From the DW:
“Germany to criminalize
upskirting and rubbernecking”
Upskirting, the act of secretly
taking images under a person's clothes without consent, is to become a criminal
offense. New legislation approved by Cabinet also punishes photographing the
victims of accidents. The German Cabinet approved a bill on Wednesday that
would make "upskirting,", a practice in which people take illicit
photographs under a person's clothes without their consent, illegal. "Taking
photographs of a woman under her skirt is a degrading and unjustifiable abuse
of her personal space," said Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht. The
legislation would also criminalize photographing victims of accidents or
pictures that "display a dead person in a grossly offensive way,"
according to to Lambrecht. "We must spare relatives the additional
suffering of pictures of their deceased parents or children being spread
around," she added. Both upskirting and so-called
"rubbernecking" will now be punished by up to two years in jail. Lambrecht
pushed through the legislation. The act of upskirting is currently defined as a
misdemeanor under German law but is not directly criminalized, unlike in
Scotland, India, New Zealand and Finland among other countries where it is
already illegal. "The term upskirting hides a disgusting intrusion into
women's privacy ... And that's why I'm determined to tackle the issue and
change the legal situation," said Lambrecht in September.
Petition pushed through law
The drive to criminalize
upskirting in Germany is spearheaded by Ida Marie Sassenberg and Hanna Seidel
from the southern German city of Ludwigsburg. The two women launched an online petition
in April of this year, which has accumulated over 90,000 signatures. "The
most disgusting thing about upskirting is that you might not even realize it
has happened," Hanna Seidel, one of the founders of the petition, told DW
in August. "You could be standing on an escalator in a supermarket, in the
metro or at a concert. And you don't know what will happen to the photographs —
whether they'll be uploaded to a porn site, an internet forum or if someone
will just satisfy themselves by looking at them." The legislation will
also directly punish the sharing of such images, for example through social
media or pornographic websites. Parliament still has to pass the bill into law.
^ I believe that upskirting
should be illegal (in Germany and around the world) but am more concerned with
making rubbernecking illegal. The legal term “Rubbernecking” - taking and
displaying a picture of a dead person – needs to be expanded on before making
it illegal and placing punishments on doing it. There is a difference between a
random stranger taking a picture of a person killed in a car accident or murdered
on the street and a picture of historical significance. Someone could say that
displaying a picture of a murdered Holocaust victim is rubbernecking and so is
illegal. Until rubbernecking is intricately defined and does not include the
taking of or display of pictures of historical significance (during a war, of
someone famous, etc.) then it should not become illegal. ^
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-to-criminalize-upskirting-and-rubbernecking/a-51223409
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.