“A man accused of using a video camera in his shoe to film up the skirts and dresses of women on public transport had been committing the crime for four years, police allege. Police said the man, in his early 20s, used an elaborate system to take potentially hundreds of images of women on Melbourne’s public transport. Melbourne East Senior Constable Sue Benskin said the man used a camera in his shoe connected to a cord that ran up his leg underneath his trousers to a black and grey Nike bumbag. The bag was linked to a running video camera, which police believe was used to take pictures of victims so they could be matched with images taken by the shoe camera underneath their skirts and dresses. The man’s alleged scheme came undone on Tuesday when a woman on a tram heading north into the city noticed his hand-held video camera and complained to police she was being filmed. ‘The actual victim herself was quite distraught at the time and it’s a very serious offence and we’re taking it very seriously,’ Sen Const Benskin said. Police apprehended the suspect on a tram about 10.45am (AEDT) on Tuesday… Sen Const Benskin said the man admitted to taking the footage over four years.” — NineMSN (Australia)

(Thanks to Cian for the link.)

The basic outline of this incident — man commits video voyeurism using camera concealed in shoe (or elsewhere) — has become so common that it hardly seems noteworthy to an aficionado of the perverse. When submitting the link, Cian didn’t indicate that it was an outrageous or crazy story, only that it contained a picture of the shoecam. Ok, that turns the tables, the device used to take pictures is itself the subject of a picture. But still, is that a big deal?

Perhaps it is, once you consider the strange disparity between the plethora of stories about video voyeurism and the paucity of images of “shoecams” and the like. On any day of the week you can go to Google News and find a dozen new stories of guys being arrested for taking illicit pictures. But to find images of the devices they use is actually very difficult. Here is another newspaper’s image of the same shoecam featured in this story. But how many more images of shoecams can you find? Try searching on Google Images for “shoecam” and you end up with some amateur porn. Try “shoe camera” and you get (legitimate) camera equipment. Google “How to install camera in shoe” and there are zero results. It’s shocking. You’d expect some pervy blog out there to have step-by-step illustrated instructions.

It’s ironic that all these hidden cameras remain, even when they’re exposed to the police and the press, hidden. What do they look like? What sorts of cameras work best? What sorts of shoes do voyeurs use? Are some shoes better than others at concealing cameras? And how do these concealed cameras affect your feet? Do they give you blisters?

If anybody knows any pictures of shoe cameras, please post the URLs here to this page. It would be interesting to build an archive of imagery that turns these hidden devices into a revelation.

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