Tiny Cameras Forge Era of Voyeurism
From: | Date: | Author: ERIC FIDLER, Associated Press Writer
ERIC FIDLER, Associated Press Writer
CHICAGO (AP) -- Forget ``Candid Camera'' -- you might be on ``voyeurcam'' right now, or even on ``bathroomcam.''
In fact, many of your private moments could be playing on the Internet or someone's VCR, thanks to technological advances that have allowed tiny, affordable video cameras to fall into the hands of people with a penchant for peeping.
Smoke detectors, exit signs, cellular phones, stuffed animals -- almost anything can hold a hidden camera, spawning a troubling new market in voyeurism, with Internet entrepreneurs selling videotapes for home viewing or charging for sneak peeks on their Web sites.
The practice is hard to stop. The cameras are hard to find, and authorities are not always sure what to do about them when they do find them.
Jay, a former college athlete who spoke on condition that he not be identified further, knows all about it: A video of him changing in a locker room showed up on an Internet site advertising tapes of ``hot younger dudes.''
``I think it's ridiculous that it's so easy to just put this on the Internet,'' he said. ``It's obviously a violation of privacy and they use us to sell videos -- of us -- for their monetary gain.''
Jay is one of 28 people who filed a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court last month against the makers and distributors of the videotapes, which were made in locker rooms at Northwestern University, Illinois State, Eastern Illinois and the University of Pennsylvania.
The plaintiffs want unspecified damages.
``What you have going on all over the place now is people who are just kind of planting cameras everywhere they can find in places that are at least theoretically public and then using them however they want,'' said Lauren Weinstein of Vortex Technology in Woodland Hills, Calif., who has been involved with the Internet since its first nonmilitary uses.
``That can be something as disruptive as someone who is hiding a little video camera with mirrors on their shoe and shooting pictures up skirts in the mall or people who put cameras in private places to try to get their jollies or to sell them,'' said Weinstein, who moderates an online discussion group called the Privacy Forum.
The tapes of Jay and the other athletes came to light when someone making a hidden-camera tape in a locker room got scared off and left behind a bag with his camera and tapes with names like ``Voyeur Time'' and ``Straight Off the Mat.''
What legal recourse Jay and others like him have is unclear. Laws vary from state to state. Prosecutors are sometimes reluctant to bring charges without laws specifically targeting surreptitious videotaping or posting such tapes on the Internet.
People are left with little recourse when tapes are made in secret, marketed in niche magazines or Web sites and then ``sold from some offshore island somewhere,'' Weinstein said.
But rather than give up, Jay said he plans to make people aware of what's happening. He said he's more careful now when he changes in a locker room. He looks for bags pointing toward the showers and lets others know what happened to him.
``Anyone's son or daughter can be on the Internet; anyone's brother or sister can be on the Internet,'' he said. ``That's rather disgusting when you think about it.''
Jonathan Zittrain, executive director of Harvard University Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, said inexpensive hidden cameras are part of a ``third wave'' of technological advances that are changing how we live -- the first two being inexpensive computer processors and inexpensive computer networks.
He said society must recognize that small-camera technology exists and decide what to do about it.
``Act early or you may lose your chance,'' he said. ``You may end up in a world you do not want.''
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