Voyeurism is not a crime in
common law. In common law countries, it is only a crime if made so by legislation.
Canada In Canada, for example, voyeurism was not a crime when the case
Frey v. Fedoruk et al. arose in 1947. In that case, in 1950, the
Supreme Court of Canada held that courts could not criminalise voyeurism by classifying it as a
breach of the peace and that Parliament would have to specifically outlaw it. A test of the lack of laws related to voyeurism came in February 2005. It became public knowledge that a website called peepingthong.com had become a depository of photos showing young women, many of them
University of Victoria students, sitting down at various campus locations, such as libraries. While the act of photographing them in isolation may not have caused a commotion, each of the women revealed their
thong underwear to create a
whale tail. Reaction from female members of the university community was not positive. The chairwoman of the student union, Joanna Groves, believed that perpetrator(s) committed an action that were "a violation of someone's privacy." The photographed individuals also appeared to be completely unaware that they were being watched. On November 1, 2005, Parliament outlawed voyeurism when section 162 was added to the Canadian
Criminal Code, declaring voyeurism to be a sexual offence when it violates a reasonable expectation of privacy. In the case of R v Jarvis, the Supreme Court of Canada held that for the purposes of that law, the expectation of privacy is not all-or-nothing; rather there are degrees of privacy, and although secondary-school pupils in the school building cannot reasonably expect as much privacy as in the bedroom, nonetheless they can expect enough privacy so that photographing them without their consent for the purpose of sexual gratification is forbidden.
United Kingdom In some countries voyeurism is considered to be a
sex crime. In the United Kingdom, for example, non-consensual voyeurism became a criminal offence on May 1, 2004. In the English case of
R v Turner (2006), the manager of a sports centre filmed four women taking showers. There was no indication that the footage had been shown to anyone else or distributed in any way. The defendant pleaded guilty. The
Court of Appeal confirmed a
sentence of nine months' imprisonment to reflect the seriousness of the abuse of trust and the traumatic effect on the victims. In another English case in 2009,
R v Wilkins (2010), a man who filmed his intercourse with five of his lovers for his own private viewing was sentenced to eight months in prison and ordered to sign onto the Sex Offender Register for ten years. In 2013, 40-year-old Mark Lancaster was found guilty of voyeurism and jailed for 16 months. He had tricked an 18-year-old student into traveling to a rented flat in Milton Keynes. There, he had filmed her with four secret cameras dressing up as a schoolgirl and posing for photographs before he had sex with her. In a more recent English case in 2020, the Court of Appeal upheld the conviction of Tony Richards. Richards had sought "to have two voyeurism charges under section 67 of the
Sexual Offences Act dismissed on the grounds that he had committed no crime". Richards had "secretly videoed himself having sex with two women who had consented to sex in return for money but had not agreed to being captured on camera". In an unusual step, the court allowed Emily Hunt, a person not involved in the case, to intervene on behalf of the
Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). Hunt had an ongoing
judicial review against the CPS. The CPS had argued that Hunt's alleged attacker had not violated the law when he "took a video lasting over one minute of her naked and unconscious" in a hotel room -- the basis being that there should be no expectation of privacy in the bedroom. However, in terms of what is considered a private act for the purposes of voyeurism, the CPS was arguing the opposite in the Richards appeal. In 2025, a case involving the use of
smart glasses to record sexual activities resulted in a conviction.
United States In the United States, criminal voyeurism statutes arise from laws and legal principles that protect private activities from unlawful intrusion. They are specific to unlawful, unconsented surreptitious surveillance, recordings, and broadcasts. They involve places and times when a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy and a reasonable supposition they are not being photographed, filmed or observed by any form of recording or broadcast device. These statutes often also criminalize the broadcast, dissemination, publication, or selling of recordings. Video voyeurism is an offense in at least twelve states. The case that led to the criminalisation of video voyeurism has been made into a television movie called
Video Voyeur.
Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia banned the sale of camera phones nationwide in April 2004, but reversed the ban in December 2004.
South Korea Some countries, such as
South Korea and
Japan, require all camera phones sold in their country to make a clearly audible sound whenever a picture is being taken. In
South Korea, specialty teams have been set up to regularly check places like bathrooms and change-rooms for hidden cameras known as "
molka".
India In 2013, the
Indian Parliament made
amendments to the
Indian Penal Code, introducing voyeurism as a criminal offence. A man committing the offence of voyeurism would be liable for imprisonment of not less than one year and up to three years and a fine for the first offence. For any subsequent conviction, he would be liable for imprisonment for not less than three years and up to seven years as well as a fine.
Singapore Voyeurism is illegal in
Singapore. Those convicted of voyeurism face a maximum punishment of one year in jail and a fine -- based on insulting a woman's modesty. Recent cases in 2016 include the sentencing of church facility manager Kenneth Yeo Jia Chuan who filmed women in toilets. Yeo Jia Chuan planted pinhole cameras in a handicapped toilet at the Church of Singapore at
Bukit Timah, and in the unisex toilet of the church's office at Bukit Timah Shopping Centre. Secret photography by law enforcement authorities is called
surveillance and is not considered to be voyeurism, though it may be unlawful or regulated in some countries. ==Popular culture==