Law Targets 'Up-Skirt' Filming
 

submitted by gekkogecko


SEATTLE (Reuters) - Galled by a court ruling last year that let two men get
away with pointing cameras up women's skirts in public, Washington state
legislators are proposing updated anti-voyeurism laws to outlaw the practice.

Filming a person's "intimate areas" would be made illegal, even in public
places, and DNA samples would be collected from offenders to better track
them
under a bill written by State Rep. Patricia Lantz, who chairs the House
Judiciary Committee (news - web sites).

"In the previous (anti-voyeurism) bill, we didn't consider the remote
possibility that jerks would go around filming up the skirts of women," Lantz
told Reuters.

Washington's Supreme Court ruled last September that two men had not violated
state law by filming women and girls, one at a shopping mall and the other at
an outdoor food festival, "Bite of Seattle."

The amended law would not make it illegal to peek at a person's private areas
in public, but would outlaw filming, including digital images, which can
easily
be loaded onto a computer and displayed on the Internet.

"As nasty as it is to the victims, standing over my desk and looking down my
blouse is not a crime," Lantz said. "But this bill makes it clear you have a
reasonable expectation of privacy about your body and a person's ability to
film intimate areas of your
body."