Isn&#39;t &quot;upskirting&quot; illegal in the UK? Why? According to this article https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/video/2018/jun/15/upskirting-happened-to-me-and-now-im-changing-the-law-video "upskirting" is not illegal in the UK. That sounds unbelievable in my ears. Can someone confirm this claim? Also, why isn't this considered sexual assault or something like that? Taking of someone's clothes in a sexual way, without the camera, must be a crime, mustn't it? So why is it not a crime to take a photo of the "act"?
It is illegal in Scotland. There is currently no law specifically against it in the rest of the UK. If you find this is unbelievable, yes it is. There are attempts now to change the laws. PS. There are no photos taken "of the act". Taking the photo is the act. The pervs use a selfy stick or just get down on the floor to take photos, or take photos on stairs. PPS. News on Jan 16th 2019: "A new law will now be introduced in the next couple of months. It could mean that perpetrators might face up to two years in prison and are added to the sex offenders register."
I don't know of any legal reason to care whether people consider reverse graffiti to be graffiti, since graffiti is not itself a legal concept. The act when done without permission is, however, trespassing, which is against the law. Painting a building is legal, if done with permission; painting a building in a pattern is legal, if done with permission. Strangely enough, cleaning a building without permission, whether entirely of selectively in a pattern, is illegal. There are in fact specific laws about defacing property, so the illegality of the act does not rely solely on trespass laws. The NYC law is here, the California law is here, and there are many similar laws. In Washington, illegality arises from a more general prohibition against causing physical damage, which is defined here, and boils down to "costs money to fix". These laws are not limited to "applying opaque material to a surface".
england-and-wales Is this illegal? YES, NO, MAYBE Context is everything, and it depends on whether this was just playful (for want of a much better word) or sexual touching. Assuming that the &quot;grandma&quot; is actually her grandmother, the likely offence - if there is one at all - would be sexual activity with a child family member contrary to s.25 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003: A person (A) [i.e. grandma] commits an offence if — (a) [s]he intentionally touches another person (B) [i.e. the child], (b) the touching is sexual, (c) the relation of A to B is within section 27 [which includes grandparents], ... (e) — ... (ii) B is under 13. Touching is defined at s.79(8): (8) Touching includes touching — (a) with any part of the body, ... (c) through anything [e.g. panties] ... Sexual is defined at s.78 as: penetration, touching or any other activity is sexual if a reasonable person would consider that — (a) whatever its circumstances or any person’s purpose in relation to it, it is because of its nature sexual, or (b) because of its nature it may be sexual and because of its circumstances or the purpose of any person in relation to it (or both) it is sexual. A key point to prove is whether s.25(1)(b) is met or not, so again: context is everything. Is it legal only for women to do? NO - Both males and females (over the age of criminal responsibility of 10) can commit any sexual offence apart from rape which is purely male-specific for anatomical reasons.
You are right that this is probably a private space; you are wrong in thinking it is your private space; it isn't. The space belongs to your employer and they can do whatever they want with their space unless there is a law that says they can't. As to what type of "hidden surveillance" is allowed that depends on your particular circumstances including what state and federal laws apply and the employment contract you are covered by. As a starting point, if this was happening in Australia then: If you gave permission, all would be legal If you did not give permission: it would be illegal to record anything taking place across a public telecommunications system (i.e. phone tapping) it would be legal for anyone to make an audio recording (not phone tapping) of any conversation to which they were a party it would be legal to make a video recording without sound.
&quot;Revenge&quot; is not a legal concept. If you injure someone other than in self defence or for another legal reason than you are committing assault. Hence dangerous booby traps for trespassers are illegal, so anything that might cause injury, however minor, is definitely out. That includes itching powder. However I would make an analogy with anti-climb paint. This allows you to use a paint that damages clothing provided you put up warning signs. So if you were to leave a parcel coated with anti-climb paint or containing a bag of paint or glitter rigged to spill it over the person opening it then that would be legal as long as there was a warning that tampering may cause property damage. (Note &quot;spill&quot;, not &quot;squirt&quot; or &quot;splash&quot;: anything ejecting paint or glitter under pressure might get it in someone's eyes, causing injury). So your friend could put a notice up saying that unauthorised tampering with parcels could cause damage to property and then put out parcels that might do exactly that. Your friend could also put a GPS tracker in a parcel to try to find out where they are going. Update Here is someone who did this. The BBC story does not mention any legal issues for him. A former Nasa [sic] engineer spent six months building a glitter bomb trap to trick thieves after some parcels were stolen from his doorstep. The device, hidden in an Apple Homepod box, used four smartphones, a circuit board and 1lb (453g) of glitter. Mark Rober, who is now a Youtuber, caught the original thieves on his home security camera. [...] The former Nasa engineer said: &quot;If anyone was going to make a revenge bait package and over-engineer the crap out of it, it was going to be me.&quot;
If I were a DA (District Attorney) looking out "stamp out" statutory rape, I would make the rounds of the hospitals, identify women who gave birth, or were impregnated when underaged, and go from there. But few, if any DAs, do this. No, you wouldn't. First, you have neither the time nor the budget to do this. Second hospitals are not public property, you would need a warrant which the court won't give you because you don't have probable cause to believe a crime has or is being committed. As a DA, I would of course, follow up on any complaints lodged by the victim, or even by her/his parents. And maybe I would prosecute a case where people were "caught in the act, or there were nude pictures, etc. May even an especially egregious PDA (public display of affection). No, you wouldn't. You would follow up on complaints to the extent that you have the time, budget and manpower to do so and you would prosecute cases where you believe that you have a reasonable prospect of getting a conviction and where prosecution is, in your opinion, in the public interest. In the real world, that means where the police hand you a brief of evidence that is a lay-down misere and (for statutory rape) where there is a real power imbalance between the perpetrator and the victim - giving 2 willing 15 year old kids the label of 'sex offender' for life is probably not in the public interest. But suppose there were no complaints or smoking guns. Could someone investigate based on something like a teenager "holding hands" with someone much older? To make the question objective, what has historically caused DAs to prosecute people outside of the above parameters? With some exceptions, it is not the role of the DA to initiate or conduct investigations of criminal actions - that is the role of law enforcement officers, usually for this particular crime, police officers. Notwithstanding, the general rule in western, liberal democracies (which the United States, with a certain generosity of spirit, can still be considered) is that citizens are allowed to get on with their lives without day-to-day interference from the state. That is, law enforcement officers do not 'go fishing' for crimes, they investigate crimes that they have a probable cause to believe have actually happened, either because they themselves saw it happen or someone has reported it to them as having happened. The term for having a law enforcement officer following you around waiting for you to break the law is 'harassment' and may itself be illegal. A law enforcement officer can initiate an investigation based on anything but as no law enforcement agency has unlimited resources, they tend to follow only those investigations that might lead somewhere. For example, it has been known for parents to hold the hands of their children and even to publicly display affection towards them and parents are often "much older" then their children - this would not generally be grounds for initiating a statutory rape investigation.
It's illegal if the intent is to deceive. Under S50(1) of the Police Act 1996: Any person who with intent to deceive impersonates a member of a police force or special constable, or makes any statement or does any act calculated falsely to suggest that he is such a member or constable, shall be guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale, or to both. Their intent would need to be proven. It will be fact-specific; in some cases far easier to prove than in others. The criminal justice system is overburdened and underfunded so it is no surprise that these trolling videos are given no priority whatsoever. Further complicating the matter is the need to correctly identify the individual to prosecute. Doing so would require a fair amount of police time, time that could perhaps be spent on more urgent priorities given the relative lack of harm these videos are doing compared to more serious crimes. However, in this video (Would You Help a Police Officer Having An Asthma Attack?) an S50(2) offence would seem to have been committed by the actor wearing the police clothing: Any person who, not being a constable, wears any article of police uniform in circumstances where it gives him an appearance so nearly resembling that of a member of a police force as to be calculated to deceive shall be guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale. It does appear that both offences are being committed in these various videos, and the only reason people aren't being prosecuted is practical: there are more serious crimes to focus on, and the police would need to identify who exactly committed this crime--given these all happened at least two years ago, it would be challenging to say the least. They also seem to commit the separate crime of wasting police time, for example by approaching cops in the street and falsely confessing to crimes. Under S5(2) of the Criminal Law Act 1967, wasting police time is a criminal offence. Bringing proceedings in court requires the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) since those proceedings could have a chilling effect on the propensity of the public to report genuine matters to the police in the future. It is likely that while &quot;wasteful employment&quot; of police time was caused by these people, so committing the offence, it is likely viewed simply as &quot;part and parcel&quot; of the job and the officer likely didn't spend any time at all investigating the confessions (depending on their nature). Of course, even if the officer did spend time investigating the false confessions, the DPP would need to give their consent so unless the person has a demonstrated history of doing this (that would stand up in court) or the time wasted was of a particularly serious nature (e.g. the man who falsely claimed to be the Yorkshire Ripper), it seems unlikely consent would be granted.
I'll preface this by saying I live in Australia where the lowest jurisdiction that can make an act a criminal offence is the state; local governments simply do not have that power here, Question 1: If I understand this right you have a law that you do not enforce that carries moderate sanctions and you are asking that a law that you do not enforce with greater sanctions will be a greater deterrent? Well ... no (see here). If you want to stop the behavior you have to enforce the sanctions that you have in a fair and impartial way. I would suggest that you make it very clear that starting in early September the laws will be enforced - that gives people fair warning. Then, each weekend in September you bring in enough police (State Troopers?) to enforce the law. Its not going to take many $250 fines to make people stop. Question 2: No comment. Question 3: No comment. Question 4: Sounds like a good way of getting the city sued for negligence; just because people are breaking the law does not make it legal to hurt them. If you are serious then fencing the entire area may be worthwhile but the area would still need to be policed.