ABSTRACT
This chapter considers two phenomena, both of which involve the digitally mediated collection and sharing of images of women without their knowledge or consent. In the first, “creepshots,” individuals surreptitiously take photographs of women and subsequently upload them to message boards for evaluation and commentary. The second involves individuals scouring virtual street maps (such as Google Street View) for images of women that are then placed elsewhere online for the purposes of evaluation and commentary. In both cases, the subjects of the images are in public or quasi-public spaces. In both cases, women are the overwhelming targets of this digital gaze. In both cases, the internet mediates the dissemination of the images, creating the potential for a large and anonymous audience. In both cases, the online commentary quickly becomes sexual in nature, and is frequently overtly hostile. This chapter argues that these practices implicate different kinds of harms – broader, more diffuse – than conventional privacy invasions. As such, rather than being understood through the rubric of “privacy” they are better understood as a new form of public surveillance. Consequently, legal mechanisms grounded in a dichotomous understanding of public and private are unlikely to prove an adequate solution.
