On the surface, it would appear that my position against the electronic tracking of sexual predators seems to clash with my position of being tough in criminals. In fact, just the opposite is true.

First of all, I feel that if a person commits a heinous crime, there shouldn't be any tracking necessary. They should be right there in their prison cell (or grave site). That should be especially true for predatory crimes and murder.

The fact that a person is out of prison and walking around among the living, to me, implies that they are fit to be welcomed back into society and shouldn't need to be tracked. At the very least it should imply that they are no longer a danger to society. If they are no longer a danger, what is the point of using electronic monitoring? If they are, why are they being released in the first place?

When it comes to sexual predators, they are easy to pick on. Nobody likes them, and people with children tend to really, really hate them. That is why I think that this is just a first step in the tracking of all persons. They already assign everyone a unique number at birth and use it to keep a lifetime "permanent record". Britain already goes so far as to put cameras on every corner to monitor their populace. To me, this just seems to be the next logical step.

Maybe I am being paranoid, but if I were a big government agency whose agenda included tracking my populace, this is how I'd implement it.

Now, where'd I leave my tin-foil hat?