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[LUG] Fwd: [ORG-discuss] Robot cavity searchers to be installed on street corners

 

Enjoy :D

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Gerard <dgerard@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: 25-May-2007 20:56
Subject: [ORG-discuss] Robot cavity searchers to be installed on street corners
To: Open Rights Group open discussion list
<org-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>


THE PANOPTICON, London, Monday (UnGadget) - The Home Office has
announced plans to include robot stop-and-search booths on street
corners in a bid to thwart TERRORISTS concealing weapons. Robot
manipulators would be built into lamp posts to "undress" passers-by
and conduct thorough bodily searches as needed.

While Home Secretary John Reid denied knowledge of the plans, his
pupils were dilating, his face reddening and beads of sweat starting
to form on his forehead. Fortunately, a nearby robot manipulator
detected the suspicious behaviour and investigated him carefully and
thoroughly.

The technology is not dissimilar to that already found in some UK
airports. Currently, air security officials pick out pert individuals
to stand in a booth while Nurse Ratched snaps a latex glove on and
performs for the CCTV camera. Within seconds, the naked human form and
anything that may be concealed on the person, such as coins, a gun,
drugs or their last two meals becomes immediately apparent. Some
security investigators, such as Big Bertha at Seattle Airport, become
tourist attractions.

A one-month trial at London's Hampstead Heath involved a
millimetre-sensitivity robot manipulator. Local human rights monitors
deemed the probes "quite satisfactory, thank you." However, robot
fetishists, or "clunkies," tended to monopolise favourite lamp posts,
wearing through the devices at a tremendous rate.

But security expert Alfred Kinsey sees practical problems. "The real
question is not whether the technology can see something under the
clothing. It's how you respond to it when the technology says there's
something unusual. Do you send snaps around for everyone? If so, do
you keep probing to see if the subject does anything else interesting
or educational? Can we sell the rights?"

A spokesman for Capita, considered likely to win the contract, told us
not to worry our pretty little heads or even prettier little buns over
the subject and to run along and be good little boys or his robot
probe would investigate us as terrorists.


(Written in January, but I don't think it's aged much.)


-d.

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