If they get lost, the children are instructed to give said drive to the good Samaritan.

And here’s the rub, as you said:

Well, unless a child molester finds them…

I tend to agree with Gavin de Becker - train your kids to ask a mother with kids for help. Moms tend to take ownership of these problems and hey, if a USB key fob helps, so much the better.

Could try microchipping like they do with animals, so only the police or other trusted authority can identify, but children should be quite easy to make blab if held for ransom. A microchip you can’t forget and so long as you forget about it, doesn’t seem restrictive. You could do away with passports or ID maybe this way. I’m not sure I like the idea of being chipped though, and for the rest of my life - it feels a little like parents own children as man owns dog

Actually DC, there has been a couple of companies that offered just such a service:

A Mexican company has launched a service to implant microchips in children as an anti-kidnapping device.

Solusat, the Mexican distributor of the VeriChip—a rice-size microchip that is injected beneath the skin and transmits a 125-kilohertz radio frequency signal—is marketing the device as an emergency ID under its new VeriKid program.

The service has even garnered the backing of Mexico’s National Foundation of Investigations of Robbed and Missing Children, which has agreed to promote the service.

That’s from back in October of 2003. Then there’s this BusinessWeek article from back in March of 2002:

Meet the “Chipsons”—Jeffrey, Leslie, and Derek Jacobs. This spring, pending trial-run approval by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration, the South Florida family plans to be the first in the country to have the VeriChip, a tiny radio-frequency device about the size of a grain of rice, implanted in their bodies. Each $200 chip will carry a unique identification number and critical medical information. Should any member of the family be hospitalized, doctors would run a scanner over the chip to retrieve important medical-history details.

The Jacobs first heard about VeriChip when it was featured on NBC’s Today show. Derek, a 14-year-old technology whiz—and the youngest person ever to become a Microsoft certified engineer—was intrigued. His mother, Leslie, was skeptical, but eventually she was won over to the idea that the VeriChip could help save lives. Her husband, Jeffrey, is a cancer survivor who takes 10 different medications regularly. Plus, young Derek is allergic to many common antibiotics. “In an accident, minutes and seconds mean everything. The chip speaks for you when you can’t,” Leslie says.

Personally I find the idea a little unsettling when you consider the plethora of ways such an implant could be misused by The Powers That Be, but I’m open to letting the free market decide if it wants it or not so long as there remains the option for the chipped individual to have it removed.

What is so hard about spelling the word “LOSE”?

Your such a looser. (Yes, that’s on a t-shirt I got for my husband—if you don’t get it, you need to work on your grammar and spelling.)

A homing device for your spawn? They’ll probably end up causing some form of cancer. My husband has a Medic Alert bracelet that works better than a VeriChip—don’t have to scan it, just read it and call the number for more details if needed. I think more emergency workers have phones than chip scanners (which probably cost a fortune).

Neurotwitch, I liked that a lot.
The bait left over on the left (isn’t English flexible?) enticed me over here for a look at

What is so hard about spelling the word “LOSE”?
Your such a looser.

Love it. 

I think more emergency workers have phones than chip scanners

Your [sic] probably right.

Alert! Alert! Any fundies reading this and wondering what the fuck we’re talking -

you need to work on your grammar and spelling

That’s as much my fault as it is Webs. I should have caught it before I opened it up, but I wasn’t paying close enough attention. I’ve fixed it.

I think I was drinking when I created this post.  Thanks for catch!

What a stupid idea! And overly complicated. Ever heard of paper. And the idea isn’t new. Parent’s have been labeling this information on their kids at least for several decades now.

If you put it on a USB drive, said finder needs a computer to read it. Even in a place like Disneyland, where security will have computers, it will still take longer to read than just reading the paper. Instead of 15 minutes of hell, not knowing if your kids are still ok, you now have 17 minutes of hell. That two minutes is longer than you might believe.

On the other hand, if this becomes a new fad, and people who weren’t tagging their kids will now do it, that’s a good thing. It’s still stupid though. Somebody needs to put their thinking cap back on. Sorry if that is harsh. I felt the need to over-compensate for the undeserved praise.

The advantage of using a USB dongle on a lanyard vs paper is that paper can be easily lost, discarded, and crinkled beyond recognition.  Especially with a three year old. A USB device on a lanyard only comes off when someone takes it off giving it added protection from external variables.  Also, I do not have kids, but I imagine that it may be hard to find big enough pockets on the clothing of three year olds as well to house needed document(s).

There is also a lot more information you can put on a USB device than paper due to storage limitations, because again we may be talking about three year olds and not adults with average sized pockets. 

Plus if you have multiple kids, you have to type up multiple documents if you use paper, whereas with a USB device, you type up one document and copy it to all USB drives.  Also if your information on the document changes over time, you have to then re-create the paper documents whereas with the USB system, you just update the documents.

On the other hand, if this becomes a new fad, and people who weren’t tagging their kids will now do it, that’s a good thing. It’s still stupid though. Somebody needs to put their thinking cap back on.

I agree, if it gets more people to keep from losing their kids, then it is a good thing.  I just fail to grasp why you would rail on such a potentially positive thing. 

To me the benefits of using this USB system far outweigh any other system in positives.  If it’s just stupid in your opinion because there is another method out there, then why rail on this one and call it stupid?  Again, I think it’s a good alternative to what a lot of parents are doing now which is nothing.

How about tatoos? They can’t be lost!
(I know someone who’s cat has a green identification tatoo on it’s ear)