Nude people too have right to privacy: Court

Madison, Wisconsin: A state appeals court ruled on Tuesday that a person who is voluntarily nude in the presence of another still has privacy rights against being secretly videotaped, in a decision that bolsters Wisconsin’s video voyeur law.

The ruling upholds the felony guilty plea of Mark Jahnke, who videotaped his girlfriend while she was naked and while they were having sex. He argued in his appeal that because the woman agreed to be naked around him, she had no reasonable expectation of privacy.

The department of justice argued that shared intimacy does not give a person the right to film another unknowingly. Jahnke’s attorney, Michael Herbert of Madison, argued that the court had found in a previous case that an expectation of privacy existed when a nude person reasonably believed he or she was “secluded from the presence of others.”

In April 2007, Jahnke pleaded guilty to illegally making a nude recording. He was sentenced to three years’ probation and six months in jail, which was put on hold pending his appeal. Jahnke’s ex-girlfriend said she became suspicious when she saw a flash of a red light from beneath a pile of clothes in her bedroom. She then complained to police.
Source:-The Times of India Delhi 1 January 2009 2008 P. 26
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