RFID tags being proposed to identify people with HIV/AIDS in Indonesia: http://gizmodo.com/5098777/hivaids-patients-to-be-tagged-with-rfid-chips What a horrible use of technology.
Well there are plans to do similar things in the developed world for the sake of "homeland security" or the equivalent concept in other countries. Sometimes I'm grateful I live in an unimportant, discreet country.
That's crap. It's basically like saying, "Oh, you have AIDS/HIV, let's ruin your life by putting a big tattoo on your forehead that says 'AIDS carrier'."
I'm not sure what to think of this. I don't necessarily think that it is totally a bad idea. I mean, the tracking is a bit extreme, but the incidence of HIV/AIDS in these countries are pretty extreme. And I feel that people who knowingly infected others with HIV/AIDS should be punished. From what I read in the actual article, you would only have the implanted chip if you knew you had HIV/AIDS. And furthermore, not all patients would have it. I know safe sex education should be more prevalent, but I'm having trouble seeing how it is all bad. They aren't saying that the patients can't live their own lives and have sex. They are just saying do it safely or there will be consequences. /Devil's advocate
The article is light on details, but I don't see how this would work. As I read it, they plan to build a massive RFID sensor network to completely track the movements of those with the chips. Then any time a new person is infected they plan to work back through the data to find the person that gave them HIV. I don't see how that could possibly work with out tracking people that are HIV- also. Even then it is likely that an HIV- would be in the vicinity of several people with the chips of the course of several months. RFID is not GPS. All it will tell you is that a particular tag was detected by a particular sensor, it does not tell you where in the field of range the tag is. Sounds like political posturing to me.
