Casey Grace Ferneyhough and her friends were enjoying a walk through Trinity-Bellwoods Park about five years ago when a man sauntered by and began hitting on them. Persistently.It wasn’t until the man moved on to another group of girls that Ferneyhough noticed a second man following from a few metres away with a camera. Two months later, she discovered the YouTube video the pair made of their attempts to pick up other women in the park that day.Though Ferneyhough, now 22, didn’t make the final cut of the video, she still felt “almost violated.”“It was a breach of privacy to know that my conversation with this guy was being recorded and I could have been online,” she said. “I was underage too, and I’m pretty sure we were in our school uniform at the time, so it was already creepy.”As nasty of a surprise as it may be to find a secretly recorded video of you posted online, there’s very little that women in them can do about it.The issue of recording people in public without their consent made headlines this month after Calgary police arrested a man they allege posted voyeuristic photos and videos of various women to Twitter under the name ‘CanadaCreep.’Jeffrey Robert Williamson, 42, had been freed on bail but was rearrested Friday on child pornography charges. Calgary police seized devices containing hundreds of thousands of images during their investigation, and say they’re working to identify the victims shown.‘CanadaCreep’ veered into illegal territory by shooting video up women’s skirts, which is a criminal offence. The account had racked up about 17,000 followers and had been active for a year before it was suspended.But recording someone in public space isn’t illegal. Though a civil case might be possible, it would be difficult to win, said Bernice Karn, a lawyer with the law firm Cassels Brock.“The behaviour would have to be fairly ou ...
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