Upskirt Photos Are Legal, Court Rules

Mass. upskirt photos: Believe it or not, upskirt cell phone photos on public transportation are now legal in Massachusetts under a just-released ruling from the state’s Supreme Judicial Court.

This development perhaps gives a new meaning to skirting the law.

The court premised its decision on the language of the state’s anti-voyeurism that only prohibits secret pics of those who are partially nude rather than those wearing clothes. “Existing so-called Peeping Tom laws protect people from being photographed in dressing rooms and bathrooms when nude or partially nude, but the way the law is written, it does not protect clothed people in public areas, the court said.”

The case got its start after a man was spotted on Boston’s mass transit system allegedly taking upskirt photos of female passengers. “Trolley riders alerted MBTA Transit Police in August 2010 that a man appeared to be taking photographs of women, including one instance in which he appeared to be attempting to photograph a woman’s crotch area, the court said. Transit Police set up a decoy operation the next day involving a female undercover officer wearing a skirt. [The suspect] allegedly took pictures of her, focusing on her crotch area, and he was arrested…”

The suspect, who could have been jailed for two years, contested the charges through the court system’s appeal process.

In interpreting the state statute in his favor, the state’s highest court ruled that “A female passenger on a MBTA trolley who is wearing a skirt, dress, or the like covering these parts of her body is not a person who is ‘partially nude,’ no matter what is or is not underneath the skirt by way of underwear or other clothing.”

The court agreed that female mass transit passengers should have a reasonable expectation of privacy from upskirt photography but that law in its current form fails to apply to that scenario.

Massachusetts politicians have vowed to rewrite the state’s peeping tom law to eliminate this upskirt photos loophole and make it a crime.

[image credit: swampyank]