Cameras to See Through Clothing in Public

You have GOT to be kidding me, if this isn't intrusive then what is? What will it take for people to say enough is enough? Does it really take a camera in every home and on demand cavity searches to get people annoyed enough to protest?

www.thesun.co.uk...


A small sample from the article -

OFFICIALS are bracing themselves for a storm of public outrage over their controversial X-ray cameras scheme.

As part of the most shocking extension of Big Brother powers ever planned here, lenses in lampposts would snap “naked” pictures of passers-by to trap terror suspects.

Ok ok so it's the tabloid sun, but if they were lying about this then the government would be all over them.

So there we go ladies and gentlemen, cameras to see through your clothing whenever you walk the street.

Don't get me wrong here, when i visit an airport i would put up with this, it's a very effective method for detecting weapons. In public this is an entirely different matter, if i wanted people to see me naked wherever i walk then i would drop my cloths and walk around as evolution intended.

No one, and i mean NO ONE has ANY right to see me naked without my permission, or under special circumstances like at an airport security terminal, or if i been arrested and need to be strip searched.

That's it, i'm done i give up entirely the last scrap of idea that i was living in a free society. I can vote sure, but most people don't vote and those that do simply don't think about their vote. Nothing will change now, the generation coming up really don't give a damn about freedom. As long as they have a big mac in one hand, a tv remote in the other, can watch big brother and rarely have to engage their brains, other than to work the phone to order another fast food meal, so they don't have to remove their obese arses from the coach they just HAD to have on credit because they saw one like it in a glossy celeb mag, then they are happy.

Sorry for that rant but i had to get the frustration out somewhere.

Edited becuase in my utter disbelief whilst typing i barely spelt a word correctly.


[edit on 28-1-2007 by ImaginaryReality1984]

mod edit: changed to external quote tags
Quote Reference (review link)

[edit on 29-1-2007 by UK Wizard]

Bump. How has this thread not gotten any responses. Does this not seem important to anyone?

I agree, I think it is a disgusting imfringment on society.

The police and government have a right and responsibility to protect people but they must do it without infringing on civilians rights ad abusing their power. Law enforcement must protect from the guilty without persecuting the innocent.

Unfortunely I find the rest of your post pretty small minded.

Originally posted by ImaginaryReality1984
That's it, i'm done i give up entirely the last scrap of idea that i was living in a free society. I can vote sure, but most people don't vote and those that do simply don't think about their vote. Nothing will change now, the generation coming up really don't give a damn about freedom. As long as they have a big mac in one hand, a tv remote in the other, can watch big brother and rarely have to engage their brains, other than to work the phone to order another fast food meal, so they don't have to remove their obese arses from the coach they just HAD to have on credit because they saw one like it in a glossy celeb mag, then they are happy.

What a blinkered, naive, tabloid-typical opinion. Besides the fact that you contradict yourself by saying you vote but then saying those that do vote dont think about voting and imply they dont care about politics, your views on "the generation coming-up" are pathetic and IMO dont correlate with reality.

As a university student with many friends of a similar age who aren't, I feel pretty confindent saying that the younger generation are the most politicised and opinionated since the 60s/70s, if not more. Issues such as immigration, nuclear power and european identity divide opinion as much as racial pride and gay rights.

Your idea that everyone is an obese couch potato isnt rooted in fact but in tabloid front pages and weak statistics.

Originally posted by ImaginaryReality1984
Don't get me wrong here, when i visit an airport i would put up with this, it's a very effective method for detecting weapons. In public this is an entirely different matter, if i wanted people to see me naked wherever i walk then i would drop my cloths and walk around as evolution intended.

Back on topic, if you feel so strongly about the issue of your body being exposed and feel that its some sort of basic human right, why are you willing to give it up in an airport? What is so special about an airport or aviation in general that makes you give up your opinions and morals? Surely if a judicial proposal is so repulsive to you it is repulsive whereever you go!

if you feel so strongly about the issue of your body being exposed and feel that its some sort of basic human right, why are you willing to give it up in an airport? What is so special about an airport or aviation in general that makes you give up your opinions and morals?

Because if a guy with a gun/bomb/weapon makes the effort to smuggle it on a plane then I would imagine the chance of that plane having an incident and killing you is much higher. If a guy has a concealed gun in the street, then he will most probably walk straight past you.

I personally think it is horrendous that the option is being put forward, not because they will implement it - they wont - but because our society today requires that the option is deemed as potentially necessary.

Any attempt to implement this would have people descending on all the major cities in protest. Are there any human rights experts out there who can see this NOT being an infringement?

My suspicion is that it is one of many proposals put forward as possibilities. What does worry me is that something like this is veiled behind the 'war on terror' rubbish. There are probably more british gun-toting madmen around than terrorists. And, believe me, i'm no apologist for terrorists. I saw dispatches the other week there, and it's disgraceful what's going on here in the UK, although I do recognise that most sensible people would not pay heed to such blatant verbal abuse and hatred of non-muslims.

Also, valuable investigative journalism is not exclusive to broadsheets. Tabliod is nothing but a format of cutting a newspaper to size. I believe The Sun is the biggest selling daily newspaper in the UK. It is an insult to the millions who buy it on a daily basis to question their intelligence. My personal opinion is that it is rubbish, but it continues to unearth stories such as this which are subsequently pored over in more detail by the newspapers willing to afford more column inches.

They have successfully uncovered a story whereby our government is investigating the possibility of using x-rays (you're only supposed to get x-rayed once every six months, i believe) to look through peoples clothing!!!

Disgraceful. Incredible. Outrageous.

I look forward to hearing the opinions of the opposition parties in this matter.

[edit on 29-1-2007 by boyg2004]

Originally posted by gfad
Unfortunely I find the rest of your post pretty small minded.

Originally posted by ImaginaryReality1984
That's it, i'm done i give up entirely the last scrap of idea that i was living in a free society. I can vote sure, but most people don't vote and those that do simply don't think about their vote. Nothing will change now, the generation coming up really don't give a damn about freedom. As long as they have a big mac in one hand, a tv remote in the other, can watch big brother and rarely have to engage their brains, other than to work the phone to order another fast food meal, so they don't have to remove their obese arses from the coach they just HAD to have on credit because they saw one like it in a glossy celeb mag, then they are happy.

Originally posted by gfad

What a blinkered, naive, tabloid-typical opinion. Besides the fact that you contradict yourself by saying you vote but then saying those that do vote dont think about voting and imply they dont care about politics, your views on "the generation coming-up" are pathetic and IMO dont correlate with reality.

Ok as i said it was a rant and i needed to vent it. Just so you know i'm only 21 so i also have friends of this age and whenever someone younger comes along they are often as described. If you think i'm a 50 year old sun reader then think again, yes ok i linked to an article from the sun but only because it was the first to publish this. I am i suppose wthin the generation coming up and yes i know that not all people are like that. It seems though that a greater proportion are.

Naive? Hardly, simply what i have experienced in my life, and i didn't contradict myself. I meant that most people when voting don't think about it very much, they read tabloids and then decide on issues without looking into the facts.

As a university student with many friends of a similar age who aren't, I feel pretty confindent saying that the younger generation are the most politicised and opinionated since the 60s/70s, if not more. Issues such as immigration, nuclear power and european identity divide opinion as much as racial pride and gay rights.

As a university student you have i would think been surrounded with people of a decent intellect so you see mostly the best rather than the worst.

Back on topic, if you feel so strongly about the issue of your body being exposed and feel that its some sort of basic human right, why are you willing to give it up in an airport? What is so special about an airport or aviation in general that makes you give up your opinions and morals? Surely if a judicial proposal is so repulsive to you it is repulsive whereever you go!

Why did you even have to ask that question? Hard object scanners at airports will greatly help reduce weapons on planes. Also you should remember i said that if i go to an airport i am CHOOSING to accept it. When walking down the street i am not really choosing it. I could of course lock myself in my house but this isn't exactly practical in our society, and i wouldn't want to either. That is the difference with this and airports.

Originally posted by boyg2004

They have successfully uncovered a story whereby our government is investigating the possibility of using x-rays (you're only supposed to get x-rayed once every six months, i believe) to look through peoples clothing!!!

This isn't x-ray as the sun makes out. It's ultraviolet light which naturally pases through our clothes. The technology is absolutely harmless to the human body, just thought i would clear that up.



[edit on 29-1-2007 by ImaginaryReality1984]

Originally posted by ImaginaryReality1984
How has this thread not gotten any responses.
Does this not seem important to anyone?

- I think your biggest problem here is the source, The Sun.

Frankly I wouldn't believe their claims, interpretation and conclusions if you tried paying me to.
I'd never rely on them as a single source......and especially not for anything remotely 'serious'.

I've had a little look around for some more credible comment with less ridiculous emphasis on the childish 'nudey x-ray specs' type stuff and a more sober appraisal of what 'proposal' means.

Try this -

PIONEERING research by Scots scientists is set to unleash a powerful weapon in the war on terrorists and drugs barons.

Last year a powerful scanner which can detect plastic explosives and illicit drugs was installed and tested at London’s Gatwick Airport as part of a pilot programme.

But the scanner has been sitting idle because its remarkable technology allows it to use a special wavelength of light literally to see through clothing. This, for obvious reasons, infringes civil liberties and means the machine cannot be used.

So scientists at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh have been called in by the Home Office to work on a solution which could see the scanner deployed across the globe.

They are developing remarkable software which takes the ‘naked’ image of the person in front of the scanner and replaces it with a computer-generated dummy.

At the same time, the machine can detect suspicious packages or objects under the clothing. Ingeniously, the software then superimposes the real image of the item causing concern on the computer-generated dummy.

Crucially, the target’s privacy will still be maintained.

Dr Yvan Petillot, of Heriot-Watt’s School of Engineering and Physical Science, said he was confident his team’s development would mean the powerful scanners would be in use soon at airports.

news.scotsman.com...

- You see?
Named sources, informed comment from the people responsible and credible information surrounding the civil liberties angle.

No long editorialised speculation(s) about unspecified possible authoritarian 'futures', no tales of unattributable and unprovable 'proposals' and certainly no sad but laughably and obviously prurient fixation on nudity.

It could hardly be more different to the, frankly intelligence-insulting, garbage contained in that Sun article.

Now, with this info in mind and having read the other article are you still so worried?

Cos I am in fact actually rather inpressed by the ingenuity of those Scots scientists and it gives me a feeling of confidence in public air travel for the future.......

......or are you still prefering to imagine 'big brother', leering officials and a 'strip search camera' on every lamp post?
Cos I'm not, but then, despite the article in The Sun, I never did.



[edit on 29-1-2007 by sminkeypinkey]

Sminkey.

You know my problem with your source? It was given 4 years ago and yet the cameras are still using the persons actual body and not the dummy version. Also to be honest even if they used the dummy it would still seem wrong to me. Innocent people should not be seen as criminals when they have done nothing wrong.

The proposal is contained in leaked documents drawn up by the Home Office and presented to PM Tony Blair’s working group on Security, Crime and Justice.

A January 17 memo seen by The Sun discusses the cameras, which can see through clothes.

If that memo does not exist then the sun is in trouble, that is why i accepted this story.

When you quoted the bit about airports having this technology in the scotsman. Well i don't mind having it in an airport, for a very obvious reason of airports being big targets. I even support the use of "electronic noses" in airports to detect explosive compounds.

I am really anonyed at the sun for quoting it as an "X-Ray" machine though. It sees under clothing but using the x-ray bit was stupid as people wil simply think it's the same as a hospital x-ray.

Sminkey, i don't like the sun that much, but occasionally they hit something interesting.

Oh and i should mention i just had to put this up before any other paper caught on to it, i get beaten so often to posting stuff lol. I've had so many threads deleted becuase someone beat me by maybe an hour, and i couldn't find it on search. In the next week we should hear more about this "memo", and if it never existed well then i will give up on anything the sun ever says. I don't have a lot of respect for the paper and this would be the end if it's a complete fabrication.

[edit on 29-1-2007 by ImaginaryReality1984]

Originally posted by ImaginaryReality1984
Sminkey.

You know my problem with your source? It was given 4 years ago

- Maybe, but that doesn't prove anything......except perhaps that 'big brother' is being incredibly slow about this impending authoritarianism (if you prefer to believe The Sun's spin).

Clearly this is the same technology.

All this amounts to IMO is a 'slow news day' at The Sun so they wheeled out an old story and dressed it up a little, read The Scotsman, it's perfectly obvious The Sun could have written the self-same tale 4yrs ago.

No-one ever got caught-out under-estimating The Sun, it truly is their 'level'.

yet the cameras are still using the persons actual body and not the dummy version.

- Well looking at even the images used in The Sun
(which is no proof or guarantee of what anyone might actually see with the 'end product') you'd hardly call them 'pictures' in any true sense.
Outlines of a white coloured human body form perhaps.

.....and as The Scotsman article proved 4 yrs ago they were discussing how to take account of the civil liberties angle.
In this respect alone The Sun is shown up.

Also to be honest even if they used the dummy it would still seem wrong to me. Innocent people should not be seen as criminals when they have done nothing wrong.

- Then travel must be hell for you right now cos I have yet to fly anywhere without being searched and having my bags checked.

I understand the principle you are discussing but you really ought to recognise we left that one behind long long ago - especially here in the UK.

Anyone travelling between Belfast and London knows that free and easy travel stopped about 35 years ago.
Seriously.

......and the sky didn't fall in and 'big brother' didn't give us all chip implants and make us all slaves etc etc with it happening either.

If that memo does not exist then the sun is in trouble, that is why i accepted this story.

- But a mere 'memo' proves nothing (and it wouldn't be the first time The Sun had spun or even completely invented a story).

There might be a grain of truth behind some of this but they'll never get into any trouble for it.
They never do.

i don't like the sun that much, but occasionally they hit something interesting.

- Yeah maybe but they can never help themselves from laying on as much 'shock!' 'horror!' and as big a sex angle too as they can.

In the next week we should hear more about this "memo", and if it never existed well then i will give up on anything the sun ever says.

- I have to say my money is on this being quickly forgotten and dying a very quiet death with nothing more being heard about it until the next 'slow news day'.

I don't have a lot of respect for the paper and this would be the end if it's a complete fabrication.

- You have to remember this is the British tabloid press we're talking about.
There's fabrication and there's well spun fabrication, they're not completely stupid.

Getting a very low-level civil servant to make grandiose claims which they can then report as "an insider/official source" talking about discussion papers (some of which might originate outside the Gov dept(s).....say a University? and therefore not take account of certain laws or Gov proceedures) that they might have seen (maybe even as they did little more than photocopy them or courier them about) may be a substantive as it gets but that isn't necessarily then basing everything on lies.


[edit on 29-1-2007 by sminkeypinkey]

Originally posted by sminkeypinkey
Then travel must be hell for you right now cos I have yet to fly anywhere without being searched and having my bags checked.

I understand the principle you are discussing but you really ought to recognise we left that one behind long long ago - especially here in the UK.

Anyone travelling between Belfast and London knows that free and easy travel stopped about 35 years ago.
Seriously.

Erm you seem to have not read what i said! Sminkey this is unlike you to miss something. I said over and over that i fully support this kind of technology in airports, they have a very clear use there.

In the street though i am minding my own business walking about and i don't deserve to be for lack of a better word scanned to see if i'm a threat. I wear clothing for a reason, when i go to an airport i accept the fact that this needs to be done, and i can truly see the benefit of it in that area.

Originally posted by sminkeypinkey
Well looking at even the images used in The Sun
(which is no proof or guarantee of what anyone might actually see with the 'end product') you'd hardly call them 'pictures' in any true sense.
Outlines of a white coloured human body form perhaps.

That of course comes down to individual opinion on what is acceptable to be seen without consent. Personally without consent no one has the right to view anyone part of my body i wish to keep hidden. Unless of course i am under arrest or going through an airport (if you go through an airport i consider this consent in itself).

Orignally posted by sminkey pinkey
There might be a grain of truth behind some of this but they'll never get into any trouble for it.
They never do.

That is very wrong that our press don't vet their sources, when they are found to be lying they should be punished in court, but maybe thats for another thread.

Originally posted by ImaginaryReality1984
Erm you seem to have not read what i said! Sminkey this is unlike you to miss something.

- Oh don't worry, it happens (rarely, I hope).
I'm not beyond error and if I took you wrong then sorry about that.

Lol no problem, it just shocked me as you always put your points across well and don't seem to skip anything.

So back to the point, if this does happen, will everyone here accept it? Would most people even care? Would others even see it as an infringment on their liberty?

Originally posted by ImaginaryReality1984
if this does happen, will everyone here accept it? Would most people even care? Would others even see it as an infringment on their liberty?

- That remains to be seen, I guess it depends on the level of serious threat people generally believe is out there.

But I can tell you that here in Northern Ireland during 'the troubles' several measures were taken that even today might be thought of as shocking elsewhere.

Frisking, electronic 'sweeping', carrier and handbag searches on entering you local stores was common-place - not when going into the small places like a little tobacconist or sweat shop but the rest of the main town stores certainly.

Cars were stopped from parking in town centres with the roadsides being lined with large steel drums filled with concrete and, for most big towns, all the roads themselves into and out of those town centres were closed and locked off with large steel barriers at night.

(It's funny how you forget the details, I just reminded myself of something.
I remember being back here on a visit after some time away.
One night on my bike I got a real scare & a shock encountering that sort of barrier on the way into town one night; if I'd been 'giving it some' it really could have been lethal.)

It was very alien but in a surprisingly short time people got used to it and carried on much as before.

It's amazing what people will get used to.