Record Private Activity, Face Jail Time

There’s an interesting legal debate emerging in Canada around proposed privacy legislation. This is from a Vancouver Sun article–I couldn’t find a link to it online:

As part of a planned bill that will hand sweeping new electronic surveillance powers to police, the federal government is also contemplating the creation of one or more new offences that would turn into criminals anyone who willfully makes surreptitious “visual recordings” of “private activity,” CanWest News Service has learned. the government is also looking at criminalizing such activity that is done “maliciously” or “for gain”.

Particular groups affected by this law include videojournalists, parents with nanny cams, paparazzi and private investigators. It’s only the first of these groups that worry me. Of course, there’s a pretty fine line between videojournalist and paparazzi. In a free society, I suppose that you get one with the other.

As the article goes on to discuss, pundits are concerned about the definition of ‘private activity’. After all, there are all sorts of journalism (even some of value to the public) that would be crippled by such laws.

Incidentally, did you know that you can now get five years in prison for videotaping someone in the nude or engaged in sexual activity where they have a ‘reasonable expectation of privacy’? So I guess lingering in the bushes with a telephoto lens in Stanley Park is out.