UnNews:Robot cavity searchers to be installed on street corners

This article is part of UnNews, your source for up-to-the-picosecond misinformation.

30 January 2007

The logo for the initiative, to be placed on all compliant devices. And subjects.

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.

Sources

• Lord Xenu "Demarcation Dispute" I perform the anal probes around here!, January 29, 2007