Occurring at the intersection of crime and technology, incidents involving hidden devices placed in restrooms have cropped up with disturbing regularity. It's an old-fashioned invasion of privacy, but conducted through a newfangled digital lens. — Photo by Bernard Hermant on Unsplash
Across the country, miniaturised hidden cameras keep popping up in the most unseemly location: public restrooms, where latter-day peeping Toms record every zip, wipe and flush of unsuspecting victims.
This year alone, the unwanted intrusions have shaken locals at a Utah university, inside a New York state middle school, at businesses in a Michigan college town, on a Florida beach — and in the heart of Pittsburgh.
Over the summer, the cleaning staff discovered a tiny camera no bigger than a 50-cent piece hidden beneath a sink inside a unisex restroom on the campus of The Frick Pittsburgh in Point Breeze, home to an art museum and the Gilded Age chateau-style mansion known as Clayton.
Caught on tape: nearly two dozen children and 48 adults, including senior citizens.
By November, police had identified a suspect, Todd Bueschen, a 35-year-old engineer living with his family in Squirrel Hill.
Investigators, who charged Bueschen with dozens of counts of sexual abuse of children and invasion of privacy, said they retrieved videos and images from the device — including pictures of him planting the camera while accompanied by his toddler in a stroller.
Elizabeth E. Barker, the museum's executive director, said she takes pains to ensure that visitors to the "treasured oasis" feel warmly welcomed and safe. News that her staff found a hidden camera targeting visitors in such a vile manner left her in disbelief.
"I was completely stunned," Barker said last week.
The Bueschen case is only the latest in a cascade of unsettling instances of video voyeurism.
Occurring at the intersection of crime and technology, incidents involving hidden devices placed in restrooms have cropped up with disturbing regularity. It's an old-fashioned invasion of privacy, but conducted through a newfangled digital lens.
"We've come a long way since the days of the VCR," said Robert D'Ovidio, a Drexel University professor who studies crime and technology. "You think about various places criminals are putting these hidden cameras — you have dressing rooms, you have bathrooms, you have house rentals."
Last month, police at the University of Utah charged a 32-year-old man with voyeurism by concealed equipment after a camera was found taped under a sink in an all-gender bathroom in the student life center. A second camera was found in another bathroom along with evidence of a third device in yet another restroom.
In Ann Arbor, Mich., a 35-year-old man was arrested in September for concealing cameras in the restrooms of local businesses.
In February, police arrested a middle school teacher in Colonie, NY, outside Albany, who hid a camera in a staff restroom and photographed 28 people. He pleaded guilty last month to two counts of unlawful surveillance.
And on Sanibel Island in Florida, police arrested a 58-year-old New Hampshire man on multiple counts of video voyeurism after a public works employee found two cameras disguised as square, red fire alarms with warning lights in a public family restroom. They were filled with nearly 300 videos.
The camera housings were homemade, according to a police affidavit. Using a real fire alarm box with a hole drilled into it, the camera — pointed directly at the toilet — was mounted inside and stuck to the wall with double-sided tape.
Police described the camera as looking like a vehicle key fob. It recorded in five-minute snippets and stored videos on a micro memory card.
Despite the steady stream of incidents, federal and state prosecutors' offices said they are unaware of any agency or group that tracks spyware crimes or collects any data, rendering it impossible to determine whether such behavior is on the rise — or how best to combat it. That's a problem, according to Drexel's D'Ovidio.
Data-driven solutions are critical to prompting lawmakers to take notice, especially when hidden-camera crimes are competing for attention with high-profile issues such as gun violence, D'Ovidio said. They're also necessary for countering the industry and its lobbyists.
"Without the data to make the case, it's hard to push back on these manufacturers that can cite legitimate alternative uses," he said.
One thing is certain, though: As cameras shrink, and as the definition of what constitutes privacy is redefined in an age when cellphones are ubiquitous, the potential paths to misbehaviour only increase in number and variety.
A Google search for "hidden camera" turns up no shortage of merchandise, including a model similar to the one on Amazon.com that police allege Bueschen used: a HowKow WiFi-enabled device, which sells for as little as US$19.99 (RM88) online.
Pittsburgh police described it as black and circular, about an inch thick with a tiny camera in the middle. Hidden in a recess under the sink in a bathroom, the camera had an SD card slot, a USB port and a power pack taped to the basin.
On the day the camera was found, the tape's stickiness had apparently worn off, and it had fallen to the floor, according to Pittsburgh police Detective Douglas Butler, the lead investigator.
Not only did the camera capture images of strangers, it also contained pictures of Bueschen's wife, her sister and his brother-in-law showering and using the toilet, police said. They're the only victims who have been identified so far.
"The sister-in-law was very shocked," Butler said. "They're hurt. They feel violated."
Forget clunky Polaroids, first-gen digital cameras or even cellphones. Today's clandestine devices that take still photographs and video have shrunk dramatically and can be disguised as any household item — alarm clocks, lightbulbs, clothing hooks, pens, smoke detectors, even cans of shaving cream.
Invasive pictures can be viewed over wireless connections, stored on digital media and uploaded to the cloud.
In Bueschen's case, police would file hundreds more charges as investigators turned up roughly 3,000 graphic images and evidence of additional hidden cameras in as many as nine other bathrooms; the only one that has been identified so far is a facility at the Frick Environmental Center on Beechwood Boulevard.
When investigators –search warrant in hand –raided Bueschen's home in November, they confiscated five laptops, several digital cameras, iPads, a portable charger with tape residue and various hard drives.
Bueschen's attorney, David Shrager, said he still was gathering information about his client, who he said had no prior record.
The lawyer acknowledged that while peeping-Tom incidents have remained fundamentally the same throughout history, technology has changed how such crimes are carried out.
Voyeurism is an age-old activity, but scientific advances have granted peepers new nefarious tools.
While hidden cameras often are promoted in positive terms, such as a way for parents to make sure babysitters don't abuse their children or homeowners to prevent people from stealing packages from the porch, the imagery tells a different story.
An ad on Amazon promoting the type of camera retrieved from the Frick property features a picture of a scantily clad woman, leaving consumers to wonder about the camera's true use.
Sascha Meinrath, a Penn State University telecommunications professor who studies technology and public policy, sees society hurtling toward trouble.
"This will become a more pernicious problem in the future," Meinrath said. "Technology will get cheaper, storage will get larger, resolution will get higher, cameras will get smaller."
One thing not keeping pace with technology, according to Meinrath: the law. He fears that legislators are not keeping ahead of the curve as the digital age continues to give rise to novel – and disturbing – legal questions.
One example: Is child pornography created by artificial intelligence illegal? Meinrath said he has no idea.
Here's another: "What if I put cameras outside a bathroom and have AI develop skits of you peeing inside the bathroom?" Meinrath asked.
"These are questions that, however awkward, need to be asked because these technologies are coming now, not in some distant future," Meinrath said. "It's possible today and will be normalised over the next five to 10 years, and we have no rules of the road for how to address these things."
While photography and telephoto lenses have been around for more than a century, the phenomenon of living in a virtual panopticon is new, as drones, satellites and closed-circuit television create a permanent surveillance state.
"We've never had a moment in which the privacy invasiveness of all this has been this grand, this problematic," Meinrath said. – The Tribune-Review, Greensburg/Tribune News Service
