[waste_monk]

I recall the panic over that back in in the day, IIRC it was near-visible infra-red, not UV - if you didn't have sufficient IR filtering over the sensor, were using flash (and the flash included a decent amount of IR), and the subject was wearing something thin, you'd potentially get unintended skin detail with the IR reflection.

As I understand more or less a solved problem on modern cameras such as on your smartphone... instead of a bulb you tend to have white LED for your flash that doesn't really give off useful (any?) IR, and there's better/more consistent IR filtering on the sensor.

[consp]

I still have a Sony CD camera (as in disk not ccd) which has near IR and a IR led. Fun to play with for night recording (its intended use) and you can see though thin clothes a tiny bit but range is very limited. Skin patterns much less due to lacking contrast. Resolution in that mode is also lacking so detail is not really a thing. I can understand the problem and I think that is the reason my IR camera in my laptop has a moire pattern in the hardware to make it almost useless to the common eye. But that last part is just a guess.

[mark-r]

Sony was forced to cripple the "night vision" feature of some cameras because it was too easy to abuse to see through clothing.