Community Chat

[newziesuzie]

This needs to be changed. 😱

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/georgia-appeals-court-upskirting-is-legal/

"ATLANTA - A man admitted he surreptitiously took cellphone video up a woman's skirt while she shopped at a grocery store, but a Georgia court said he didn't break the law.

A divided Georgia Court of Appeals this month tossed out the conviction of former grocery store employee Brandon Lee Gary, who recorded videos up a woman's skirt - known as "upskirting" - while she shopped.

The 6-3 majority opinion said Gary's behavior, while reprehensible, doesn't violate the state's invasion of privacy law, under which he was prosecuted."

[qvcfreak]

Very wrong in my opinion. 

[maestra]

Hope Brandon gets the daylights kicked out of him if caught doing this again.

[circles]

They have to be kidding...!!!

I wonder if the law would change if it was their wife or daughter...

[itsmagic]

That is wrong -  I think it is very much an invasion of privacy. 

[QueenDanceALot]

What an idiotic ruling.

[Noel7]

Unbelievable.

I wonder if those men would think it was an invasion of privacy if someone was in the men's room secretly taking photos of them at the urinal.

[ChynnaBlue]

Texas HAS a law against this, but the appeals court justices here decided it was too broad. Here's the super creepy story about a super creeper. The appeals court held up the judgment.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/19/texas-court-upholds-right-to-take-upskirt-photos

Apparently freedom of expression is more important than my freedom not to have perverts take pictures up my skirt without my consent.

Excerpt: The appeals judges appeared to agree, stating that although “upskirt” type-images are intolerable invasions of privacy, the wording of the law is too broad. Presiding judge Sharon Keller wrote in the court’s opinion published on Wednesday: “Protecting someone who appears in public from being the object of sexual thoughts seems to be the sort of ‘paternalistic interest in regulating the defendant’s mind’ that the First Amendment was designed to guard against.”

The judges said that photographs were “inherently expressive”, like other artistic mediums such as films or books, and so the process of creating them, as well as the images themselves, was part of an American’s right to free speech because “thought is intertwined with expression”.

[Marp]

The Georgia Appeals Court is not the only one that has made this ruling.  Similar rulings have been made in Texas and Massachusetts.  There are likely others.

It all comes down to the wording of the respective laws and hopefully all 50 state legislatures are reviewing the wording of their laws.  In some states (I believe GA is one) if upskirting occurs in a restroom or dressing room it would be illegal but because of the wording being upskirted while going up stairs, in an elevator, just walking along is not against the law as written.