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Rep. Al O'Brien, D-Mountlake Terrace, a retired Seattle police sergeant, has sponsored a bill to look into the possibility of surgically implanting tracking devices in sex offenders who have been released to the community.
His proposal, embodied in House Bill 1142, would hire the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs to see whether implanting "subcutaneous" radio frequency identification devices could be used economically to keep an eye on offenders.
The group would report back to the Legislature in December.
That RFID technology is what the state uses on the Narrows Bridge to electronically collect tolls from motorist. It's that little chip in the decal that we put on our windshields.
One thought that comes to mind is that scene from Total Recall, when Arnold Schwarzenegger's character realizes he is being tracked and pulls the huge bulbous device out of his nostril. I think of this only because, just as ex-cons sometimes disable their ankle bracelets, so too would some of them scratch the RFID tag out from under their skin.
Here's a link to the full text of the bill.
The bill has been referred to te House Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Committee, but I don't think it's scheduled for a public hearing yet.
COMMENTS:
Which one of his relatives or friends would be doing the study? Keeping the family members employed and their businesses running with taxpayer money.
You give government the power and they will use it to the nth degree. We gave bush the power to go to war with Iraq and look how that turned out.
If this gets passed, count on it starting with sex offenders and then spreading to murderers, then people who commit assaults and then to everyone who is convicted of a crime. Next they will use it to store medical information for the public. Then they will find other reasons to use it and then everyone will have one.
Doing something in the name of tracking sex offenders is popular and gains lots of support because the crimes touch regular folk’s emotions. It is easy to condemn sex offenders and give them the harshest treatment but too many people are so self-righteous and put the weight of the world on the people who commit crimes and they never see their own flaws. These people who serve their time should be let out and be able to get jobs and support themselves and their families. If you overly diminish a person to the point that they think they cannot redeem themselves, then they will commit more crimes to make it in life. This directly contradictory to what we want to accomplish when dealing with these people. We say we want these people to learn form their mistakes and commit them again but we want to heap so much punishment on these guys that they can never get from under the position that they are in and progress in life. Everyone sins whether it is stealing a candy bar, shooting a person, having an affair, lying, abusing your children and having sexual relations with an under aged person. Everybody talks about what they will not do or could not do but in life things happen.
Remember that not too long ago, our own Chief of police shot and killed his wife and killed himself while his children watched. Biblically we have examples. Paul killed Christians before he became one. King David had a man killed because he longed for the man’s wife and Jesus was descendent of David. Solomon was the wisest king and he worshipped other Gods toward the end of his life. Peter denied Jesus three times. My question to you people who support this is this. If Jesus gave his life for our sins, how much of his shed blood would it take to redeem a sex offender? And can a sex offender be redeemed with Jesus’ sacrifice? You people who support this obviously don’t think that a person can do something wrong (although you are not perfect) and learn and change and be a better person. This is a wrong-headed idea.
In society sex offenders are the weakest link in the chain that we are all connected to. It we put too much stress on that link, the chain will break. No one is perfect and everyone has flaws. It would be prudent to help these people deal with their problems, learn from them and become upstanding citizens in our communities. We need to strengthen the weakest link, not make it weaker no matter how you feel about the crime. This will back fire and before long, we all will have this chip implanted in our bodies.
No longer will the love of freedom be the guiding force behind American ideals, but rather the love of power and control. No longer will the individual matter, but rather the system will be worshiped. As the range of "criminals" expand further to include the average person, we will increasingly find ourselves in the midst of a fascist state.
We will not be free citizens, but rather classed "citizens" and "illegals" who must beg their permissions from an increasingly totalitarian state. We will be tracked like human inventory. Freedom will be replaced with authority, and consent with begging permission. This would be a sad day for the Founding Fathers, as they would literally see what they fought and died for die in front of them.
Do not let this day come. Do not give in. If you love freedom--truly love freedom--then you know that this makes all of us less free. How can any of us be free when we isolate entire segments of the population, tag them and track them? How can any of us claim democracy when we are not asked permission whether or not we want these technologies? How can any of us be free when we still allow slavery?
I urge you to no longer wait. Get mad. Get writing. Spread the word. Don't let your congressmen forget who they really work for. We can't have a democracy if nobody tries. Remember, democracy is a contact sport, and it requires that we all get involved. The Founding Fathers knew intimately that it was in fact a free democracy that was the fragile, difficult path, as the slide into tyranny is an easy one.
We cannot forget these lessons, as most fascist states started out as open, free countries. We can no longer allow our disbelief of "It will never happen here" give way to the inevitable "It's already happened." Are we going to let this slip past us, or are we going to stop cowering to the fearful megalomaniacs currently in office? It's time we take back our country.
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