I’m thinking about working on this design… honest
I always wince at those offers to fingerprint your child so they don’t end up being the subject of two weeks of wall to wall coverage on FOX and CNN when they go missing (my kids being cute white ones and all).
In fact a couple of months ago I got into a heated argument with some (theoretically) well-meaning high school kids who were running a ‘Fingerprint your child so when it’s their turn to be kidnapped the authorities will be able to ID the remains’ booth.
“Where are the fingerprints stored,” I asked. “Who has access to them?”
No answer.
Yes, I worry more about the State — the police, the schools the Department of Homeland Security, whomever — having access to my children’s DNA swabs and fingerprints than I worry about a theoretical boogyman someday running off with my child. Fact is, it rarely happens and when it does it’s more than likely a custody fight or a relative.
So I guess all that paranoia has paid off for the parents of Brennan Hawkins, the Utah boy who went missing for four days. He was so well indoctrinated by his teachers and parents that he hid whenever rescuers passed by.
Kathryn Cramer has the details.
I was fingerprinted as a kid as well, but back in those days (e.g., 70s/80s), the fingerprint card was put in an envelope, labeled, sealed, and given to my parents saying “if we need this, you’ll have it to give to us.”
That’s the only fingerprinting I’d let happen to my kids at the moment. When they’re kidnapped/missing/etc., that’s when Los Federales need to be able to put them into the search mix.
Geesh, I hadn’t even considered this yet (I guess that’s a common phrase for parents of very young children). I certainly don’t want the State to have too much info on my children, as right now they certainly are scarier than the boogeyman.
We could do the thing that Derek talks about in his comment, just leave the police out of it. I have an ink pad, a child, an index card, and a strongbox. If the police need it later, I can hand them the fingerprints, otherwise they’re in my keeping.
I too was printed as a kid and my parents were given the envelope, a la Derek. The government didn’t have my official prints until I was a teen, but we’re not here to talk about the past.
Very few people seem concerned about protecting themselves from being tracked by everyone from Google to John Ashcroft (Hey, he lives in my state . . . I know he’s still watching.). Maybe we should all relax and just get bar codes stamped on us and we can be scanned everywhere we go.
But, personally, I’m less concerned about the government knowing where I am than I am about Tom Cruise knowing where I am. I don’t want his Thetan levels to blow my mind.
I can name a dozen things in my house at any one time that would have a ‘good’ fingerprint on from my kids, could the police take a copy then?
There’s businesses now that provide non-descript jewellery or tags to slip in clothing. It can detect kids by GPS or from short wave freq at say about 10 miles. 2008 = have RFID chip fitted at birth for only 99.99!!! First years tracking free!
I can see a bunch of sides in this argument, but I’ll start by defending the Utah child. He was emotionally stunted, as his parents noted. Also known as special. So, it was basic “stranger/danger” training that he might have not been able to take that logical leap on. From the way the story sounded, the ATV driver more or less had to run him down.
As for fingerprinting, I know that local police stations in Arizona do fingerprinting, but it’s the same technique as Derek noted - it’s kept by the parents.
The other side, as for GPS/RFID tags, when I was a really young child, there was a child killer in Oakland County that was never caught. That is enough to want to outfit my children with RFID/GPS when I have them.
I’m not sure why fingerprinting should send up an alarm. What can the state do with fingerprints that they can’t already do with your name, address, phone number, place of employment, and social security number?
While I’m all for the parents having the prints on file, I can’t say that I want - or trust - the government to “do the right thing” with them.
Here in Milford, we had a small uproar about a company that was going to try to get the kids to bring pamphlets for this type of service home to their parents. Seems innocent, until you find out that the company was going to do this at town playgrounds. I’m still not clear if it was people or just flyers, but it was still just a little too creepy.
As far as the RFID/GPS thing goes, while I like the concept, I can’t say that I trust it - if the government doesn’t abuse it, who’s to say that someone won’t hack the system and then use it to sell info about kids locations to pedophiles - or simply use it to kidnap the kids? Sure they’d say it’s not possible, but how many times have you heard that your credit card company will protect your info, only to read about a company losing a backup tape or something? It’s just not worth the risk in my mind. Not unless I’m the only one who can access the data - and even then, I don’t know that I would trust the system.