If you were a
woman who has gone to a gym, lazed on a beach, travelled on an escalator,
visited a superstore or even attended class; you could have been the target of
a “creepshot”. A creepshot is a picture typically of the breasts or butts of
unsuspecting women taken by a voyeur using a smartphone in public places.
Recently, there was the incident of a man taking upskirt pictures of women
travelling on elevators. Such pictures are later posted on Internet sites with
embarrassing taglines such as “hot blonde with tight ass at Target Pharmacy”.
On one of the
sites that post “creepshots”, the founders describe themselves as “a couple
regular family guys who love to hang out, have a good time”. They describe a ‘CreepShot’ as a candid
picture which captures the natural sexy, embarrassing or funny aspect of the
subject matter/person without their knowledge”.
Their advice to voyeurs is to “Take a look at the world around you. There are creep opportunities everywhere:
during your commute, shopping, coffee shops, office, sporting events or just
even walking down the street! How about
creeping your wife? “
Although
voyeurs and websites that host them argue that these pictures were taken in
public places, the context, instant and lack of consent when they were shot,
violates personal privacy. For example, women working out in a gym do not
expect to be photographed in an exercise pose that highlights a particular part
of her anatomy.
Existing laws
need to be rewritten as they are not phrased well enough to deal with these
immoral and reprehensible acts. The Massachusetts highest court ruled last week
that a man who took cellphone photos up the skirts of women riding the Boston
subway did not violate state law because the women were not nude or partially
nude. The court ruled that existing Peeping Tom laws protected people from
being photographed in dressing rooms and bathrooms when nude or partially nude,
but did not protect clothed people in public area.
Recently
Google announced an update to Google Glass which allowed users to snap
photographs just by winking. Detecting
eye blinks is much more difficult than catching a person using his camera and
creepshot possibilities are one among the several privacy concerns that the use
of Google Glass raises.
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