baggs Your logic seems to be that if a woman doesn't know she has been "upskirted" then it doesn't harm her personally - and therefore what? there is no need to criminalise such behaviour? If it were not an offence to, for instance, secretly film women in the shower or the toilet, would you say that there is no need to make it a criminal offence because the woman was not aware that it had happened?
The point surely is that even if the person in question is unaware she has been photographed/filmed, if the perpetrator knows that, even if he is found out, what he has done is not seen as a criminal offence, he will no doubt continue with the behaviour (and there is quite a bit of evidence to suggest that such behaviour can escalate to even more serious acts).
It's not a "moral panic". If a woman chooses to be photographed in these sorts of situations, that's fine but if a woman has not consented to it then it is an invasion of her privacy, both in the surreptitious taking of the photograph/film and in distributing it on line.
I imagine that at one time we did not have laws to prevent images of babies and children being used for porn purposes. I expect the law referring to this specific activity only came into force once it was discovered that it was happening. When there was no internet, for instance, such photographs and films could not be distributed in that way.
