Video camera sees all, even through your clothes
NEW YORK - Imagine walking down a busy street and suddenly everyone can see through your clothes.
It's not just a bad dream.
It's the harsh reality of a new technology; a camera that can actually see through your clothes. Some people are posting those pictures on the internet -- your nude picture could be available to millions of eyeballs -- and you wouldn't even know it.
“It's a great way to be a peeping tom without having to climb a tree and look in a window,” said Privacy Rights Clearinghouse spokesperson Beth Givens. “It's invisible to the person whose privacy is being violated. They don't know that somebody has the ability to look underneath their clothing.
It looks like a normal home video camera. But this camera has special feature called night vision. Infrared technology that allows this camera to take pictures in the dark.
Someone figured out that by using the night vision feature in broad daylight along with a special filter, this camera could also see through some clothing.
Sony discovered the camera's X-ray ability in 1998 and quickly changed the way it manufacturers night vision cameras so it wouldn't happen.
But some people figured out how to modify the camera to get the see-through effect back. Hundreds of them are for sale on the internet.
Most people who end up on Internet don't know they’re being photographed. They are innocent victims of whose pictures are taken on the street, at swimming pools, and even beaches.
It's so new even privacy advocates are surprised.
Givens looked at the photos and says wearing clothes gives us a right to privacy.
“This technology violates that expectation of privacy. It obliterates that expectation of privacy,” explained Givens.
Some believe it's a lawsuit waiting to happen.
"You go out in the street, you don't expect people to be able to look under your clothes," says Martha Davis of the National Organization for Women's Legal Defense Fund. "That is such a basic expectation that any court in the country would find that this violates that right."
In an e-mail to ABC News, one Web site operator declined to be interviewed, saying, "I do not want to be labeled a pervert."
See-through technology like infrared and even more advanced thermal imaging are being used for good, to help firemen see through smoke and save lives.
Some cars are being equipped with infrared to help drivers see at night. And
the military protects its troops by using the technology to detect land
mines.
-- Anonymous, August 08, 2001