Intimate Covert Filming Bill

1. Intimate Covert Filming Bill (Or where “Peeping Tom” meets the Internet)

2. Intimate Covert Filming Bill • What is intimate covert filming? • Why a legislative response? • How does the legislation respond? • What is not covered in the Bill • Other options

3. What is “intimate covert filming”? • Making a surreptitious visual recording of another person in an intimate situation without their knowledge or consent in circumstances the other person could reasonably expect to be private • A person is in an intimate situation if they are: • Naked or private areas partially exposed • Engaged in intimate sexual activity • Engaged in showering or toileting • “Peeping Tom” activity

4. Why legislation? • Implications for personal privacy of the combination of new technologies and intimate covert filming • New forms of prurient behaviour • Intersection with sexual offences • Not adequately dealt with by existing laws • Overseas legislative responses

5. Activity covered by the Bill • Prohibition on making an intimate visual recording • Offence to publish, import, export, sell intimate visual recording • Offence to possess intimate visual recording in certain circumstances

6. Activity not covered by Bill • Statutory exceptions to offences • Covert observation, but not recording • Intimate covert filming where no reasonable expectation of privacy • Covert filming in non-intimate circumstances (even for prurient purpose) • Publication of images of people in intimate circumstances if recording done with their knowledge or consent

7. Intimate covert filming – other options • Bill concerned only with criminal offending • Civil proceedings • Privacy Act complaint procedures