‘Upskirt’ photo creeps deserve Puritan punishment: the stocks

OK, listen up, all you dumb users of smartphones: In spite of what Massachusetts’ high court decided, no, it isn’t OK to take “upskirt” pictures of unsuspecting women.

On Wednesday, in the land of the Puritans and the home of “Banned in Boston,” all hell broke loose after the state Supreme Judicial Court overruled a lower court in a case involving one Michael Robertson, who seemed to think it was clever to use his cellphone in ways Apple or Samsung never intended.

But Robertson got away with it because the state’s Peeping Tom laws don’t apply to such behavior, the court found. As my colleague Michael Muskal reported:

“A female passenger on a MBTA trolley who is wearing a skirt, dress, or the like covering these parts of her body is not a person who is ‘partially nude,’ no matter what is or is not underneath the skirt by way of underwear or other clothing,” the court said in its ruling.

State law “does not apply to photographing (or videotaping or electronically surveilling) persons who are fully clothed and, in particular, does not reach the type of upskirting that the defendant is charged with attempting to accomplish on the MBTA,” the court said.

So that’s one small victory for a Boston creep, one giant leap for creeps everywhere.

(Although state lawmakers, of course, were rushing Thursday to amend the law. So it’s not likely to be legal long.)

[Updated Friday, March 7, 10:50 a.m.: Sure enough, the legislature passed a bill to prohibit “upskirting” and Gov. Deval Patrick signed it on Friday.]

Still, and maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t part of you think: We need a law against this? How about someone just punches the guy in the nose?

Or not. Given the recent case in which a man was shot and killed after an argument over his texting in a Florida movie theater, maybe we don’t want citizens taking matters into their own hands.

But is this how the Digital Age is coming of age, with sophomoric (and worse) behavior? With laws having to be passed to address what used to be called common courtesy?

Apparently so. But if that’s the case, I’d like to suggest a more low-tech punishment for such high-tech misdeeds: Let’s take a cue from the Puritans and bring back public shaming. That’s right: the stocks.

It’s not enough to outlaw “upskirting.” We need to deter it. The death penalty may not deter murderers, but I’m betting that 24 hours in the stocks in a public square in Boston would perhaps have the desired effect on “upskirting” miscreants.

And go ahead, folks: Take all the pictures you want.

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