A U.S. immigration officer is facing prison after being convicted of taking up-skirt video of a flight attendant last year while on duty escorting a passenger bound for deportation.
The man faces a maximum sentence of 20 years for interfering with flight crew enroute from Dallas – Fort Worth to Miami on November 6, 2023.
The crewmember had noticed him holding his phone in a suspicious manner, pointing it up whenever she walked by. Another flight attendant recorded him doing it. They informed the pilot, who arranged for law enforcement to meet the aircraft on arrival. They found multiple up-skirt images on the CBP officer’s phone.
Sentencing is scheduled for August 16. In a statement from the man’s attorney, he ‘regrets his actions’ and seeks ‘forgiveness’ presumably because he’d like a modest sentence.
From their earliest days, flight attendants have faced sexual harassment. Harassment may be somewhat less common in the U.S. than it used to be since social norms have shifted away from “coffee, tea, or me?” and air travel itself is, for the most part, no longer ‘sexy’. But nearly everyone has video now in their pockets.
Of course in the fall a flight attendant was caught taking video up a passenger‘s skirt and several years ago German airline Condor warned pilots to stop taking video of flight attendants having sex. Go figure.
Creeps will be creeps, and CBP has no shortage of them too.
Has someone made the argument that if something is visible to anyone in public then any creep in public has a right to creepily record what they can see in a public space?
Meant DHS, which includes CBP and ICE amongst other agencies.
CBP always following their motto: if you see something, tape something.
Huh? GUWonder says “Has someone made the argument that if something is visible to anyone in public then any creep in public has a right to creepily record what they can see in a public space?”
It’s not the same AT ALL.
Upskirt videos do not involve recording something publicly visible. It’s an invasion of PRIVATE space. So is recording in a locker room or shower, or hiding a camera in an AirBnb, restroom, hotel room, etc.
Recording in PUBLIC is commonly done and it’s hardly “creepy.” Ever heard of street photography? Vacation pix? Journalism? Security cameras? Live streams? Paparazzi? The minute you walk into the public you lose any presumption of privacy. If people can see you walking down the street they can take a picture of you walking down the street, whether on purpose or accidentally in the background of a shot.
That accompanying picture is lame. What is the PUS officer? Someone seated facing backwards? Looks like a bad attempt with AI.
@Andrew…..that’s the point he’s making. Someone will make the comment/try and excuse the behavior by saying the flight attendant was in a public space. Anyone does that is just as much of a perv as the guy that did it.
If the creep was bending down to grab something from a bag under the seat back and had 24/7 video recording eyeglasses or a body cam on that caught the “up skirt” images without him physically intruding into the clothes and touching the clothes or body of the person filmed in public (albeit a common carrier’s flight on a privately owned plane), would those captured up-skirt images be illegal since they were taken in public view?
GUWonder needs professional help before it gets arrested.
To use AA’s logic, the fa saw the phone and didn’t avoid it, therefor SHE is responsible. Maybe she even WANTED the guy to take an upskirt photo of her.
The guy has serious issues. Maybe needs therapy. And he definitely needs a fine.
But what is “maximum 20 years in prison”? People who rob banks or even kill get less than that…
Dan got it.
There are people who may believe that if there is a way for someone in public to see it, then it’s not criminal to photo/video capture it even as they may know it’s unethical or frowned upon to do so and thus try to do the privacy invasion on the sly while claiming it’s not privacy invading because of it being recorded in public.
Tired of I is right in that I need professional help, but Tired o I has no clue about whom I am hiring and what kind of professional help. 😉
Perhaps not everyone enjoys a good debate and getting ahead of the arguments that some people will try to use. 😉
Personally, I think this creep situation with a DHS employee is yet another example of why background checks used by DHS shouldn’t be relied upon in the way they are for the public in particular.
She wasn’t a little kid, and her private area was covered by undergarments, so that’s American Airlines is against doing it.
Upskirt is not visible to the public unless you’re standing on something clear or reflective. It doesn’t matter that it’s only obscured by position, it’s still not visible to the public.
Let’s examine the situation from a different angle. Las Vegas show, some years back. Two acts ended with a lone female performer on stage almost certainly wearing nothing at all–yet local law prohibits full nudity in places that sell alcohol. How can that be? Because in both cases she was positioned such that there was no line of sight.
Geez, you guys coming down on GU are too literal. The point was about specuous arguments creepers might make, not that going through gymnastics to take upskirt pics was technically “public”.
(“public” is usually defined against a reasonable expectation of privacy, and in your skirt counts as reasonable expectation of privacy!)
In most cases, a legitimate attempt to cover something in public makes it private. A skirt has been a way to cover body parts for many years, thus anything “up there” is private and not meant for public viewing.
If the public accidentally sees private parts, or if someone accidentally shows their private parts, no crime has been committed. If someone purposefully attempts to see something private without permission, that is an invasion of privacy and is potentially criminal.