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New 'silent camera' apps cause plague of voyeurism in Japan - and some are on sale in West 60 per cent rise in illicit photography Apps let users take photos - but only show innocent-looking emails on screen Silent camera apps already on sale in West By Rob Waugh Last updated at 12:55 AM on 3rd January 2012 Most smartphone cameras have a built-in shutter noise to prevent the camera being used to take pictures without people's consent. But a new wave of 'silent' apps - some specifically designed for voyeurism - have been blamed for a huge rise in...

PLANTATION— A female traffic magistrate was accused of following a man into a courthouse bathroom, taking a picture of him with her cellphone as he stood at a urinal, and then trying to bite the finger of a deputy who questioned her about it, according to an arrest report. Rhonda Hollander, 47, was arrested Thursday after a brief physical struggle with the female deputy at the West Regional Courthouse, according to the report obtained Tuesday from the Broward Sheriff's Office.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- A Philadelphia-area school district agreed Monday to pay $610,000 to settle two lawsuits over secret photos taken on school-issued laptops. The Lower Merion School District admitted it captured thousands of webcam photographs and screen shots from student laptops in a misguided effort to locate missing computers....

NEW BRUNSWICK — Two Rutgers University students have been charged with invasion of privacy for secretly placing a camera in another student’s dormitory room and transmitting a sexual encounter on the internet, Middlesex County Prosecutor Bruce J. Kaplan and Rutgers University Police Chief Rhonda Harris announced today. Dharun Ravi, 18, of Plainsboro and Molly W. Wei, 18, of Princeton have been charged with two counts each of invasion of privacy for allegedly using the camera to view and transmit a live image of an 18-year-old student in Piscataway on Sept. 19.

BEAVER (KDKA) ― Beaver County District Attorney Anthony Berosh confirmed to KDKA-TV that his detectives are investigating after a peephole was found in a unisex bathroom wall in the lower level of the Beaver County Courthouse. Tony Amadio, the chairman of the Beaver County Board of Commissioners, said he learned of the peephole on Tuesday. "Yesterday morning when I came in about 8:30, District Attorney Anthony Berosh came to see me. He sat down in this very office and said, 'Tony, let's go take a walk.' "He says, 'I have some things I want to tell you and it's not...

OGDEN, Iowa – A former Ogden teacher who pleaded guilty to making secret videos of girls in a locker room has been volunteering for his old district. Thomas Perdue had been a teacher and coach in Ogden for 20 years when videotapes of girls and women undressing at the locker room were found at his house in 1995. He pleaded guilty to several counts of sexual exploitation of a minor and served six months in prison... Ogden Superintendent Bill Roederer says Perdue volunteered as an announcer at a school track meet in May. He says officials didn’t feel that anyone...

LAVERGNE, Tenn. — Police in La Vergne have charged a plumber with illegally taking video of a customer in the nude. . . . Investigators said Brennan switched on a camera in his tool kit and told the customer she needed to take a shower so he could find the source of the leak.

It's the fear of many air travelers: Step into full-body scanning machines and Transportation Security Administration officers might get an eyeful of their private parts. That is apparently what has been happening on a regular basis — at least during TSA training sessions — and earlier this week it led one Miami International Airport transportation security officer to allegedly attack a co-worker with a baton. The co-worker had been making fun of the size of the officer's genitals, according to Miami-Dade police.

The system that Lower Merion school officials used to track lost and stolen laptops wound up secretly capturing thousands of images, including photographs of students in their homes, Web sites they visited, and excerpts of their online chats, says a new motion filed in a suit against the district. More than once, the motion asserts, the camera on Robbins' school-issued laptop took photos of Robbins as he slept in his bed. Each time, it fired the images off to network servers at the school district. Back at district offices, the Robbins motion says, employees with access to the images marveled...

(Newser) – USA Swimming has been rocked by the disclosure that 36 coaches have been banned for life for molesting teen athletes over the last 10 years, according to a suit brought by victims' families. Coaches secretly videotaped, fondled, and were otherwise indecent with their charges, court papers reveal. One coach in Indiana set up a camera in a "special" shower room and secretly filmed his athletes while they bathed, ABC News reports. In some cases, the itinerant coaching lifestyle allowed predators to stay one step ahead of authorities and victims' families. Another coach, who was sentenced to 40 years...

A suburban Philadelphia school district used school-issued laptop webcams to spy on students at home, potentially catching them and their families in compromising situations, a family claims in a federal lawsuit. Lower Merion School District officials can activate the webcams without students' knowledge or permission, the suit said. Plaintiffs Michael and Holly Robbins suspect the cameras captured students and family members as they undressed and in other embarrassing situations, according to the suit. * * * The Robbinses said they learned of the alleged webcam images when Lindy Matsko, an assistant principal at Harriton High School, told their son that...

Speak Now, Tiger, Or Forever Hold Your Peace Golfer must speak publicly about car crash — and rumors of Uchitel affair Courtney Hazlett When Tiger Woods got in the car just before 2:25 a.m. Friday, he didn’t just crash into a fire hydrant. He had a head-on collision with another object: the invisible bowels of the bad-publicity machine, which in more than 13 years of professional golf, he’d been able to avoid. As a college athlete in the mid-1990s, my circle overlapped with Woods’ from time to time, and I can attest there are plenty of stories about a slightly...

A class of fifth graders in California got a shocking crash course on the birds and the bees courtesy of their teacher and an X-rated home video she accidentally included in a DVD of classroom memories. The error was not caught until after the DVDs were distributed to the students and their families. Parents tell CBS 13 Sacramento that the woman is a good teacher who made an honest but embarrassing mistake. According to the station, the offending DVD starts with a menu screen that displays various school trips and functions. Click on one of them and "you see kids...

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Two FBI workers are accused of using surveillance equipment to spy on teenage girls as they undressed and tried on prom gowns at a charity event at a West Virginia mall. The FBI employees have been charged with conspiracy and committing criminal invasion of privacy. They were working in an FBI satellite control room at the mall when they positioned a camera on temporary changing rooms and zoomed in for at least 90 minutes on girls dressing for the Cinderella Project fashion show, Marion County Prosecutor Pat Wilson said Monday. Gary Sutton Jr., 40, of New Milton...

STAMFORD - A janitor at the Stamford train station was charged Thursday with secretly videotaping at least 16 women in a bathroom stall with a cell phone taped to a roll of toilet paper. Felicitos Gonzalez, 41, of 1 Division St., Apartment R, Stamford, was arrested by Metropolitan Transportation Authority police at his home a block away from the train station Wednesday. Gonzalez was arraigned on 16 counts of voyeurism at state Superior Court in Stamford Thursday. Judge Barbara Brazzel-Massaro ruled that Gonzalez, a Mexican native working in the country illegally, will be jailed in lieu of $50,000 bond for...

A former youth pastor accused of secretly taping Bible study students changing clothes in his Ellenton home has pleaded no contest to nine counts of voyeurism. Matthew C. Porter, 31, of Ellenton, is scheduled be sentenced on the misdemeanor charges at the Manatee County Judicial Center on Aug. 21. He faces up to nine years in prison if sentenced consecutively on the charges, Assistant State Attorney Erica Arend said Friday. The maximum sentence for misdemeanor voyeurism is one year in jail. Porter resigned from Bethel Baptist Church after admitting he secretly videotaped his students ages 12-16, according to the Manatee...

Sheriff's detectives conducted a proper search of the home of a youth pastor even without a warrant, a Manatee County judge ruled Thursday. The ruling shot down a defense challenge and now means prosecutors can use videotapes and hidden cameras seized in the voyeurism investigation last year. Authorities did not need a warrant to search the home of Bethel Baptist Church youth pastor Matthew C. Porter because a friend who had been house-sitting agreed to let detectives inspect Porter's home in Ellenton, Manatee County Judge George K. Brown Jr. determined. The detectives, the judge said, acted reasonably. Investigators say Porter,...

"Former teacher Brian Presken, 32, was accused of using a mirror to look under a woman's skirt last summer at Barnes & Noble Booksellers on Airport Boulevard in Pensacola."Defense attorney Katheryne Snowden argued that the voyeurism charge should be dropped because Presken's accuser didn't have a reasonable expectation of privacy in a public place under Florida law. "The law under which Presken was charged states, 'It is illegal to secretly observe someone with lewd, lascivious and indecent intent in a dwelling, structure or conveyance, and when such locations provide a reasonable expectation of privacy.' "Snowden said the statute her client...

The larger worm in the top image is a hermaphrodite -- a worm with male and female organs -- while the worm on the bottom is male. Biologists at the Brain Institute at the University of Utah genetically manipulated the brains of hermaphrodite worms so they were attracted to other worms of the same sex. The study showed sexual orientation is wired in the worms' brains. Credit: Jamie White, University of Utah University of Utah biologists genetically manipulated nematode worms so the animals were attracted to worms of the same sex – part of a study that shows sexual...

Same-sex attraction is genetically wired in nematode's brain -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The larger worm in the top image is a hermaphrodite -- a worm with male and female organs -- while the worm on the bottom is male. Biologists at the... Click here for more information. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- University of Utah biologists genetically manipulated nematode worms so the animals were attracted to worms of the same sex – part of a study that shows sexual orientation is wired in the creatures’ brains. “They look like girls, but act and think like boys,” says Jamie White, a postdoctoral researcher and first author of...

Talk of lewd tapes, hidden cameras, forged documents and blackmail dominated the first courtroom hearing yesterday for a Navy doctor accused of secretly filming U.S. Naval Academy midshipmen having sex in his house. Two former midshipmen accused Cmdr. Kevin Ronan, who served as a physician for academy athletic teams and as the brigade medical officer, of taping three midshipmen having sex with their girlfriends and four other midshipmen alone and naked.....

DESTIN, Fla. — A man who secretly videotaped his house guests' activities in the bathroom has been ordered to pay the Texas couple $3.25 million in damages. Okaloosa County jurors issued the verdict against Kevin Michael Moncla on Monday. The couple and their two young children were videotaped from September to November 2002 while they were guests in Moncla's Destin home. "It was very important to my client that she do everything she could to put the public on notice what this man was capable of," said Virginia Buchanan, an attorney for the couple. In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs, identified...

PROVO — A Brigham Young University assistant professor has resigned after being arrested Thursday night for investigation into allegations that he taped and watched pornographic videos of a 14-year-old girl on his computer. The 63-year-old man is being investigated for sexual exploitation of a minor, a second-degree felony, and voyeurism, a class-A misdemeanor, after Provo police found a video clip of a girl undressing on a laptop computer belonging to BYU. The Deseret Morning News does not name arrested persons until charges are filed. Acting on a tip, Provo police approached the man at his home and took him to...

Adding sexual orientation to hate crimes will destroy America as we know it. First it would put homosexuality above religious freedoms, a violation of the first amendment. Second it would be giving special rights to a class of people, recognized only by there deviant behavior. It would be similar to saying that it will be a hate crime to call someone a criminal when they steal your car. Third. The phrase "sexual orientation" is made up by homosexuals to try to make themselves look less filthy than they really are. The purpose of the phrase is to take the spotlight...

Upskirt Subway Camera Causes Bomb Scare Wed May 18, 7:46 PM ET NEW YORK - A small digital camera apparently planted by an unidentified voyeur to shoot up passing skirts caused a brief bomb scare near a Manhattan subway station, police said Wednesday. A pedestrian called police on Tuesday afternoon to report seeing a box with wires sticking out of it under a subway grate in a sidewalk on the Upper East Side. The block was closed off while the police bomb squad investigated. The scare ended when officers discovered that the device was a digital camera. Police said on...

YMCA Chief Fired for Transgender Ball Flap Dec 24, 10:00 AM (ET) CHICAGO (AP) - A YMCA director has been fired and overnight facility rentals banned after the parents of young children arriving for a morning swim meet clashed with participants in an overnight transgender fashion show and ball. Greg Weider, who had been acting director of the New City YMCA for two years, was fired Wednesday. Programming manager Michael Horton, who oversaw scheduling at the center, resigned two days earlier. "We've taken very swift, decisive action, and we will do everything we can in order to restore the...

In an incident the YMCA is calling "a very regrettable scheduling error," kids arriving for an early-morning swim meet Sunday walked into a gender-bending scene of the kind most of them wouldn't be allowed to watch on TV. Several of the kids' angry parents clashed with participants in a transgender fashion show, which had been under way at the New City YMCA since about midnight, resulting in a chaotic melee that was eventually broken up by private security guards and East Chicago District police. A YMCA member had reserved the entire facility, at 1515 N. Halsted, from 11 p.m. Saturday...

Hairy Toes Play Role in Peeping Tom Case 20 minutes ago JAMESTOWN, N.C. - Hairy toes gave away an alleged peeping in the women's locker room at the Mary Perry Ragsdale YMCA. A Greensboro man hiding in the women's locker room Tuesday night was caught peeping after a woman in a neighboring shower stall spotted his hairy feet, authorities said. David Herbert Witham, 43, was charged with six counts of "secretly peeping in the room of females." Authorities said a man hid in a shower stall and used a small mirror to catch glimpses of showering and disrobing women. He...

In the stack of bills signed by the governor this week, there was this eye-popper: No more sneaky videotaping of people in their bedrooms, or face a fine or jail or both.

Navy investigators are searching for whoever is responsible for hiding a wireless video camera in a shower stall for female sailors. The camera was found aboard the San Diego-based command ship Coronado on April 14. A Navy spokesman says the camera's battery was dead and a search of nearby compartments didn't turn up its receiver. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the Navy's Seventh Fleet have interviewed several sailors and civilians aboard the ship -- which left San Diego for Japan last month. Authorities say so far no arrests have been made.

Seattle police are investigating a Des Moines police officer accused of peeking into a couple's bedroom while on duty. The officer, who has been with the department since 1995, has been on paid leave since Sept. 24, when the allegations came to light. Court documents filed in support of a search warrant in the case say the most recent alleged incident occurred Sept. 20 when a witness saw someone late at night, peeking into the master bedroom of his neighbor's home. When he shone a flashlight on what he thought was a peeping Tom, he discovered it was a Des...

STAMFORD, Conn. -- A Greenwich man who was arrested on charges that he videotaped couples having sex in a Greenwich park claims he has a right to videotape because he was in a public place. Court papers said Robert Berwick has pleaded not guilty to breach of peace and voyeurism charges for allegedly secretly videotaping people in Bruce Park and other areas of town. Prosecutors said even visitors to a public park can expect some privacy if their acts are not in plain view. The lawyer who is representing Berwick said a park is different from a home or a...

Safety of children in grocery carts: adults' personal health and safety habits. Observations of 246 children and the adults accompanying them were carried out in supermarkets. Of those arriving and leaving by automobile (n = 194), 36% of adults used safety belts, and 51.1% of children used safety belts or restraining seats. While shopping, 79% of adults lost sight of the children in their care at least once, and 73.2% were 10 feet or more from their children at least once. 48% of children climbed or attempted to climb from carts; 27% stood in carts, and 23.6% handled hazardous products....

<p>NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) -- A Tennessee middle school allowed security cameras to film children undressing in locker rooms and then stored the images on a computer accessible through the Internet, according to a lawsuit filed by a group of angry parents.</p>

LONDON, June 19 — Advances in cellphone technology have spurred an insidious new threat — the use of the increasingly popular camera phones by pedophiles to photograph children. Across Britain, swimming pools and sports facilities have cracked down on their use while the YMCA in the Australian state of Victoria has also imposed a ban. Officials have yet to raise a clamor in the United States, where the devices have only recently become widely available. U.K. PARENTS AND child protection agencies say they worry that pedophiles will use the state-of-the-art camera phones to surreptitiously photograph children in changing rooms, instantly...

The hate-crime murders of five innocent people in a Nebraska bank robbery has receded from media consciousness because the victims were white and the perpetrators were "minorities," but the videotape of Madelaine Toogood swatting her brat remains the top news on the national level and here at Free Republic. Google News Search: Nebraska Bank RobberyGoogle News Search: ToogoodFree Republic Search: Bank RobberyFree Republic Search: Toogood

<p>NEW YORK -- A Virginia couple accused of having sex inside St. Patrick's Cathedral to earn prizes from a pair of radio shock jocks was heckled Wednesday as they left a Manhattan courthouse.</p> <p>"God is mad at you!" shouted one angry man as the pair walked silently past. "You should be ashamed of yourselves!"</p> <p>Brian Florence, 37, of Quantico, Va., and Loretta Lynn Harper, 35, of Alexandria, Va., were due back in court Oct. 2 to face charges of public lewdness.</p>