TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Somebody's Watching You

Somebody's Watching You

Monty Solomon (monty@roscom.com)
Sun, 17 Jul 2005 23:29:26 -0400

Upskirting. Downblousing. Happy slapping. As camera phones
proliferate, an ugly vocabulary is born.

By Monica Collins

Camera phones can be dangerous. That's my technoparanoia talking, as
the hybrid gadgets now number in the millions and allow anybody to
take pictures for the perverse kick of it. A cellphone salesman from
Rhode Island was arrested in May for peeping under a 17-year-old's
skirt with a camera phone as she rode the escalator at the Emerald
Square Mall in North Attleborough. The crime? "Upskirting."

"Downblousing" is just what you imagine: covertly snapping bosom shots
of women bending over, images that typically turn up on Internet
voyeur sites. California's Legislature banned upskirting and
downblousing after pictures taken at Disneyland showed up on the Web.
"Happy slapping" involves surprising a passerby with a punch or slap
and recording the act on a camera phone. In April, the British
newspaper The Guardian reported that transport police had investigated
200 such incidents in the previous six months at London bus stops and
train stations.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2005/07/17/somebodys_watching_you/

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