Law targets 'Up-Skirt' filming

Seattle - 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." -- Reuters

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