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.