Do these stories sound like “Progress” to you?
In Massachusetts its not a crime to take “upskirt” shots of strangers!
A man who snapped secret pictures up women’s skirts on a Boston subway train – a practice known as upskirting – did not violate the state’s Peeping Tom law, Massachusetts’ top court said on Wednesday, pointing to a loophole in current legislation.
…The ruling comes in the case of a man who was arrested by transit police in 2010 for using his cell phone to take pictures and video up women’s’ skirts on the subway and who fought to have the charges of voyeurism dismissed.
The law “does not apply to photographing… persons who are fully clothed and, in particular, does not reach the type of upskirting that the defendant is charged with attempting to accomplish on the MBTA,” it said.
The court said that, while women have a “reasonable expectation of privacy in not having a stranger take photographs up her skirt” the law “in its current form does not address it.”
I wonder if this asshole aided his photography by physically pulling the woman’s skirts up he’d still be OK. This is so foolish. Yes the woman are “Fully Clothed” but there is a certain amount of privacy afforded by the hanging skirt, and putting a camera under that skirt strikes me as a blatant violation…but not in Massachusetts!
Of course they’ll try to “fix” the law, and likely make it worse….
Next up from the Golden Boy of “Progressivism”:
The behind-the-scenes turbulence of U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson’s family life continued to spill into public view Wednesday as his attorneys worked to combat his wife’s recently revealed domestic-violence allegations.
The congressman’s lawyers revealed video of the domestic incident that played out at the Grayson home Saturday, which they said proved that Lolita Grayson committed an attack, not her husband.
“He was hoping that this matter would stay in the courts and outside of the press, but since horrendous accusations have been made against him … he believes that the truth must come out,” Grayson’s attorney Mark NeJame told reporters during a news conference in downtown Orlando.
Oh yeah its Republicans who are the ones who are anti-woman!
And last is more funny than anything else:
Grown ass “Progressive” man simply throwing a temper tantrum. Go him!
Make it a crime to beat up anyone taking such photos. Make it an infraction and set the fine at $10 per incident, with no court costs.
Problem solved, problem staying solved.
Sorry Weerd, but this time I have to say that the court ruled correctly. At least as far as that’s what that law covered. Now, I would think that something else would cover the action concerned, such as something under assault maybe. But the law was written very specifically. If they want it to cover other scenarios (and I really think it should!) then they need to amend the law.
While I’d be happy for the women concerned if the shmuck had been charged and jailed, I still would have been upset over the twisting of a law to cover something beyond it’s scope. After all, we’ve always held laws to mean exactly what they say.
I can see some room for it under an originalist interpretation, where the legislature clearly intended it to prevent incidents like this, but I’m now quite leery of courts interpreting laws rather than just applying them.
I don’t know about that! The law specifically covers “Private Areas” and photographing people in “states of undress”.
I would argue that INSIDE a woman’s skirt or dress should be considered a “Private Area” and photographing a woman in her underwear or bottomless is indeed a “State of Undress”, in that “Private Area” the woman is indeed in a state of undress.
A spirit of the law precedent could be made too.
Ok, that I could fully agree with. That’s what happens when I try multi-tasking while in the middle of writing a report and only scan the documents before commenting.
I don’t necessarily disagree with your assessment either! I mean I’ve certainly spotted a woman’s underwear when she sat down in a short skirt or caught a glimpse down a woman’s blouse, and those are hardly activities that should be compared to say peering into a changing room at the local clothing store.
Further if this was a guy who was just taking pictures as women sat down on the train, it gets CLOSE to the latter, but is also close to the former. I don’t know the specific details, but given he was arrested by a female officer in a skirt as part of a sting brought about by his habitual behavior, my disagreement with the decision is entirely in the SPIRIT of the law, over the letter of the law.
But if you take a picture from under a skirt, then they are not “fully clothed” in that picture. What a crap ruling.