Do you agree with this law?

Ridiculous. But if that is the law, there is nothing to stop the victim from posting the perv’s picture to all her friends on FB and asking them to forward it to everyone they know, and so on.
After all, “The MBTA is a public transit system operating in a public place and uses cameras, the alleged photographer is not in a place and circumstance where he reasonably would or could have had an expectation of privacy.”

He will be sentenced to jacking off to those pictures for the rest of his life.

That was one of the most fucked up rulings I’ve seen in a while. A woman or a man in public has an expectation of privacy everywhere. We don’t have a bigger right to be pervs than a person has to some privacy.

Of course I don’t agree with the verdict but I understand where they were coming from. This is expected in cases like this. It’s black, white and grey simultaneously.

There are a lot of “voyeur” and “candid” videos out there. It has a very large niche market. There are millions of videos out there of people in public filming women walking, even secretly filming their feet as their sitting down at a restaurant. A friend told me.

@Blackberry Must have been a good friend.

It isn’t a law, it’s an interpretation of existing law.

So @LuckyGuy has an appropriate response to anyone caught in a similar situation. @Adirondackwannabe So you’re saying you have a right to privacy while on a bus or subway that exceeds everyone else’s rights? I can’t take a nice, non-offensive picture on a bus?

I don’t agree with the judge’s ruling, because I think there is an expectation of non-offensive behavior by other passengers.

No, I’m saying the pervs don’t have more rights than the general public. Maybe a little respect and consideration for others?

I disagree with the verdict. In my opinion, you carry your personal space with you whereever you go, that includes anything that is beneath your outer layer of clothes.
Just like an embassy is a piece of sovereign territory of the owner of the embassy in another country.
What she should do now is sue the creeper for copyright infringement.

These women should kick those pervs in the cock & claim they were entitled to on grounds of general principle.

If they hit the guy, or did anything physical they would be arrested and likely lose.

They can do much more damage to Michael Robertson of Andover, by publicizing the verdict and mentioning how Michael Robertson of Andover, took upskirt pictures of women while on the subway. The court ruled that Michael Robertson of Andover, was not violating their privacy by taking those pictures.
I hope Michael Robertson of Andover gets a lot of enjoyment from those photos.
Stick a fork in that wiener. It’s done.

Had he plead guilty, nobody would have known about the case.

No charges brought against a stealth kick in a crowded train, accidents will happen.

Or a high heel jammed on some toes.

Pen stuffed up the anus, knee thrust into balls etc.

I think that the question should be more properly written as “Do you agree with this interpretation of the law?”, because surely not even Massachusetts has a law that says “feel free to poke a camera between a woman’s legs and film up her skirt.” I haven’t lived in the state for a while, but Connecticut isn’t that far away, and I’m sure that I would have heard something if that law was passed. (I see that @zenvelo beat me to this wording.)

So in a sense, as much as I hate to agree with the interpretation, I think it’s a proper exercise of the judicial restraint that we often cry for. That is, if there is no law that specifically says “you can’t do this”, then there’s no way for a judge to find “guilt” against a law that doesn’t exist.

One would think that “there ought to be a law” that says “you can’t put a camera between a woman’s legs and film her without her knowledge and / or consent”, but apparently that law hasn’t been written yet. Give it a week or so.

@CWOTUS I do want to know if people agree or disagree with the law as it stands. I think everyone would agree with the interpretation of the law as it is pretty clear the guy did not violate the law as it is written.

Essentially do we need to further restrict what we can or cannot do? IMHO we cannot write enough laws to legislate common decency and common sense in people. Personally I would like to see us write a “Look the other way while we beat some sense into cretins” like Mr. Michael Robertson of Andover law.

I have a question. Did the camera guy actually hold the camera under her skirt and take a photo? Basically had to get into her personal space to snap a photo from an angle that a person’s eyes would typically not be unless they passed out onto the floor?

I think the law sucks. IMO sexual things are shared and given willingly to your partner. This guy is taking from unsuspecting women, in this case. That’s wrong on so many levels.
@JLeslie My guess is the shoe cams.

Well, @Cruiser, I’m sure that no one except a few (people that no one here wants to meet anyway) will agree that this is the way that personal privacy should be treated even in the public sphere. As you say, the guy did not violate the law as it is written. Does that make what he did “right”? Of course not!

So, yes, apparently since we’ve devolved to a place where some people’s mores enable them to think “this is okay to do, because there’s no law against it” we do need such a law now.

At one time in my youth there was no “need” to prevent people from walking into airports and onto public airplanes while carrying weapons – including “things that could be weaponized” – because no one up to that time had thought to commandeer those planes in flight. It would clearly be unconscionable for them to do that, and “it wasn’t done”. For that reason there was no law against carrying a weapon onto a plane, even though hijacking was clearly illegal.

Robert A. Heinlein once noted that you could chart the descent of a civilization by the numbers of laws that it found that it needed to enact. Pretty damn prescient and wise of him, I thought, and still think.

@Adirondackwannabe If that is true I think that should be against the law, and is not in the spirit of current law in my opinion.

@CWOTUS I completely agree especially that sage quote from Robert A. Heinlein and we are sinking like a rock it seems.

Yes, I see no problem with it.

How many women let their bubbies hang out and get mad when men leer at them?

Guys have been trying to catch shots under bleachers, on trampolines, with holes in cabins at camp, etc… If I choose to wear a dress, which I do quite often, I believe it’s my responsibility to keep my goodies covered, it’s kind of what ladies have been taught for a long time (keep your knees together, check your dress in back.)

Now if I’m in a tanning bed where I have to strip down, I do have the expectation of privacy, and I believe that’s why those kind of pervs are criminals.

That did it. Throwing out all my dresses and skirts. I never wear them anyway, thank God.
@ucme you made me laugh out loud.

Oh golly, finally a question with an agenda behind it! ~~ I say it is unethical behavior, but to say it is illegal or criminal, not the way it was described by the justices via the OP. Sucks, but not everyone likes it when the chickens come home to roost. What if seems to boils down to from my reading is that this guy enjoys a form of voyeurism, which is not sex, but sexual in nature, that most do not like so the person is labeled deviant. For nothing more than that he is a pervert because of his choice of sexual-based enjoyment. Was he ethical? No. Did he see anything that he would not see on the beach, which could have been more? No. If that is what I think the justices were saying then I guesses it is up to the person to protect themselves in a public setting. Not knowing if she were sitting with knees apart, standing, etc. I can’t say she personal space was violated. What is she had a loose top and no bra, if a man on a elevated walk way can see her on a bench below snaps a pic of her twins when the wind blows the top in a favorable viewing position, if he has a lens long enough to capture the goods, it is a public place, should she not take some situational awareness of where she is at? The law was made, it is not for me to decide, society will get what it breeds eventually.

Insane! Might as well allow random strangers to run around neighborhoods installing hidden cameras in womens bathrooms and bedrooms. If I caught some dude looking up my skirt I wouldn’t need the police, and he would need surgery to repair his fractured skull and broken jaw. I wear skirts every day but I don’t use pubic transportation. Pun intended. lol

Leave it to @Hypocrisy_Central to say it’s okay.

^ Again, your powers of clairvoyance is off, I said I will not judge it for the Justices did. I don’t know how he got the pics so i can’t judge on it.

@zenvelo I said it was okay, too. Where does personal responsibility come into play?

If I wear a skirt and sit spreadlegged, is it a perv’s fault for looking? As a woman, I can assure you that I’ve seen more bubbies and crotches than anyone should see, from other women not acting like ladies.

victim blaming, here we go again.

No, I don’t agree with it. However, they were constrained by the parameters of existing laws and the way they were written. It’s my understanding that they’re going to work on changing it.

@KNOWITALL It’d be one thing if you wore a skirt and sat down across from me on the train with your legs wide open. It’d be another entirely if I snuck a camera under your skirt to take a picture.

@uberbatman Ya think? lol
Leave it to one of the brighter stars here to make such a comparison. hahaha

@KNOWITALL: I am guessing the perv, Michael Robertson of Andover, probably snuck the cameras up the ladies’ skirts when they were standing up, therefore, the women were not doing anything to reveal themselves, they were probably holding on to the strap and trying not to fall, and not knowing that they were being filmed.

@jca You are so quick to label Mr Michael Robertson of Andover as a perv….Mr. Michael Robertson of Andover was obviously set up…actually all Mr Michael Robertson of Andover was doing was laying on the floor of the train innocently taking pictures of the ceiling of the train and these women happened to step over him as he pressed the shutter button on his camera…so now Mr. Michael Robertson of Andover’s reputation is forever smeared in the national media.

While fulling acknowledging the victims have a right to kick Robertson in the sack, I don’t see why this is so controversial. Seems to me they interpreted a poorly or archaically written statute that was tailored narrowly and isn’t effective anymore because of changing technology (e.g., smaller cameras). It took all of a day to change the law.

IMHO, problems like this are preferable to the much more common problem of sweeping laws that net just about anyone who deviates.

@bolwerk They did not yet change the law they merely passed a law Massachusetts Legislature proposed that has to yet be signed into law by Gov. Deval Patrick.

@Cruiser: the governor indicated he will sign it.

@bolwerk I did see this as well…but that is putting the cart before the horse and can a very treacherous move to make. just saying from experience

@uberbatman Exactly. If someone has to go under a woman’s skirt to get the picture then that should be illegal. That is not for public consumption. The public is not lying on the floors and sidewalks.

…“Consumption” @JLeslie? Urm…that kind of struck me wrong in the context of this conversation!

LOL. Is it actually wrong to use the word there, or just sounds bad?

Just…brought very strange images to my imagination because of the topic of this discussion. :)

@uberbatman @jca Have you gone to a beach anytime in the last decade? Thongs and string bikini’s everywhere.
In an immodest society how can you expect pervs not to be creepers. I guess I just expect it, maybe that’s the difference between our thoughts on the subject.

@KNOWITALL: so the reason he is doing that is because there aren’t thong-riddled beaches in Boston? :-\

@bolwerk With internet porn, I don’t know why anyone would confront real people in any way unless they have impulse control issues.

@KNOWITALL: I would kind of expect a perv to be a porn knave usually. Like this guy! Note the compulsion to see women humiliated.

The Boston guy was probably more a thrill seeker though.

@bolwerk Well yeah, we’re all acting as if half the jellies on this site aren’t…lol Read through the NSFW’s if you don’t believe me!

Remember when Britney and Paris got out of the limo’s with no panties? Big media frenzy, it was all over tv and the internet.

@KNOWITALL That’s different. I still wish people wouldn’t snap photos like that, but Britney and Paris flashed anyone who was in eyeshot. A woman standing is not flashing people at eye level.

@KNOWITALL: I suspect that was done on purpose :-\

If I had been his “Victim”, I would have been the one facing charges after having pulverised his camera, both hands, extracted his eyeballs from their sockets and squeezed them through clenched fingers. They’d end up having to change the law to protect the buggers from vigilante bitches like me.

@KNOWITALL Kinda ironic isn’t it? One man’s erotic entertainment is another man’s perversion and another man’s kinkiness, and all determined off his own pet peeves.