The technology isn’t really the issue for me. Most people already carry smartphones that can reveal our location, movements and habits. The concern is what happens when the state starts normalising invasive tracking of human beings.
Once you move from electronic tags and ankle monitors to implanted devices, you’ve crossed a significant ethical line. It raises serious questions about bodily autonomy, consent, data ownership and proportionality.
History shows that surveillance powers introduced for “the worst offenders” have a habit of gradually expanding. Today it’s high-risk prisoners, tomorrow it’s parolees, then perhaps other groups deemed “at risk”. That’s the slippery slope many people are concerned about. Academic and legal commentators have highlighted concerns around privacy, surveillance, autonomy, cybersecurity and the potential for what some describe as an Orwellian or dystopian model of social control.
There are also major data security concerns. Any system that stores location, behavioural or biometric information becomes a target. If a prisoner’s implant can be read, tracked, cloned, manipulated or hacked, who is responsible? What happens if the data is wrong? What safeguards exist against misuse by governments, contractors or criminals? Security and privacy risks are repeatedly identified as key concerns in research into human microchip implantation.
Society should be very cautious about creating infrastructure that allows continuous monitoring of individuals. The fact that we can do something technologically doesn’t automatically mean we should.
For me, compulsory implanted tracking devices belong more in the pages of Orwell’s 1984 or an episode of Black Mirror than in a modern liberal democracy.
