Cell Phones and Privacy

As I own and use a prepaid cell phone, I would continue to be a proponent of their existence. The main reason I use a prepaid cell phone is because I have no desire to have any part of a phone plan. I rarely, maybe 1-2 times a week, use my cell phone, its main purpose is to have in case of an a emergency, and having a prepaid cell phone allows me to do that at a cheap price. If there is an added benefit that my phone cannot be tracked than that just adds a bonus onto the package, but not something I find to be a necessity. These examples, of emergency use and cost effectiveness, act as legitimate uses of for prepaid cell phones. With all that being said, I would not object to a more stringent policy on obtaining a prepaid cell phone. I see no harm in initially having to register a prepaid cell phone that would allow a number to be backtracked to a purchaser. This may not be an effective preemptive measure against criminals, but you would be able to trace the phone back to a real origin

Location Tracking

For me, the ethical complications of implanting a computer chip on a child are harder to hash out than any privacy issues. If there are no health risks, would you even have to tell your child they had a chip implanted on them? The question then becomes when do you think a child would expect to be able venture into the world with any semblance of privacy? Using a conservative approach, a child, technically, should be unable to travel far form the nest, without the aid of an adult, until they turn 16 and can get their own license, certainly then, a six year old is not entitled to much privacy. The real dilemma comes in how the computer chip is able to be monitored. If the system is allowed for parents to track their child exclusively, without having to go online or call someone, than I would fully support it. But, full support becomes harder if the system is a massive online database with unknown individuals being able to monitor locations. It does not matter how secure the database is, nor how miniscule the odds are of you being affected, all it takes is the theory of one. As we have seen glimpses of already this semester, all it would take is one person to hack that database to throw everything into chaos. Likewise, it would not matter if the system had been able to monitor thousands of children and save hundreds of kidnapped victims, if it was concluded that a single child had been abducted by a predator being able to track the victim through the database, the entire company would collapse under from the scandal.

Therefore, in a perfect world, I would support a bill in Congress to require ID chips in children under the age of 5 and with that support a parents right to have a chip implanted on their child, barring, of course, any health risks. If the child’s' location can be securely maintained, the positives far outweigh the negatives. The same is true with GPS Shoes for seniors with Alzheimer’s, even better it's less intrusive, only being tracked by their shoes. If there is the threat, better yet, risk that a person may lose track of their location, having the ability to find them can only be a positive.

First Post

Hola,
This is my first post related to CS408-01 "Living in a Networked World." I have had to open a blog before for another class, but never really used it, so this is still somewhat of a new experience. The very nature of having this blog interests me. Though highly unlikely, anyone connected to the World Wide Web across the globe could technically see this post if they wished. A wide collection of the population now has an outlet to make their opinions known and that makes a big world seem small in a sense.