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Peeping Tom

Peeping Tom goes high tech

Technology surpasses laws governing privacy

March 28, 1996
Web posted at: 11:25 p.m. EST

Rochelle From Correspondent Carl Rochelle

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Audiences got a voyeuristic thrill from spying on neighbors in the popular movie "Sliver." But the fantasy has become a nightmarish reality for some caught unwillingly on tape.

"I walked in here and checked the vent (in the bathroom), wanted to improve the heat and I noticed a piece of glass," said a man who asked not to be identified.

The piece of glass behind the vent turned out to be the lens of a video camera the size of a cigarette pack. "I couldn't believe what I was seeing," he said.

Sliver

Also hidden behind heating vents in the bedroom, the voyeuristic eye of the camera spied on the suburban Maryland couple for over six months.

"I was in shock, I was afraid. I didn't know why someone would put cameras in my home," he said.

A next door neighbor, trusted enough to have a key to the home, installed the video intruders and targeted the wife in a high-tech version of a peeping Tom.

"We were both very much afraid of what this man might do and we felt rather helpless. The fact that video cameras were not illegal was sort of an aftershock," the husband said.

The couple sued for civil damages, but the neighbors' action was not a crime in the state of Maryland.

Astounded, state delegate Dana Dembrow crafted a bill, now working its way through the legislation, that criminalizes visual surveillance in private places like homes, bathrooms, and dressing rooms.

"Nothing is going to prevent people from doing things that they shouldn't do, but it's really an example of the law keeping pace with evolving technology," Dembrow said.

And that's a daunting task as the technology gets cheaper, smaller, and more accessible.

Camera

John Candland of The Counter Spy Store holds up a small camera with a microscopic lens. "This is a little pinhole camera, that's all that I need to see out of something. This can be housed or hidden in anything," he said.

Cameras can be hidden in stuffed animals, clock radios, sunglasses, even in locker rooms at work.

"Everyday I go to work, before I change I always look at the ceiling, look in my locker. When I got to the bathroom, I keep looking to see if there's a wire." Franklin Etienne may sound paranoid until you hear why he checks his surroundings.

He works for the Boston Sheraton Hotel, where he was one of scores of employees secretly taped while changing in their locker room. Now, he's suing for invasion of privacy.

"I've been miserable, under stress, always nervous. Violating someone's privacy is wrong. No one should be able to do that, no one," Etienne said.

Hotel

Massachusetts made it illegal to videotape in dressing rooms in retail stores, but most states have no laws restricting video surveillance. Privacy experts and legislators are just now beginning to debate the issue. There are a lot of disturbing questions and agonizingly few answers.

But David Boyd of the National Institute of Justice says don't blame the technology. "Fault the way people use the technology. Society has got to figure out where it's got draw the line," he said.

And Robert Ellis Smith with the Privacy Journal says that regulating technology is a tricky job. "If Congress were to legislate in 1996 on video surveillance, probably the law would be obsolete in year from now, we really don't know what direction that technology is taking," Smith said.

But for Franklin Etienne and the Maryland couple, the debate is coming a little too late. "It's going to be a long time, if ever, we get over this," the Maryland man said.

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