On Rights and Wrist Tasers

[UPDATE: I read through one of the articles more fully and found a link to the original letter from the DHS goon interested in these things. It can be found if you click through to the Washington Times link below. Strictly speaking, if you read that letter, his primary focus is on border security and detention of illegal aliens. I'm sort of curious at what point he expects to put them on the wrists of people, but the whole "airline passenger" bit is based on a one-line (or one and a half) speculation in the larger letter, "In addition, it is conceivable to envision a use to improve air security, on passenger planes." and "The DHS and in some respect the TSA, are both interested in border security in various forms and for differing reasons."

So it's very possible that on the airline front, this was just someone thinking out loud, and it will never get past the "someone spitballing comes up with a really bad idea" stage, and that the articles I've read (and this one, below, that I wrote) are blowing it all out of proportion.

Still, better to discuss the issues when they're little ones than waiting until they're big, and the decisions have already been made, eh? --Liam]

Recent news reports (I've heard about it from three places now, including NPR's weekly news quiz game show "Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me" and the Washington Times) indicate that the Department of Homeland Security is considering requiring that all airline passengers wear a new "safety bracelet". This will take the place of the traditional boarding pass and will contain information about the passenger (ostensibly to help with identification in case of a crash).

It will also enable monitoring of the location of each passenger, and in the case of hijack or other dangerous behavior, can be made to emit a "taser" like electric shock, to immobilize the user.

Where to begin with how bad an idea this is....

First off, let's consider that criminals have proven time and again to be pretty darn tech savvy. Which means that there's a very good chance that criminal elements will figure out how to disable them, thus rendering the only people unencumbered by such an "immobilizing shock" the very people they're needed for. But worse, imagine that they figure out how to trigger the devices on other people. Individually, it would make mugging a lot easier. Find someone at the airport, trigger their wrist band, and then as they're recovering, steal their wallet, laptop, etc. And collectively, imagine if the passengers on Flight 93 (the one that the passengers took back on 9/11 and crashed in a field in PA) has all been wearing these devices, and the al Qaeda operatives on board had hacked the system. Instead of overpowering the hijackers, they might have all been twitching painfully as the hijackers successfully made their suicide run at the White House or Capitol Building (the two most likely targets, last I read, for Flight 93).

My wife's initial thought on hearing about it was that it wasn't that much different than the pilot having a gun in the cockpit, but I disagree. In order for the gun in the cockpit to cause any harm to anyone, the pilot or co-pilot has to get it out and wield it. That's quite a bit different from a bracelet that is electronically triggered, and thus, could be triggered accidentally.

Then there are the people who have heart conditions and pacemakers. Will they be allowed to not wear one, since they'd be potentially lethal? But if so, again, would it be difficult at all for criminal elements to come up with phony documentation of a heart condition in order to avoid wearing one?

But the biggest reason to avoid these (and the reason why, if they ever become mandatory, I will no longer patronize the air travel industry) is the slippery slope argument. Once they slip this past us, and convince a significant number of us that it's GOOD that we wear these, because (so they'll tell us) they keep us safer, how long will it be before someone references Columbine and suggests having the children at the more dangerous high schools be required to wear them. All in the name of stopping the next Eric Harris or Dylan Klebold BEFORE they can kill too many of their classmates.

Once that goes through, then they'll start suggesting we all wear them at certain large scale gatherings. Political rallies. Soccer's World Cup matches. Any place where dissent or disappointment could turn ugly.

And then, perhaps, they might tweak them to work like the old "invisible fence" for dogs, such that as long as we stay out of the restricted areas of a given place, we remain shock free. I'm not sure I want my local Six Flags to issue me a wrist band that will shock me if I accidentally open the "employees only" door next to the bathroom one.

All the while, the wearers are broadcasting their whereabouts and potentially subject to "immobilizing shock" at a moment's notice.

It's not too hard to imagine any of the above scenarios, if these things are accepted on airplanes, is it really that hard to imagine that we could reach a day where we're all required to wear these things all the time, as our personal identification? Do we really want to get to a world where we, like in the old Soviet Union, can be stopped at any time and have our papers demanded, and be hauled in to prison if we aren't carrying them?

Or one in which all of our movements are tracked by the government, so that every detail of our lives is now available on a computer somewhere? Every time you stopped at McDonald's to sneak a burger when your spouse thought you were being true to your diet. Every time you had a beer with the buddies before heading home but told your spouse you had to work late. To say nothing of those among us who are having affairs, now having their movements all carefully stored.

And is there really any good reason why law enforcement needs the ability at a moment's notice to "electrically immobilize" an entire gathering?

Of course, I've gone overboard again, at this point these are just being considered, and my best guess is that cooler heads will prevail and someone will realize just how bad an idea these things are on just about every level and one day this will have been just another bad idea that someone thought up and never went anywhere.

Still, it's worth thinking about, because if this is that one bad idea in a hundred that someone is actually successful in implementing, we want to watch out, lest our ever-eroding civil liberties erode even further.

Liam.