Back in 1998, Sony had to recall over 700,000 video cameras after customers made a shocking discovery.
The tech giant had boasted the new camcorder’s ‘X-ray’ ability, with the video cameras fitted with night-vision, infra-red technology, which let people take videos in the dark. Sounds like a pretty marketable idea, right?
It didn’t go quite as planned.
When people used this camera in daylight, the ‘NightShot’ abilities did something a little less—appropriate.
It turns out a bunch of people had taken pictures of women who were either fully clothed or in swimsuits, but they looked almost naked.
An ABC reporter stated that at least 12 websites were found with pictures of women who looked almost naked, even though they were in actual fact wearing clothes.
‘It’s an outrage — I think it would outrage anyone. You go out in the street you don’t expect people to look under your clothes. It’s such a basic expectation that any court in the country would find that this violates that right.’
The supposed ‘X-ray’ capabilities of this camera ended up with a lens that could partially see through clothing on certain occasions because of the infrared technology (mostly when wearing dark clothes, which would give a translucent effect—so not transparent).
‘Any sheer blouse or clothing, if you hit it with enough light, you’re gonna get a silhouette of what’s underneath; and that’s essentially all you get with these Sony camcorders.’
The massive tech giant had to call back all the cameras that were sold in a desperate effort to improve the situation.
Unfortunately, people wanted to try to revamp the camcorder to get different ways of properly seeing through clothing, and some even went on the market for up to $700.