Tiddly camera sees through clothing

RICH PERVERTS REJOICE, for there's new technology in town under development which may well be able to see right under clothing. Of course, it's designed for security purposes, but one can't help but ponder on privacy problems the technology could cause.

Researchers at Northrop-Grumman Space Technology are working on tiny little cameras which will be able to peek right through clothing and other materials to check blokes and blokettes for weapons or other dodgy goods. The technology's called passive millimeter-wave or PMMW technology, and will also be used to see through heavy clouds on rainy days, also for security and surveillance purposes, says the EE Times.

As it stands, the technology at the moment only provides "somewhat fuzzy" greyscale images, so it may not be time to worry about your bits and bobs being seen at every airport on the planet just yet. However, the researchers are trying to work on improving the image quality.

The blokes behind the technology are likening the technology to made up gizmos used in sci-fi flick Total Recall. The team will present more information on the technology at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, or ISSCC, held on the 12th of February, 2007. µ