Madam, you should really try and match your bra with your panties

A CAMERA that can see through people’s clothing at distances of up to 80ft has been developed to help detect weapons, drugs and explosives.

The camera could be deployed in railway stations, shopping centres and other public spaces.

Although it can see objects under clothes, its designers say the images do not show anatomical details. However, it is likely to increase fears that Britain has become a surveillance society.

The new technology, known as the T5000 system, has attracted interest from police forces, train companies and airport operators as well as government agencies.

It has been developed by ThruVision, an Oxfordshire-based company spun out from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, one of the government’s leading physics research centres.

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This has been used at the Canary Wharf complex in east London, which is home to several global banks and is regarded as a target for terrorists. The Dubai Mercantile Exchange has a similar installation.

The system can be linked to a computer so that it can automatically scan anyone passing and alert its human operator to anything suspicious. Clive Beattie, ThruVision’s chief executive, said: “Acts of terrorism have shaken the world in recent years and security precautions have been tightened globally. The T5000 dramatically extends the range over which we can scan people.”

Bill Foster, the president of Thermal Matrix, an American defence contractor specialising in imaging systems for the US military, is one customer. He said: “This could be deployed at major sporting events, concerts and rail stations as well as for military use.”

The technology works by detecting and measuring terahertz waves, or T-waves for short. These are a form of electromagnetic radiation, emitted by all people and objects that lie between the infrared and microwave parts of the spectrum.

The waves from any given material also carry a distinctive signature, offering the potential to distinguish Semtex from modelling clay and cocaine from sugar.

Amazing how much our governments will talk about how we should be afraid of the evil terrorists but when such a device is developed, they will immediately turn this device upon its own citizens. To all governments, the people they serve are the ones they are afraid of most.

So now we will have a Department of Homeland Security full of voyeurs, blackmailers and creeps.... oh. right. We have that right now...

Crimes by Homeland Security agents stir alert

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is supposed to stop these types of crimes. Instead, so many of its officers have been charged with committing those crimes themselves that their boss in Washington recently issued an alert about the ''disturbing events'' and the ``increase in the number of employee arrests.''

Thomas S. Winkowski, assistant commissioner of field operations, wrote a memo to more than 20,000 officers nationwide noting that employees must behave professionally at all times -- even when not on the job.

''It is our responsibility to uphold the laws, not break the law,'' Winkowski wrote in the Nov. 16 memo obtained by The Miami Herald.

Winkowski's memo cites employee arrests involving domestic violence, DUI and drug possession. But court records show Customs officers and other Department of Homeland Security employees from South Florida to the Mexican border states have been charged with dozens of far more serious offenses.

So... trusting these guys to look at intimate pictures of unwilling citizens is just fine? How about we turn these cameras around and point them into the White House and Dick Cheney's secret lair for a change? It would be nice to know our government is working on our behalf rather than against us.