Police say the sexual encounters were videotaped without the knowledge of the participants, according to an affidavit of probable cause filed.
Laws involving videotaping individuals without their knowledge can differ based on a number of circumstances that may be involved in a particular instance.
According to Cumberland District Attorney David Freed, a major distinction between what is considered a felony and what is considered a misdemeanor is whether or not the footage contains sound.
“The distinction is made with the interception of oral communication and video,” Freed said. “If it does contain sound, it is a wire tap violation, and that is considered a felony of the third degree. If it is just video, it is considered a third-degree misdemeanor if there is only one violation or a second-degree misdemeanor if there is more than one, and there’s usually more than one.”
Second-degree misdemeanors have a maximum sentence of two years for each violation.
Among violations involving only video, there is also another distinction between filming a public act and a private act.
If a person is filmed walking down the street, there is no violation, according to Freed. That, however, does not include “upskirting,” where people film underneath the skirts of women walking in a public area.
“It was sort of a new thing, and there wasn’t a law for it before,” Freed said. “There was a case in Cumberland County that changed that law in 2005, to take effect in January 2006. There was a man who was filming women at the Capital City Mall, but the charges were dropped, and the woman wasn’t happy with that result. We got that law changed.”
The law now includes a section prohibiting the videotaping of intimate body parts, even if they are covered.
For violations involving a private area, such as a home, it is not illegal to own security cameras or to tape those visiting the household without notifying them of the cameras.
What does make the security camera footage illegal is when what is being filmed is sexual in nature, according to Freed.
The Invasion of Privacy law states that a person commits an offense when filming someone without his/her knowledge and using the videotapes or photography for sexual gratification, recording a person in full or partial nudity or filming someone who has a reasonable expectation of privacy. Taping sexual acts without consent would also fall into this category as a violation of privacy.
— Naomi Creason, The Sentinel
http://www.cumberlink.com/articles/2008/04/09/news/local/doc47fcbe3f506da892431817.txt
No comments:
Post a Comment