox News report, shown on this Youtube video, confirmed of a Saudi inventor who recently created a bombshell microchip to track terrorists (whoever is "labeled" a terrorist), illegal immigrants, fugitives, political opponent defectors, Saudi Arabians who don't return from pilgrimage, and criminals according to the killer microchip application. The microchip includes a GPS device and a lethal dose of Cyanide that could be activated at any given time. So far Germany refuses the Patent. Who will score this deadly creation? Depends on who runs faster to this Patent, the military or the terrorist groups.

Jake Ward, Deputy Editor for Popular Science, shares the pros and cons of human microchipping. As Congress considers inserting 100 sex offenders with GPS microchips in their shoulders there are torn concerns on both sides. But as Ward describes, some criminals already wearing GPS chips around limbs try to cut the chips off. Insertion will stop that possibility. That is if the criminal does not try to be his own surgeon.

When radio-frequency identification chips have been used for a wide range of situations it depends upon freedom of choice in what a person supports. Below are some situations listed. Which would you use an inserted or non-inserted RFID chip for?

a) Sex Offenders
b) Paroled Criminals
c) Terrorists (confirmed by confession, not assumption)
d) Alzheimers Patients
e) Children Under 12 (including infants)
f) Teens
g) Adults
h) Mental Patients
i) Anyone Receiving Government Assistance (welfare, health care, and so on)
j) Sports Athletes
k) Out of Country Travelers
l) Immigrants
m) Government Officials (while traveling out-of-country)
n) Drug Dealers (confirmed)
o) Soldiers Abroad

Truth is, who is going to fork over the money to keep millions of people monitored? But as for now 100 sex offender test subjects could be the first out-of-prison criminals to be tracked by way of inserted microchip.

The downfall that is widely being recognized as microchips are not cheap and will not stop a crime from happening.

Weigh in!

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Source(s):
Examiner-Enterprise
National Archives / Government U.S. Constitution
Fox News / Youtube
(accessed September 30, 2010)