British Mulling Security Cams That See Through Clothes?

Ok, how many of these devices will there be? 1000? 2000? More? Who is going to monitor each and everyone at all times, and spot anything dodgy? I can think of several items that would look illegal with an x ray type machine but be perfectly legitimate, so where are the crowds of police going to be to search everyone with a suspect shadow? So what we have are a load of potential radiation emitting machines dotted about the country, costing immense amounts of resources and achieving bugger all, all in the name of anti terrorism, a problem that has been increased ten fold by 'It's not my fault' Blair and G.W. Shrub…sorry, Bush. You know it makes sense! And yes, I have posted this comment elsewhere!

You've posted your comment elsewhere -- and please continue to post it, and similar comments, whenever you can. This is utter insanity -- all of it. Shrub (known as King George, here) plays on fear to further his agenda.

A good article in Newsweek recently confirmed what I have long contended -- namely that the war in Iraq is generating young terrorists by the thousands. Can you possibly blame some kid for wanting to get even with America when we just killed his parents and sister? (Sadly, your nitwit is almost as bad as ours, putting your country at risk, too.)

Clearly, the war has strengthened Al Quaida -- they now have a strong presence in Iraq -- where they were completely absent before the war. Have we captured Osama -- heck no -- he's not even in the news.

Take one part village idiot, add some arrogance, some lies, some belligerence, and an uninformed public... stir it up and you get Bush's war.

There's no end to this "who's policing the police" thing once it starts.

Of course, Woodrow Wilson was our first Shrub. By inverting the nature and role of our government (from problem to be controlled, to our Golden Calf), paying Russia to stay in WWI, and by joining a war in which we had no business, we basically caused the global socialist problem, the Great Depression, WWII, and pretty much all the wars since then.

Wilson, the first U.S. President who had the toy called income tax, grew government by 790%, and sealed the global imperialist policy we toyed with in the Spanish American War.

The rest of it, with spy cams and other sci-fi/1984 stuff, is just symptomatic of ungoverned government... politicians with ultimate power and no restraint.

What are we going to do about it? Probably nothing. We never do. We just wait until it falls under its own weight and then start over again.

"Of course, Woodrow Wilson was our first Shrub. By inverting the nature and role of our government (from problem to be controlled, to our Golden Calf), paying Russia to stay in WWI, and by joining a war in which we had no business, we basically caused the global socialist problem, the Great Depression, WWII, and pretty much all the wars since then."

Are you saying that the world would be a better place if Germany had won the first world war because that's what would have happened if the United States of America stayed out and let Russia withdraw.

Yes, it's true: one camera for every fourteen citizens. In "1984" by George Orwell, "Big Brother is watching you". Today, "you are watching Big Brother". Really?

With the CCTV & other surveillance devices and the governments intention to create a national DNA database that starts at birth it really makes Orwell's Big Brother look like a bunch of amateurs. At the same time the funding available for our police & military is being effectively reduced by the many new 'initiatives' so loved by our politicians that they are powerless to catch the criminals that they might identify. In the UK we have daily stories of the authorities losing track of criminals, being unable to sentence effectively because we have filled our jails & lack of policing on the streets.

I don't know how many have seen the sort of image these cameras produce and the article doesn't have an example but I believe the cameras they are talking about produce an image similar to the one at right.

As you can see things like a gun stand out clearly and are not the smudgy images that we have seen in the baggage X-Ray scanners we are so familiar with. There is no confusing the fact that the person in this image is carrying something that looks very much like a firearm and not something that is roughly the same silhouette.

The last thing I heard about these systems was that the designers were developing software that would hide the socially sensitive bits and only display suspicious items. If they have indeed managed to do this then nearly all the arguments put forward against this technology is baseless and just a scare tactic.

The question then becomes do we wish to subject ourselves to greater scrutiny? Is the object of seeking out those, that have decided that they do not wish to comply with the rules we as a society have imposed, worth the loss of privacy these cameras produce.

The other thing is that since they require the production of a low intensity X-Ray they were only intended for use in limited applications. I can see them as a screening process for people that have access to or are boarding aircraft but not in general use as surveillance cameras.

After all just about anything can be used in an antisocial way, I have a high powered astronomical telescope that can read the headlines of a newspaper from a kilometer away. It's pointed skywards but could easily be used to spy on others so do we ban astronomy just because some unscrupulous person would use a telescope to invade somebody's privacy?

"...do we ban astronomy just because some unscrupulous person would use a telescope to invade somebody's privacy? "

By implication, do scrupulous persons therefore use telescopes to invade aliens' privacy? Where does it end?

I think a point that needs making is that, yes, in limited applications I dont have a problem, but where will it end? Once something is in place, new applications will be found that were not origanally discussed, but the fact of it's existance will, by inference, allow these applications in.

You say:

If they have indeed managed to do this then nearly all the arguments put forward against this technology is baseless and just a scare tactic.

I'd don't think anyone argues against the technology per se. There may be beneficial uses for seeing through clothes. But to do so in a security setting is the equivalent of a strip search -- especially for women, who are notoriously sensitive about body image and the overall shape of ther bodies (they could care less about their genitals -- which are not exposed even when they are naked). Consider Playboy magazine in the 60's. The nudes were airbrushed, but still they appealed to the prurient interests of kids such as me. Consider people with ostomy pouches, artificial limbs, etc. Do they not have a fundamental right to privacy?

In the US, our constitution precludes cruel and unusual punishment, but we now torture people. It precludes unreasonable search and seizure, but we routinely pat-down innocent people as they try to board a plane. Our constitution certainly makes the case that people are innocent until proven guilty. Although it does not cite it explicitly, presumption of innocence is widely held to follow from the 5th, 6th and 14th amendments. But we search innocent people as if they are presumed guilty.

If we believe that the greater good should take precedent over privacy, then we would be far further ahead to give people boarding planes proctological exams, which in males, can detect not just colon cancer, but prostate cancer too. We'd save thousands of lives -- whereas with the current privacy encroachments there is no evidence that we are saving any at all. Even before 911, we had invasive, and moderately effective security in place at airports. Current security would not prevent a virtually perfect reenactment of the 911 events (with box cutters replaced by undetectable techniques well known to Green Berets) and our own government has demonstrated that our borders are not secure, even now. Nor were they in 1950, or 1970, or 1990, nor will they be in 2010.

Perhaps this seems indelicate to those who have lost loved ones to terrorists (terrorists such as the IRA, or the people who bomb abortion clinics here, or the people who blew up the WTC), but, in fact, I have two brothers in NYC, one of whom worked at the top of the WTC, and one of whom's church was within the walled-off area during cleanup... so I am writing this with them in mind: Terrorism in the US (excluding our own terrorism against other countries) is a very very very minor killer. Since 1993 (the time of the first Al Quaida attack on the WTC) the rate averages to less than 200 people per year. Compare that to the thousands who die from the diseases mentioned above, the hundreds of thousands from lung cancer and other smoking-related diseases (3 million worldwide), the 40,000 in traffic deaths, etc, etc, etc. As a cause of death here, in the USA, "TERRORISM" can't even cause the meter needle to twitch detectably.

Yet we continue to ramp up surveillance of our own people, considering them guilty until proven innocent. And we continue to generate new terrorists in Iraq, to further feed the fear.

So no, there is nothing about the technology itself to criticize -- it is its employment in invading privacy and fear mongering that is the concern.

You're on a roll. Why don't you run for public office? You have thoughts in your head, along with the passion and ability to articulate them.

We need people like you to squeeze out the politicians who're...not like you.

Hi Ken,

You have brought up some very valid points. Even with the aircraft that were crashed on September 11^th 2001 that year there were fewer people killed in airliner crashes than all but one year of the previous decade and six since 1950.

When you look at it from that perspective it isn't even a drop in the proverbial ocean. It certainly makes you think whether the money, effort and loss of freedom is actually worth it.

I don't know if you realize it but Australia has a leader that from all detectible means seems to be a clone of George W Bush and has led Australia down the same path. At least you are guaranteed to get rid of your leaders after 8 years. Australia on the other hand is stuck with them till either their party is ousted from government or his fellow party parliamentarians decide to oust him.

At least there is an election due this year so we can only hope.

You said, "At least there is an election due this year so we can only hope." Sadly, the words Election and Hope don't go together these days.

As far as I can tell, madness has been a global phenomenon at least since Woodrow Wilson introduced us to World War. We all seem to have an amazing disconnect between the way we talk and the way we vote.

I've been trying to fight for liberty and justice for all for quite a while here, and by most measures I've done very well. But by the one measure that counts (turning hearts, minds, wallets and action toward liberty and justice for all), I've done exactly squat.

Common sense is a very hard thing to sell these days. But I bet you already know that.

It certainly makes you think whether the money, effort and loss of freedom is actually worth it.

So true.

I tend to be something of a bleeding heart type, but I also try to view these things in a purely pragmatic cost-benefit sort of way. I imagine myself arguing with a Cheney type, who has no moral compass: I'd say, "OK. let's forget about the lies that got us here in the first place. Let's forget fact that killing innocent people is morally reprehensible... let's just look at it in dollars and cents terms."

With most cost-benefit analyses, there is some benefit associated with the cost, so you can say, that for x billions, we received x benefit. With the war on terror, it all falls apart, because there is no benefit. We are paying astronomical sums to make life worse for ourselves, to kill our own troops, to generate brand new terrorists, and to make it easier for terrorists to gain strongholds where they were absent before. Then there is the cost in Iraqi lives, now 655,000 according the one of our own most respected medical institutions.

The death toll in Iraq following the US-led invasion has topped 655,000 - one in 40 of the entire population - according to a major piece of research in one of the world's leading medical journals.

The study, produced by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore and published online by the Lancet, claims the total number of deaths is more than 10 times greater than any previously compiled estimate.

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1920166,00.html)

My neighbors across the street are Iranian. Like most Iranian-Americans, they are smart, capable people, and contribute a lot to America. Their friends in Iran (the general population there) are known to be among the most progressive in the middle east. Sadly, the guy running things in Iran is not so likable. Now, Bush is moving ships into the gulf to provoke Iran. He plans to kill, if given a chance, people just like my neighbors.

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

You didn't mention that we're also sandblasting our armed forces down to a vapor-thin veneer. Now that we're likely to hire a lot more soldiers to boot (with long-term costs like pensions, benefits and such to go along with the training and equipment costs), in our full charge into mercantile imperialism, we're really heading into trouble.

And it's not so much that power tends to corrupt, it's more that we're corrupt to start with, and things don't get any better when you've got absolute power with no apparent accountability.

Even so, GWB is, in my opinion, more arrogant and crazy than even Woodrow Wilson was.

I don't believe that George Bush is the Anti-Christ; but I'm thinking he must be some sort of Anti-John the Baptist.

I've reviewed the manufacturers information on this device and it appears that the amount and type of radiation is so minimal it will not penetrate the skin. Someone who is going to fly has more concern with Gamma radiation levels at 30k feet than with this device.

As for the ability to see beneath my clothes, I believe if operated with dignity it will be a very small price to pay for a faster moving security line.

It is not lawful to expose the genitalia in public places in the UK, with one exception: a vehicle driver may urinate against the nearside rear wheel of the vehicle (presumably while it is stationary and not while using a mobile telephone). The users of the display equipment attached to such cameras will therefore require embracing within new legislation before the concept becomes available.

I'm trying to imagine how a woman might exercise her full rights. Urinating against the near rear wheel while simultaneously flashing her genitalia would seem to require the stance of a sumo wrestler. Yet another instance where the law provides the technical means for full equality, but not the practical means. Perhaps mirrors would help. I am anxious to visit the UK again, and have chrome-plated my equipment for a more striking display.

Has anyone noticed, now that England has band private ownership of almost all guns the crime rate has skyrocketed to the point that London is now the most dangerous industrialized city in the world. Even more so then St. Louis or Chicago or even Washington D.C. Funny how every single city and state in the U.S. that has allowed canceled carry has had there violent crime rates drop. Makes you wonder doesn't it?

There is no truth in the rumour that the crime rate is due to vehicle users urinating against the wrong wheel...

Your post does indeed make me wonder. Being no great speller myself, I was able to skip over several misspellings, but your term "canceled carry" had me wondering. I guess you were trying to write "concealed carry?"

Assuming that you are writing about carrying concealed weapons, then are you are trying to imply that the crime rate in London has soared because there are fewer people carrying concealed guns? This is an engineering forum, and to convince anyone here, you'll need to post numbers. Then you'll need to make a good case for causality, not simply correlation.

I've been unable to dig up any evidence that a family having a gun offers any protection to that family. In fact, according to this website the opposite is true.

The research has shown that when other factors are held constant, the gun death rises in proportion to the rate of gun ownership. One study found a 92% correlation between households with guns and firearm death rates both within Canada and in comparable industrialized countries.

Other studies show that increased risks are associated with keeping guns in the home:

• Homicide of a family member is 2.7 times more likely to occur in a home with a firearm than in homes without guns. Keeping one or more firearms was associated with a 4.8 fold increased risk of suicide in the home.

This same site also says:

The easiest response to suggestions that Canadian civilians need guns to protect themselves is to look south to the US to see where arming for self protection leads. While rates of violence in the US are comparable to countries such as Canada, Australia and Great Britain, rates of lethal violence are much higher. For example, murders without guns in the US are about 40% higher (1.4 times the rate) than in Canada while murders WITH handguns are 1500% higher (15 times the rate).

While we may not agree on gun control, we certainly agree on supporting our troops. I too am all in favor of bringing them home to get them out of harm's way.

Is it still true that, while saccharin is illegal in the USA, hand-guns are not?

That is in fact true, but for good reason. We used to throw saccharin packets at the waiter to signal that we were displeased with the service. That was far too subtle, and bad service continued. Now we simply blow away the offending waiters, and as you can guess, service is much better.

Excellent, Mr. Fry. Well done.

Returning, after much good reading, to the posted question, it would appear that there is a much higher need for a covert firearm detector in some countries than in the UK. Prison construction looks like another good area to invest in.

Now what about a covert saccharin detector?

Touche. Buying stock in USA prison operations seems like a safe investment. We'll probably soon have a slight twist on Andy Warhol's idea; In the future, everyone will be in prison for 15 minutes.

And since a U.S. congressman was caught trying to bring a handgun onto an airplane right here in Indiana, you may also have a point about looking for firearms.

But just remember that the "Shot Heard 'Round the World" was a result of some Brits trying to take our guns away at the Lexington Green.

You make it sound like our laws are written down or something. They're not. We operate purely on the principle that politicians are better armed than anybody else, what with their helicopters and nukes and whatnot.

So while we make it practically illegal to get healthcare or start a business, yes, you can get away with a handgun if you're registered with the government...or if you're a criminal.

Your country is now demonstrating the value of gun control. Violent crime skyrockets when only lawbreakers have guns, right? That's the pattern everywhere. Our worst crime rates are...huzzah...where the gun controls are most strict; and violence rates are dramatically lower in areas with looser controls. And it doesn't correlate to population density or economics as far as anybody can tell. It seems to be simply that what we'd like to work does not work at all.

It's kind of like outlawing war, isn't it?

Of course, we currently have the world's highest percentage of citizens in prison here in the Land of the Free, but most of them are imprisoned for non-violent crimes. You'll do more jail time for possession of certain drugs than you will for murder.

And back to the question of this thread...who's likely to cause more trouble; a few zealots armed with only box cutters, or a politician? (hint: see Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Caligula, Nero...)

Mr. Fry, you understand that the link you sent us is horribly biased. I could send you many links from the opposing ideology that show opposite conclusions.

But if you go to http://www.benbest.com/lifeext/murder.html#intro you'll see a nicely objective, only slightly out of date site that supports the claim that it ain't so simple to say that gun control never/always works anywhere. You can see that in the USA the facts are pretty compelling. We were much better armed in 1900, but crime was dramatically, astoundingly lower than today in per capita terms. And you can see that Swizerland, where guns are a duty and tradition, is one of the safest nations on earth.

Hi , If we talkedabout technology it is good , But cant we creat a society where we can use this technology for any good reason ? There r many ways to fulfill anybodies requirements , This types of gadgets are being required because of few or many selfish necesity of A Nation or Nations , it includes political and strtigical both . In past A single king want to be an emperor or world conquerer , In recent times A single political personality or A Nation wants the same .

I think our inovative minds are advanced as time passes but our Mindsets are at the same level as they were in long past .

We'll never get anywhere until we realize that government is a force to be restrained, not a god to be worshipped.

We should use technology to monitor politicians, not citizens.

In fact I think it'd be truly wonderful if we could develop a technology that reliably and accurately determines if/when a politician is telling the truth.

(we don't need anything to tell us when they're lying)

In fact I think it'd be truly wonderful if we could develop a technology that reliably and accurately determines if/when a politician is telling the truth.

But think of the technological hurdles: we'd be looking for detection in the parts per trillion!

Very good. Well done again.

But there's something I must tell you that will astound you. In fact I hesitate to tell you this because paradigm shift can be very painful, and this one is certainly going to throw you for a nasty spin.

But there are truthful politicians. I've been looking for years and I've found them. I've even met with them. By my count, there are at most 14 out of the 535 in our U.S. Congress, but they're there, and they've not been "corrupted" by "the system."

There were more several years ago, but one foolish plank in the GOP's "Contract with America" before the 1994 elections was a voluntary term limit. The truthful ones kept their word and left...leaving exactly who to man the pump?

The problem isn't the corruption of power so much as it is that most people are corrupt (politicians or not), and that we don't recognize and reward the good ones when they stand right before our faces.

If we could develop a technology that can sort the liars from the (admittedly very rare) angels, we'd really be onto something special.

Amen.