US Court Rules Upskirts Legal
- Categories: International, News
- Date: Mar 7, 2014 15:33 JST
- Tags: Courts, Crime, Law, Massachusetts, Photography, Upskirt, USA, Voyeurism
Proving that Japanese courts have no monopoly on such rulings, a US high court has ruled taking upskirt photos of women on trains is legal “because they are not nude,” and because they have “no reasonable expectation of privacy” in so public a place.
The case which prompted the ruling was the 2010 arrest of a 32-year-old man who was using a cellphone camera to take upskirt pictures of women on Massachusetts public transport.
After complaints about this horrendous crime spree and unlike Japan not being able to easily arrest and convict men based solely on the testimony of female passengers, police finally managed to lure him into snapping up the skirts of a female undercover officer.
He was arrested and charged with two counts of attempting to secretly photograph a person in a state of partial nudity, facing a misdemeanor charges carrying maximum of two and a half years imprisonment.
Rather than go along with this and perhaps risk being brutalised sexually or otherwise in prison or persecuted as a registered sex offender for the rest of his life, he challenged the ruling based on a legalistic quibble: that his victims were not “partially nude” as they were still fully clothed.
After initially being denied in a lower court, the state’s high court subsequently ruled in favour of his appeal, the judge stating that:
“A female passenger on a MBTA trolley who is wearing a skirt, dress, or the like covering these parts of her body is not a person who is ‘partially nude,’ no matter what is or is not underneath the skirt by way of underwear or other clothing.
In sum, we interpret the phrase, ‘a person who is … partially nude’ in the same way that the defendant does, namely, to mean a person who is partially clothed but who has one or more of the private parts of body exposed in plain view at the time that the putative defendant secretly photographs her.”
The man was acquitted, with the court ruling that the law “does not apply to photographing (or videotaping or electronically surveilling) persons who are fully clothed and, in particular, does not reach the type of upskirting that the defendant is charged with attempting to accomplish on the MBTA.”
That the only way citizens in public can enjoy any expectation of privacy or freedom from surveillance, whether of the mass or intimate variety, is to risk arrest themselves by going about in a state of nudity seems likely to delight the US government and their corporate masters, all of whom are increasingly keen on the possibilities offered by being able to track people wherever they go by way of ANPR, cellphone triangulation, transaction records and lately automated facial recognition.
The state prosecutor had no recourse but to complain that the law should be changed so upskirtists could join the 1% (the only alternative to a change in the law perhaps being to have deprived the female officer of her underwear for the duration of the operation):
“Every person, male or female, has a right to privacy beneath his or her own clothing. If the statute as written doesn’t protect that privacy, then I’m urging the Legislature to act rapidly and adjust it so it does.”
Incidentally, both the judge and the man’s lawyer were female, whilst the state prosecutor was male.
Japan also experienced a similar recent ruling, although in that case the legal shenanigans took the opposite direction as the law only prohibited voyeurism in public places, now handily redefined to exclude anywhere hidden camera toting police happen to be.
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'murica! the land of the free!
I live in Massachusetts, and I can say from experience that the women around here don't really even wear skirts (unfortunately)
Move to a major city in Japan. Girls and women here wear skirts all the time. In fact I'd say it's probably about as common as a girl wearing pants in the states. It's soooo nice!
tight pants like yoga pants show more with less effort, anyways
Expect a mass exodus of Japanese to the eastern United States?
After the mass exodus is over, they all migrate back to japan because skirts isn't that plentiful in usa.
They will stay. For the yoga pants. Or anything that is like spats.
-1 for common sense...
Fully clothed or not, looking under the skirt of a woman is voyeurism.
wear pants then. Equality for women and men right?
Don't mind me take a picture of your receding hair line. I mean, you can just wear a hat if it bothers you. :)
There's nothing inherently sexual with receding hair line.
Also, a man is not complete without a nice hat. Wear a nice hat today.
But that... goes against the bible! :O
Hey I like pants but.. I like skirts too. Equality means freedom to wear anything. So if women shouldn't wear skirts then no men should wear kilts.
Men are free to wear skirts. Ask the irish or the scots...
Fortunately trials haven't relied on "common sense" for a couple hundred years now. They rely on the strict interpretation of existing laws, and if a law isn't worded properly to account for a crime, regardless of how obvious it might seem, then it ain't illegal and there's no grounds for conviction.
What about staring at her face because it looks hawt?
If your skirt is short enough to be filmed, it is on you, not the perv.
Attitudes like that keep us from having good things. It sounds like you're saying "if you can't accept that shots of your crotch and ass might end up on the internet without your permission then stop wearing skirts". Just like those assholes trying to "prevent" rapes by telling girls to dress more "modestly". Yeah lets all become amish now out of fear of rapists and pervs...
If I were a girl, yeah I'd expect perverts and even filming, but putting videos out into the public without consent from whoever is in the video should be criminal.
Not hard enough, bitch.
Are you.. trying to say something?
Dress properly with a long dress or you're asking exactly what you want. To be peeped especially if your wearing pants.
Dress responsibly.
You don't like good things, do you?
@19:19 - so you're basically supporting the belief that women should basically dress like the Amish or devout muslims (at least, the American equivalent of it) or else being unfairly filmed by a guy is ok?
Getting looked at is one thing (what kind of intelligent woman wouldn't show cleavage if she didn't want it to be seen?), but no woman should be told it's ok that she got sexually molested or it's ok pictures of her crotch or ass ended up on the internet because of what she was wearing... besides, only paparazzi care about shots like that (where the woman is wearing the flimsiest thing and shouldn't be surprised if her cooch shows up on the internet and I can't recall when they ever were surprised), MOST of the rest of the underskirt shots are probably of schoolgirls who wear boring regular panties. Girls who have to wear basic skirts with a uniform. Not even their own choice to begin with. Now tell them to dress "modestly".
yeah wear a fucking burqua! you fucking idiots
you have the best comment, Glad human beings with with brains still exists.
Or do as Misaka Mikoto does and wear shorts under the skirt.
I didn't realize so many Amish people visited Sankaku...
So, women should have an inherent right to tease men? And men are not allowed to give in or face criminal charges? What kind of matriarchal feminazi world are we living in?
Are you assuming that all men dislike being teased? You think it doesn't send my heart aflutter to see pretty girls in their short skirts and hotpants in the summertime and that I can't enjoy it without wanting to rape/molest/infringe on their rights? You want that taken away? Who cares about your thoughts on women and feminism, you're a fucking misandrist.
Nah, I'm just a fucking troll wasting your time and enjoying your tears. I also love playing the devil's advocate.
>>So, women should have an inherent right to
>>tease men? And men are not allowed to give in
>>or face criminal charges?
Yes.
@20:03 - I'll take your word for it but there's no telling you could just be backpedaling after realizing you said something stupid. It's not hard to believe because I've seen much stupider serious posts around here. In fact I thought I remembered your name from other posts here throwing around the word "matriarchal" but it actually seems like a lot of people are starting to pick that word up lately.. wtf? Did I miss a joke somewhere?
I don't see how that's sexist. You aren't forbidden from wearing tight clothing on your well toned muscular body, if you had one of those.
@20:28
Me being serious on the internet? Never.
Debating rules of the internet:
1. spew bullshit until someone proves you are talking out of your ass
2. declare yourself a troll and claim moral superiority
Trolls never win, especially if admitted to being one, and even more especially if the troll has a name. May your posts never be read again.
Ummmmmmm newsflash, rape does not equal looking.
Nothing is EVER an excuse for rape.
But you're damn well getting LOOKED at in a perverted way if you dress yourself as provocatively, otherwise you're saying "I put these clothes on, thereby I am limiting your freedom of where you can point your eyes".
And this isn't even about just LOOKING. This is about photoing and filming! I just related the idea that women should watch what they wear to the same stupid idea that idiots say will prevent rape. When did I ever say there is an excuse for rape? Of course there is no excuse for rape, just like there's no excuse for filming someone's privacy with the potential to put it up on the internet. Filming under a schoolgirl's skirt is no less creepy and infringing on privacy than filming her family watching tv through her window without any permission.
I want to make what I said more clear, be cause I never said anything that disagrees with whay you're saying, but sankaku apparently doesn't want my reply to show. This one might not either but worth a shot.
@19:47
You misread his comment. He was being sarcastic.
If you don't want photos of your dick on the net wear shorts and pants! dont go around naked.
What if your dick is hanging out of your shorts and you don't even realize it? Unfortunately I have seen such a picture on the internet... :( of course, a pic like that is probably always of an older, poor man who doesn't give a shit (and is probably drunk), so it's something most women even probably wouldn't like to see
"might end up on the internet without your permission"
I would not give a quarter of a shit if my dick or my spread asshole lands on the internet if it can't be connected to anything else like my face.
You see some random ass/upskirt/cunt on the internet, you really want me to tell you also meticulously search for that womens identity among those hundreds of other different asses.
I also guess you could not tell the asses of your female friends apart If you randomly found them on the internet. And also I might even go so far and say not a single shat will be given then too.
So true. Whores want to be filmed. That's why they wear slutty short skits. In fact, they're asking for the dick. It should be legal to rape 'em.
Why is everyone assuming that only "short/slutty skirts" are the ones being filmed under? What about school uniforms? They probably get phones shoved under them more than any other. They don't only exist in Japan. In fact a ban on skirts would result in an outcry from catholic schools. It'd be like banning headscarves. And isn't it enough to want to be seen and not filmed.. or "dicked"?
Reading comments on this website is like having access to a time machine that only goes 100 years backwards.
scary how the internet reveals what's really on the minds of the average bloke...
Really? Kinda like the feeling I get on Fox News...
If you dont want naked photos of you to be viewed by government employees, don't fly on an airplane. It's on you, not the TSA.
So, to take upskirt photos. I must go to Massachusetts then.
Goes to Massachusetts to get upskirt photos.
Can't find a skirt.