In Hong Kong there has been an issue with voyeuristic crimes such as upskirting since the legislation is not very clear in this cases or actually non-existent. Recently, a court ruling rendered existing legislation ineffective for many smartphone-related offenses.
Democratic Party lawmaker James To Kun-sun is urging justice officials to draft the laws against such crimes. He took to radio to say that the law had failed to keep pace with changes in society and said officials had “wasted eight to 10 years because they were lazy.”
Shortly, Hong Kong police issued a memo on tackling these type of crimes saying that an officer has the power to arrest a person for breach of the peace and they could cite loitering causing concern, disorderly conduct and outraging public decency in prosecuting those who took upskirt photos or videos in public place.
A breach of the peace is a common law concept that is not a criminal offense and can occur in a private or public place when harm is done or is likely to be done to a person or in their presence to their property, or a person is in fear of being harmed through an assault, a riot or other disturbance.
But lawyers are skeptical saying that their proposed solution will not lead to prosecution or conviction if an incident happens on private premises. In that respect, they are urging the government to speed up the drafting of a law that specifically targets voyeuristic crimes. Also, last year, the Law Reform Commission proposed six laws against sex acts including the criminalization of “non-consensual observation or visual recording of another person for a sexual purpose.”
