Glimmer man

[Zipporah Schumaker]

A [glimmer man] (sometimes rendered as glimmerman) was a name unofficially, but universally, applied to [inspectors] who were employed by coal gas manufacturers in Ireland to detect the use of gas in breach of [rationing] restrictioons during the Emergency (ie. WW2) from March 1942 and in some places as late as 1947.
The term is now used as a metaphor for bureaucratic intrusion into privacy.