Tracking hostage victims?

[Greigor25]

Do you think it would help and would be possible to track hostage victims by the means of a concealed electronic device and GPS?. If so they could give this opportunity to people who think they may have a high chance of being targeted.

[newtron]

It would definitely be possible, but the device would probably have to be implanted in the body somewhere, so that it would not be discovered when searched.  This might be a good idea, but the idea of implanting  an identification device in the body has scary implications related to the degradation of our civil rights.  But I'm sure that this type of technology will be used in the near future, if it isn't already.  I know you can have a microchip implanted in your pets so that you can locate them where ever they might be.

[rekstout]

To have something that actively transmitted a homing signal strong enough to be picked up even at a moderate distance would be uncomfortably large to say the least (think mobile phone as a minimum - and the talk time on one of those is not more than ten or so hours).  The mind boggles as to where it would be "implanted"!

[Oneeyedvic]

A similar technology already exists - there was an article I read in which a person had a 'chip' (like a dog identichip) implanted in his forearm - this was in order to become part of a night club. No cash was taken at this club, but everything charged to your account - by way of this implant.

 

Fairly sure that the military would already have this technology to track hostages - it really is a question of - do you trust people to 'chip' you!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3697940.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3742684.stm

 

[newtron]

Sorry, I guess the microchip for pets that I mentioned does not tell you the lcation of the pet.  It just gives an ID number that is linked to contact info in a data base when read by a scanning device.  So maybe the concealed tracking device is not as easy as I thought.