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hidden camera in public restroom

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legal_advice_se

Junior Member
What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)?
California and Illinois

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)?
California and Illinois

I am in a racially motivated crime while I was a student in a large university.

The school I attended has a long history of hidden camera incidences dating back to mid-1990s; as little as 2 years ago, another school official was arrested for installing hidden camera in public restroom.

I was not aware of being filmed until I over-heard my coworkers gossiping about the videos online. The videos are being circulated within my department, but none of the coworkers are willing to tell me the websites. Many of the coworkers give hints that the camera-person will find way to videotapes me as long as I continue to attend school.

I changed my jobs several times, but the person(s) is able to track down my location and forwarded the video whenever I work for a different company.

After I left my original school, another one of the school official was arrested for video-taping an athlete at school and was sentenced for 2 years in jail.

I am hoping people in the forum can provide more information about the laws on hidden camera.

If a 3rd party person(s), has posted the video via different foreign language websites, I am hoping someone can tell me the steps in filing the lawsuit against that person(s) as well.

Thanks for reading my post
 


eerelations

Senior Member
What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)?
California and Illinois

After I left my original school, another one of the school official was arrested for video-taping an athlete at school and was sentenced for 2 years in jail.

That's not possible. Period.
 

Beth3

Senior Member
Thanks for reading my post

You're welcome but I don't think you need an attorney, I think you need a mental health professional. Truly. The scenario you describe strongly suggests you're imagining things that just aren't happening.
 

legal_advice_se

Junior Member
For your information, I attached the nytimes article that mention a similar incidence about 10 years ago

Unauthorized videotapes of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of naked male athletes in the locker rooms of more than 50 universities are being produced, sold and distributed on sexually oriented sites on the World Wide Web, according to a lawyer representing 200 of the men who were taped.

Without their knowledge, the athletes were videotaped at urinals, at showers or weighing in unclothed at competitions. No camera was ever in open view, the students said. The tapes were made by employees or students working for video companies. Posing as athletic trainers, they were able to slip into the locker rooms carrying hidden cameras in gym bags.

Sometimes a zoom lens was used. The result was a video, with no sound, that later was edited for sale on the Internet or by mail.

The students' attorney, Louis S. Goldstein of Chicago, filed a lawsuit in Illinois state court late last month seeking a permanent injunction to stop the video producers and Web sites from marketing and displaying the videotapes. ''This is a big business,'' he said.

Eventually, he and Dennis A. Berkson, another Chicago lawyer, will seek class-action status for the victims, whose numbers he expects will increase once a university is identified through student uniforms or its buildings.

''I know that we have at least 1,000 kids on eight tapes,'' Goldstein said. ''There are many more tapes than eight, and usually there may be from 5 to 10 schools on each tape. This could eventually involve thousands and thousands of college athletes shown naked and being marketed and distributed world wide on videos and on the Web.''

The videos of the students, including their faces, are now marketed through Web sites under such titles as ''Voyeur Time,'' ''After the Game,'' ''Wrestle Time'' and ''Shower Time.''

One former varsity athlete learned from a roommate that he had been taped a few years ago in a locker room at his school.

''I pulled up the home page and I am looking at myself naked on the Internet,'' said the former athlete, who spoke on the condition that neither his name nor his sport be identified. ''And everyone in the world has access to it. My parents have seen it now, and they are very upset. It is terrible because I have no control over it.''

According to the complaint filed initially on behalf of 28 John Does -- a judge has ruled the students' names may be kept confidential -- the students were members of football, wrestling and squash teams. Goldstein said baseball and track athletes were also videotaped, along with men in a United States Marine Corps locker room.

The universities where the taping occurred are identified as Northwestern, Eastern Illinois, Illinois State, Pennsylvania, Iowa State, Michigan State, Indiana and Illinois. Two other Ivy League schools besides Penn are also apparently involved, but Goldstein would not identify them.

Goldstein said the clandestine operation, which began almost a decade ago, depends on fresh material for steady Web site users who typically buy memberships to a site or a group of sites. To increase the number of people looking at the site, the sites promote the hidden camera angle and the outright sale of the videotapes.

The video companies earn upward of $20,000 a month, with virtually no overhead. And who runs them? Mitchell Kamarck, a Beverly Hills lawyer who represents celebrities whose images routinely appear on the Web via hidden camera, says it is mostly ''college kids wanting to earn a buck.''

The lawsuit was filed in Illinois state court rather than in Federal court because the law on the Federal level is limited to audio wrongdoing -- listening in -- but not to video eavesdropping. Illinois is one of a handful of states with a statute that bars secret videotaping in saunas, bathrooms and tanning booths. In addition, the students are suing under statutes that allow individuals to assert property rights to their own images, and under racketeering statutes that, if they prove their case, will entitle them to triple damages.

A spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Chicago said there was no active investigation. As is its policy, the United States Attorney's office in Chicago would not comment.

Within the legal community, there is a debate on what criminal laws were violated, if any. There is no Federal eavesdropping law regarding hidden video cameras, so prosecutors are examining two laws: one that makes interstate distribution of pornography or indecent material a violation, and another that deals with racketeering statutes. Making the issue more difficult is the uncertain law governing control over images and words on the Internet.

There is wide-ranging freedom on the Internet, and lawyers for the companies are expected to use that freedom as their first defense. ''Their lawyers always begin with that, but the First Amendment does not hold when it comes to commercial exploitation,'' Kamarck said. ''The use of hidden cameras in bathrooms is illegal, immoral and impermissible.'' The Web sites are bold, he added, and ''because there are so many of them, they feel they won't ever get caught.''

The lawsuit said, ''The hidden-camera activity, accomplished in a locker room where students have the presumption of security and privacy, was extreme and outrageous.'' In addition to the obvious invasion of the locker room, the students fear employers will believe they were willing participants.

None of the companies named in the lawsuit is a household name. They are Franco Productions, Rodco, Hidvideo, and HidVidCo-Atlas Video Release, Logan Gaines Entertainment, D.I.Y. Triangle Video and Cal Video. None had listed telephone numbers, and no one could be reached for comment.

The companies' owners were also sued individually, as were a group of Internet service providers, companies that lease the computer space where the videos are posted and promoted. They were identified as PSI Net, TIAC.net and GTE Internet and its offspring, Genuity.net.

The University of Pennsylvania has mounted a vigorous attack to get the videos removed from the Internet. The school's general counsel, Peter C. Erichsen, wrote letters to two video companies, Logan Gaines Entertainment of Kahului, Hawaii, and HidVidCo of Boston, saying the university's legal rights had been violated.

Logan Gaines, whose company displayed and distributed the tape of the Penn wrestlers on the Web, wrote back saying he would remove all hidden-camera images of Penn wrestlers from his site, Erichsen said. Hidvideo has not replied, said Erichsen, who plans further legal action.

Goldstein said the scheme began to unravel last spring with the discovery of two tapes. One was found by a University of Memphis track athlete who recognized wrestlers from Penn and sent the tape to friends there. Another tape and a hidden camera were discovered at the Midlands National wrestling tournament at Northwestern, which attracts scores of schools.

Because of the hidden-camera taping, Penn is renovating its locker facility, separating the shower section from the rest of the locker room, to address the problem, a spokesman said. Other schools are also tightening security at their locker rooms.

But the athlete who spoke on the condition of anonymity said locker rooms are not the same to him anymore.

''You know, you see a gym bag and you don't think twice about it,'' he said. ''But now I do.''
 

cyjeff

Senior Member
Yeah... not reading that.

What proof... actual proof... do you have that you have been personally video tapped and/or that you have proof that video tapping has occurred?

Bring the proof to the police.

A nebulous reference to video that you haven't even seen doesn't begin to approach the standard of proof necessary.

As terrible as the incidents that you describe sound... because they happened near you doesn't mean they happened to you.

Personally, i would believe that your coworkers are jerks and are playing on your fears.
 

legal_advice_se

Junior Member
I think they are messing with a very insecure person (you) and the videos don't really exist.
why you imagine I am a insecure person? You are trying to judge a person simply by a paragraph he wrote on the internet?
I am being targeted because I am a minority, not because I am a insecure person.
 

cyjeff

Senior Member
why you imagine I am a insecure person? You are trying to judge a person simply by a paragraph he wrote on the internet?
I am being targeted because I am a minority, not because I am a insecure person.
Nothing in your post stated a racial bias in the very least.

If you have proof, call the police.
 

cbg

I'm a Northern Girl
I do not question the possibility that someone may have installed a hidden camera in a restroom. Not likely, but not impossible. It's been done.

I seriously question (1) whether it was done specifically to target you and even more so (2) whether the video, should it exist, has been distributed as widely as you appear to believe.
 

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