Home :: Amber Alert

Can RFID Be Used With The Amber Alert System

I was just reading all about the Amber alert down in Lubbock Texas for Mychael Darthard-Dawodu and it got my mind thinking. First I am glad that the baby was found alive in New Mexico but is there any way that the abduction could have been prevented in the first place.

If you are not familiar with this particular Amber alert the baby was taken from the mother in a Texas hospital by someone posing as a nurse. The infant was kidnapped early Saturday from a woman who walked out of Covenant Lakeside Hospital with the 5 pound baby hidden in her purse.

This woman allegedly said she needed to take this days old baby to get some test done. Any mother in this situation would hand over their baby to someone that had hospital clothes on. It has been said that the woman actually came in the room a few times posing as a nurse. I am sure the mother felt comfortable that this was a hospital employee.

Sure a hospital is busy place and this lady was seen on a security camera exiting the building but what could be done to stop this from happening in the first place is what I am thinking about. I would never want to think about the feelings that poor mother had when they told her about what happened.

I believe that we could and should use some sort of RFID tag device, maybe a label in a wrist strap on each baby that would be hard to remove. They already tag the baby with it's name so they don't get all the babies mixed up. It would be easy to make that wristband RFID capable. That's another thing that could be tracked also using something like I am thinking about. Maybe a tag on the inside of the diaper where it would not be seen. I know the wetness part is a tricky issue but the label can be placed high enough on the waistband that it could avoid getting wet.

Each hospital could place a RFID reader at each elevator entrance and staircase on the maternity floor. When the tag goes through it a big read flashing light could go off and security could have stopped this from happening before the suspect was caught 100 miles away.

Once again I am sure the people that are against using RFID for anything will say that it violates the babies privacy rights but that is something that I bet every parent that reads about this story will just laugh at.

I am sure that there is already a RFID product on the market that would be able to handle this already. I just can't focus on one as I keep thinking about what those poor parents must have been going through at the time.

With the cost of Generation 2 tags on the decline and the important issue at hand many hospitals should look into some sort of RFID enabled device or something else to keep this from happening in the first place.