File under, "Bad uses of technology"

According to Australian newspaper The Age, "Lawmakers in Indonesia's Papua are mulling the selective use of chip implants in HIV carriers to monitor their behaviour in a bid to keep them from infecting others."

John Manangsang, a doctor who is helping to prepare a new healthcare regulation bill for Papua's provincial parliament, said that unusual measures were needed to combat the virus.

"We in the government in Papua have to think hard on ways to provide protection to people from the spread of the disease.... Some of the infected people experience a change of behaviour and can turn more aggressive and would not think twice of infecting others.... Among one of the means being considered is the monitoring of those infected people who can pose a danger to others.... The use of chip implants is one of the ways to do so."

The National AIDS Council does report an increase in the number of HIV/AIDS cases, but unless these are chips featuring a level of hitherto unheard-of sophistication (brain scanning? real-time analysis of blood chemistry, blood pressure, and heartbeat?) combined with super-accurate GPS, it's not clear that this could work. Putting ordinary RFID tags in people tells you whether they're within range of an RFID reader, but nothing else; and unless you're going to blanket a country (or just a city) with readers, that's not very useful.

[Hat tip to Sean]

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