Big Brother Gets X-Ray Specs

A company called American Science & Engineering has developed cheap, simple vans that can take full x-ray images of vehicles, houses and any other structure, analyze the contents and send in SWAT teams to neutralize the threat.

Apparently they are being used already in the Land Of The Free, and will soon be coming to a neighborhood near you.



So there you are, driving home from a trip to the local nursery with a few bags of fertilizer and lime in your trunk, and happen to whiz past a scanner van. You're at home an hour later, happily transplanting begonias when you find yourself surrounded by masked men pointing guns at you. And they already shot your dog, of course.

Nah, that could never happen. Not in Canada, anyway. Right?

Last week, an 800 year old law that required masked men to identify themselves as police before they blow open your door was quietly watered down. So, you probably won't have any idea whether the masked thugs pointing guns at your face are a gang of crackhead home invaders or the honorable men and women of your local constabulary.

One can only pray that some clever Chinese hacker-entrepreneur can quickly come up with a jammer that blocks, neutralizes or hacks the technology in these vans. They've done very well with all sorts of other jammers, so its only a matter of time.

And lets face it - there are all sorts of other ways that a REAL terrorist could defeat these things - just steal a half dozen vehicles, load the trunks with fertilizer and a taped up bundle of road flares, and plant the decoys on different roads two miles away from the actual target.

Or, even more fun, and probably far more effective, is park a few vans with couples gettin' busy in them across from the police station.

Them vans would never even leave the parking lot.