The San Francisco Herald Examiner had this to say about Assembly Bill 182 which would make it a crime to videotape someone in sexually compromising positions without their knowledge or consent.:
"Showing that no sexual fetish goes unexploited by the Internet or unpunished by the Legislature, lawmakers have made video peeping women's skirts an down their blouses the newest anti-crime crusade. More than 100 Web sites are devoted to so-called "upskirt" voyeurism, where men with tiny cameras hang out at shopping malls, amusement parks and beaches to secretly [Image] videotape women's underwear, lingerie, pantyhose or whatever.
It's not illegal. State law prohibits looking "through a hole or opening into a bathroom, changing room or any other area where someone has a reasonable expectation of privacy," but not looking under someone's skirt in a public place. Police in Southern California have been forced to release several men, including one who angled a concealed video camera under the skirts of women waiting in line at Disneyland. In a 1996 Oakland case, police could charge a man only with eavesdropping on private conversations after he was caught videotaping naked men in an athletic club locker room.
The man allegedly hid the video camera in a gym bag and would turn it on as soon as he reached the club. Assemblyman Dick Ackerman, R-Fullerton, says these secret videos and photographs are an "offensive, disgusting practice," a blatant invasion of privacy and a crime directed mostly toward women. "There are literally thousands and thousands of women who have had pictures taken either up their dress or down their blouse," Ackerman said. "None of them, I'm sure, are aware of what's going on and that people are making millions and millions of dollars at it." With little dissent, the Assembly Public Safety Committee on Tuesday approved Ackerman's measure to outlaw such activity.
At a press conference before the vote, Ackerman passed out a list of "upskirt" Web sites, some containing explicit descriptions, including one for lesbian and bisexual girls showing hard-core pictures."
"We're not asking you to look at all of those," Ackerman said, "but we had to do some research."
[An Irvine-based company started about two years ago advertises that it has a special "V-team" of video Peeping Toms to "infiltrate by every means possible the places where women least expect to be seen."
"There are guys out there who view this is as a kind of high-tech hunting game," said Andrew "Drake," spokesman for Upskirts.com, using a "professional name." Drake said the measure most likely wouldn't affect business because they didn't have employees who videotaped women, despite the "V-team" claim. Ackerman's bill would outlaw the videotaping, not the posting of such material on the Web. All videos are sent to the company free of charge from Peeping Toms around the world, Drake said, and posted on the $6.95-a-month Web site. The site does, however, give advice on "spy resources."
When asked about the morality of making secret videos up women's skirts, Drake said it was hypocritical for the media and others to condemn his site when it was OK to run clandestine nude photos taken of Brad Pitt while on vacation, as Playgirl recently did.
"What I feel is if someone doesn't want to view this stuff, don't look at it," Drake said, adding: "We never show women's faces. It would be very hard to recognize someone from their behind. Their faces are blurred out." Technological advances have allowed some cameras to be as small as a pager or disguised in a water bottle or boom box. Voyeurs can film someone as they go up an escalator, or place a bag with surveillance equipment under women's skirts while they're waiting in line somewhere.
"I was truly shocked, truly shocked to hear about something like this going on in my own county," said Assemblywoman Patricia Bates, R-Laguna Niguel. "As the mother of a young daughter, it's particularly a threatening and intimidating invasion of privacy." Federal law prohibits distribution of images of bestiality and child pornography, but the U.S. Supreme Court last year threw out the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which made it illegal to put sexual material where children could find it. The court said the law was too broad. Ackerman's original bill made the offense a felony, but he amended it to reduce the penalty to a misdemeanor. The California Attorneys for Criminal Justice had complained in a letter to Ackerman that a felony conviction for video peeping might put someone in prison for life under California's three-strikes sentencing law. "The penalties seem to be out of proportion to the offense," Steven Meinrath, a lobbyist for the group, wrote in February.
But the biggest amendment makes the offense illegal only when the videographer has the intent of "arousing, appealing to, or gratifying the lust, passions or sexual desires of that person," the bill now reads. Civil libertarians wanted the measure narrowed so news organizations wouldn't get busted for taking a photograph of, say, Monica Lewinsky's skirt blowing up over a New York subway grate. "We're not really strongly opposed to the legislation," said Francisco Lobaco, state legislative director of the American Civil Liberties Union. "From a practical point of view, he fixed the principal concern we had. But we're never in great support of bills that perhaps should be civil penalties instead of criminal."
George Martin who owns the California-based GM Video, a company which specializes in videos of women exposing themselves publicly, had this to say. Martin is in the middle of his own legal fracas, stemming from taping female flashers at Copper Canyon.
Martin: "I think this bill [192] is about the person videotaping, not selling the tape. We've only done one of those [voyeur] movies, and it was done in Missouri. I had somebody do it there, and I bought the rights to the tape. So, as far as selling the tape, I don't think there's a problem with that. I don't think there's a law against that. If you get caught making the tape, you're in trouble. We're not going to make any. In California, that's for sure. We'd be too scared to do that. [Martin shoots the bulk of his product in Arizona at Copper Canyon.]
"It's the same thing we ran into at Copper Canyon. After the fact, selling the tape is not the problem. I broke no laws at all, but the actual filming of it - we weren't even caught filming something bad - somebody made a complaint - and we'll still fighting it. It goes on and on. It's a big mess. "I won't roll on this case. It's too important - what they're trying to do myself and everyone else there at the river - and the confiscation of camera equipment just for the hell of it.
"It's hard to imagine that 2 1/2 years have passed and we're now going into the courtroom for the umpteenth time. This time we're getting discovery from the prosecutor's office. We tried to get the so-called 'audiotapes' that were taken of myself and Candy Apples and a bunch of girls from LA where they [the police] got hold of all my model releases and tried to get something against me as contracting them [the women] to do something. That never happened. Part of this case was that a detective audiotaped the girls. Of course we wanted the audiotapes. When we had him in court, the detective said he erased over them. God, the guy destroyed evidence because it didn't benefit the prosecution. We won half of that case. The sheriff in San Bernadino County had to pay me eight grand so he's pissed off to beat hell. That's why this case is continuing.
"The sheriff's department is trying to prove that I staged a lewd conduct in public. That's all. When I got all my things back [there was a raid conducted on Martin's premises when he still had the company in Arizona] by a federal court order, I discover that a clerk in the sheriff's department screwed up and sent me the audiotapes!! Boy did we get an earful. On those audiotapes, you hear the detective talking to all the girls, and he's talking to the lady who made the complaint up there about people screwing in public. He [the detective] said, 'We're going to put GM Video out of business.' Well, there it is right there, a civil rights case. He hung himself real bad, and they're squirming now. This is waiting until this case is either thrown out, or we go to trial. It has do be done within three years, and they've been stalling in this because they know what's going to happen. If they lose, they're going to get their asses sued, for $15 million. We're doing nothing. There's no trial. There's not even a preliminary hearing. It's been pushed off to the side a bit."
Martin has also got some legal battle raging with a couple of former shooters, one of whom is claiming rights to all the tapes which he shot for Martin.
