Add Illinois to the list of states looking to block the lenses of video voyeurs. After the victim of one such video voyeur testified in tears to the state House Judiciary Committee, the committee passed a bill to punish video voyeurs and sent it along to the full House last week.
The Chicago Tribune says Erica Newman was victimized by a dog walker she hired for her Labrador retriever, discovering as she moved furniture around her apartment that he'd planted a small videocam in her bedroom.
On Feb. 18, Richard Aronson pleaded guilty to a disorderly conduct charge and was given 30 hours community service and a year's court supervision, as well as an order not to have contact with Newman.
But Newman was shaken because Aronson wasn't charged with more serious crimes, the Tribune says. And authorities could not charge him with anything more serious because they couldn't find a relevant statute - most state laws on illegal recordings apply to audiotape, not soundless visual imagery, the paper says.
The bill going to the full state House would cover not only cases like Newman's but high-profile cases, such as the recent one involving naked college athletes taped with the tapes sent out over the Internet, the Tribune says.
The bill would prohibit recording images inside locker rooms, changing rooms, a hotel, or an individual's home, with maximum proposed penalties being 364 days in jail and a $1,000 fine, the paper continues.
"I no longer want to change my clothes in my bedroom," Newman told the Judiciary Committee. "I don't like to sleep in my bedroom. This man lives within two miles of me, and I'm scared I'm going to run into him."
Chicago state representative Mike McAuliffe proposed the bill. The Judiciary Committee approved it unanimously. And anyone sending such images over the Internet or just showing them to someone else would bump up the potential penalties to up to three years in prison, the Tribune says.
