Full question:
My son is in ninth grade. He was using the school bathroom last week and looked up to see a boy with a school video camera attempting to film him. Another boy was with this kid with the camera. My son reported this incident to his high school vice principal. There were also two witnesses who saw the boys with the camera, one who walked into the bathroom during the incident and another who claimed that he saw the boys with the camera in the hallway after the incident. The vice-principal told me she was trying to find the boys on the school computer and when she found them that she would 'prosecute them.' Later, when I telephoned her, she told me that only one boy had been apprehended and that nothing was on the camera. She told me that the boy who used the camera had been signed out of school by his parents and would be home-schooled for the rest of the year. This did not sit well with me and I contacted the local police and filed a complaint. In an e-mail I later received from the principal of the school, I was informed that the camera used was not a school camera but a cell phone camera and that the boy had been 'pretending to take pictures' of my son. My son saw the camera and he told me it was a school camera which is used by the high school video club to record special events. There was an event for area senior citizens held at the high school that morning. Furthermore, I just happened to be there in the office that morning waiting to take my son to a doctor's appointment and I spoke to one of the witnesses who told me there were two boys with a video camera standing outside the bathroom after the incident. The principal's e-mail further informed me that after speaking with our local police it was determine that because there were allegedly no pictures taken there is nothing they can do. I feel that my son's privacy rights were violated. I also believe that there is a federal law against unlawful video-taping of an individual in a private or intimate setting called the Video Voyeur Protection Act passed in 2004. Any advice or additional information you can provide to me will be greatly appreciated! Thank You!
- Category: Privacy
- Date:
- State: New Jersey
Answer:
Video Voyeur Prevention Act states that it applies to an image ‘broadcast’, meaning to electronically transmit a visual image with the intent that it be viewed by a person or persons.
Invasion of privacy is the intrusion into the personal life of another, without just cause, which can give the person whose privacy has been invaded a right to bring a lawsuit for damages against the person or entity that intruded. It encompasses workplace monitoring, Internet privacy, data collection, and other means of disseminating private information. A non-public individual has a right to privacy from: a) intrusion on one's solitude or into one's private affairs; b) public disclosure of embarrassing private information; c) publicity which puts him/her in a false light to the public; d) appropriation of one's name or picture for personal or commercial advantage.
Please see:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s108-1301
This content is for informational purposes only and is not legal advice. Legal statutes mentioned reflect the law at the time the content was written and may no longer be current. Always verify the latest version of the law before relying on it.
