California bans video peeping

The new law, which becomes effective Jan. 1, makes video voyeurism a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail and $1,000 in fines. State officials said the initial bill was a response to several recent incidences where hidden cameras were discovered "peeping" down women's shirts or up their skirts. Many of the videos end up online, where people can pay to view them.

Existing "peeping Tom" laws in California covered only taping in bathrooms and changing rooms, where there is an expectation of privacy.

But developments in camera technology have made it possible for peepers to get their videos out in the open, without the person being filmed ever noticing.

Jeepers creepers, peepers
In one instance, according to newspaper reports, a man at the Disneyland theme park in Anaheim, Calif. put a camera with a zoom lens and auto-focus into a shopping bag, and then carried the bag so it could film up women's skirts.

Other instances involved cameras placed at a shopping mall and at an outdoor festival. In those cases, cameras caught women as they waited on line, got on and off rides and walked into bathrooms.

California Assemblyman Dick Ackerman said that once his office began working on the bill, they got calls from throughout the state.

Numerous occurrences
"When news started getting out, we got more and more reports. (One department) had 13 cases on file," he said. "It used to be video cameras were gigantic and hard to hide. Now they can be the size of your fist and easy to conceal."

Ackerman said there are dozens of Web sites that specialize in displaying such videos.

A quick search for "video peeping" on a typical search engine turns up dozens of sites that specialize in such videos. The sites claim to have videos taken in places like bathrooms, doctor's offices, showers and dressing rooms.

"We ran into an independent contractor in L.A. selling them on his own, and many of those videos ended up on the Internet," he said. "You can't do much (about distribution) on the Internet, but you can try and stop the source."