But the laws as created raise some questions for me, and I’m doing a poor job of expressing them. Why do we rely on laws which apply only in private, instead of establishing that we have the right to expect the degree of privacy that is reasonable for the circumstances. It occurs to me now that the specificity may be due to the nature of it being a criminal issue, rather than civil (and I’m more accustomed to dealing with civil issues). And that is a fine explanation! Maybe there are valid slippery slope arguments to be made.

My questions weren’t meant to suggest that the court should change the law because I disagree with it. I was questioning the basis for how those laws are written.

I understand the way the law is written. I was asking a broader question about how we frame laws about privacy.

Why don’t we have a reasonable expectation of privacy *everywhere*?

So if I take a picture of my best friend at the peace rally, I have to get model waivers from everybody in the background, otherwise I’m violating their privacy? If I listen in on a conversation at the table next to me at a restaurant, it’s just like I snuck up to your house and put my ear to the crack on your front door?

The way the law is written talks about WHERE you are. That’s the loophole that asshats like this guy used. It doesn’t address the idea that you can physically be in a public place, but you can still have your privacy violated without somebody touching you.

corncob, I’m happy to be corrected (I’m a lawyer, but not in Oklahoma), but statute §21-1171(b) refers to photography “when the person viewed is in a place where there is a right to a reasonable expectation of privacy”. In other words, if you’re in public, you’re fair game. That needs to be fixed.

So taking sexually explicit pictures and video of minors is fine so long as it was shot in a state where the age of consent is suitably low? Somebody alert the feds. Busting illegal porn rings up is about to get significantly trickier.

Requiring “consent” to take upskirt photos would be the equivalent of banning the practice. (Don’t believe me? Go up to 10 young girls wearing skirts and ask if you can stick a camera under there, and see how often you get screamed at, slapped, kicked in the nuts or arrested.) This makes what you’re saying a distinction without a difference as far as I can see.

I actually remember some case law that’s kind of on topic from my days in journalism school. A newspaper ran a photo of a woman in an amusement park whose underwear was exposed when she stepped on one of those vents that blew drafts upward for that purpose. The court upheld her invasion-of-privacy suit on grounds that the exposure was involuntary on her part. (It’s worth noting, though, that this was a civil, not a criminal case.)

I think you’re kind of missing the point here. It’s not like I’m an expert in sexual psychopathology, but the surreptitious nature of upskirting is probably the big turn-on for these guys.

I don’t agree with the upskirting, but the law is pretty tricky when it comes to public property.

What you propose would be like getting a woman’s “consent” to peep through her windows.

Talk about a slippery slope arguement. If the state of Oklahoma cared about privacy, they would have made the Peeping Tom statute have jurisdiction over public property. If that were the case, then the Oklahoma Court would have against the defendant (the Peeping Tom).

“Really, though, shouldn’t her being a minor at the time the photo was taken allow for something? “

Hell, in some areas, looking closely at, and/or taking pictures of minors unrelated to you in a public setting is grounds for getting your ass hauled into court.

That *this* is apparently sanctioned in OK is mind-boggling.

And now, the paranoid in me is loking at this as part of the “slippery slope” to strip away the underpinnings of roe v wade

I think you’re kind of missing the point here. It’s not like I’m an expert in sexual psychopathology, but the surreptitious nature of upskirting is probably the big turn-on for these guys. What you propose would be like getting a woman’s “consent” to peep through her windows.

A court there has ruled that upskirt photos — taken without the (in this case, underage) victim’s consent — are perfectly legal. Because if you wear a skirt in public, you can’t expect perverts not to take pictures up it.

Not so fast. The young women was at least 16. 16 is the age of consent in Oklahoma. link 18 is not the universal age of consent since the age of consent varies by jurisdiction

As for the upskirting, it’s a bit of a grey area. The law can be pretty tricky. Personally, I think he should have gotten her consent to upskirt her though. The court probably didn’t want to ban upskirting, but they should have said upskirting is legal unless it is without consent.