It seemed like a stealthy, albeit disgusting, plan. 
 
 A Wisconsin man thought he had come up with a way to creep under the skirts of women and take invasive and, perhaps, to him, titillating video, according to police in Madison, Wis. Unlike other “upskirting” instances, in which people have been caught using cellphones to record invasive photos of women, this 32-year-old thought he’d try a different approach: a shoe camera. 
 
 It’s unclear what a “shoe camera” entails, but this unidentified man found a camera he could attach to his shoe and purchased it with the intention of taking videos under women’s skirts, according to a Tuesday report from Madison Police Chief Michael Koval. 
 
 But before capturing any footage, the man decided to test out the camera at home, Officer David Dexheimer told the Wisconsin State Journal. 
 
 Just then, the device’s battery blew up, injuring the man’s foot and derailing his scheme, Koval wrote. 
 
 He sought out medical treatment for minor burns, Dexheimer told the Wisconsin State Journal. As it turns out, the explosion hurt not only his foot but also his conscience. 
 
 The man opened up about what happened to a clergyman, Dexheimer said. The clergyman suggested that the man turn himself in to the authorities and accompanied him to the police station. 
 
 At about 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, police officers at a Madison station were contacted by the man, who admitted to his failed upskirting plans. The man was “counseled on his actions,” Koval wrote, but ultimately released because he had not taken any illegal videos. 
 
 It appears that the explosion, and the advice from the clergyman, worked out in the man’s favor — for the time being. Authorities are continuing to investigate, Koval said. 
 
 Upskirting, in its various forms, is not uncommon. Some reports in places like Washington have even found a spike in upskirting incidents in recent years, as phone cameras and other recording devices have become ubiquitous. Upskirting has been reported in Metro stations, Walmarts and grocery stores across the country. 
 
 Upskirting is illegal in many places, including Wisconsin. Under a 2015 Wisconsin law, anyone who uses a device to record “under the outer clothing” of a person without their consent can be found guilty of a felony. 
 
 In other places, however, the law has been murkier. In Georgia, for example, a court in 2016 ruled that “upskirting” was legal in public places, such as a Publix grocery store. ||||| Speaker DeLeo vows to fix law after ruling says ‘upskirting’ — shooting a picture under a woman’s dress — is legal 
 
 The state’s highest court says “upskirting,” the practice of secretly photographing under a woman’s skirt, is not prohibited by state law. 
 
 The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court said today that a state law intended to prohibit “Peeping Tom” voyeurism of completely or partially undressed people did not apply to people who take pictures of people who are fully clothed. 
 
 House Speaker Robert DeLeo said this afternoon that the Legislature would immediately begin looking at ways of closing the loophole in the law. 
 
 “The ruling of the Supreme Judicial Court is contrary to the spirit of the current law. The House will begin work on updating our statutes to conform with today’s technology immediately,” DeLeo said in a statement. 
 
 The high court’s ruling today came in the case of a man who allegedly took photos under the dresses of women on Green Line trolleys. 
 
 The court focused on the language of the law, which prohibits secret photography of “a person ... who is partially nude.” 
 
 “A female passenger on a MBTA trolley who is wearing a skirt, dress, or the like covering [private] parts of her body is not a person who is ‘partially nude,’ no matter what is or is not underneath the skirt by way of underwear or other clothing,” the court said in a unanimous ruling written by Justice Margot Botsford. 
 
 The court said Suffolk County prosecutors, who argued that the Peeping Tom law should apply, had a “flawed” interpretation of the statute. 
 
 The high court ruling reversed a Boston Municipal Court judge’s denial of a motion to dismiss by Michael Robertson. 
 
 Trolley riders alerted MBTA Transit Police in August 2010 that a man appeared to be taking photographs of women, including one instance in which he appeared to be attempting to photograph a woman’s crotch area, the court said. 
 
 Transit Police set up a decoy operation the next day involving a female undercover officer wearing a skirt. Robertson allegedly took pictures of her, focusing on her crotch area, and he was arrested, the court said. 
 
 Robertson was charged in December 2011. In 2012, he filed a motion to dismiss the complaints. It was denied. But he took his appeal to the Supreme Judicial Court, which agreed with him. 
 
 The court said the core of prosecutors’ argument was “the proposition that a woman, and in particular a woman riding on a public trolley, has a reasonable expectation of privacy in not having a stranger secretly take photographs up her skirt. The proposition is eminently reasonable, but [the law] in its current form does not address it.” 
 
 Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley’s office called the decision a “blow to privacy.” 
 
 “Prosecutors argued that a person has a right to privacy beneath his or her own clothes, and we will urge the Legislature to re-write the current statute to grant that right,” Conley’s office said in a statement. ||||| Lifetime GPS Tracking of Sex Offenders OK'd CHICAGO (CN) - Requiring a convicted sex offender to wear a GPS monitoring anklet 24 hours a day for life does not violate the Fourth Amendment, the Seventh Circuit ruled Friday, reversing a ruling from Wisconsin. 
 
 Michael Belleau was convicted in 1992 of sexually assaulting a boy for five years, beginning when the boy was eight. Belleau served one year in jail, and was arrested while on probation for sexually assaulting a 9-year-old girl. 
 
 Belleau was sentenced to 10 years in prison for this second offense, and his parole was revoked after he admitted having sexual fantasies about grooming little girls to molest them. 
 
 He was civilly committed for five more years as a sexually violent person. 
 
 As a condition of his release in 2010, Belleau is required to wear a GPS monitoring anklet 24 hours a day for the rest of his life. 
 
 He sued the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, claiming the lifetime monitoring violates his Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable search. 
 
 A federal judge agreed, and held Wisconsin's monitoring statute unconstitutional. 
 
 But the Seventh Circuit reversed on Friday, citing the Supreme Court's 2015 decision in Grady v. North Carolina : that constant monitoring of sex offenders may be permitted within reason. 
 
 "The focus must be on the incremental effect of the challenged statute on the plaintiff's privacy, and that effect is slight given the decision by Wisconsin to make sex offenders' criminal records and home addresses public," Judge Richard Posner wrote for the three-judge panel. (Emphasis in original.) 
 
 Given that anyone with an Internet connection can look up Belleau's name, photo, address and criminal history, "The additional loss from the fact that occasionally his trouser leg hitches up and reveals an anklet monitor that may cause someone who spots it to guess that this is a person who has committed a sex crime must be slight," Posner wrote. 
 
 The government's interest in protecting children weighs heavily against Belleau's privacy interests. Even at age 73, there is no way of guaranteeing that Belleau will not harm a child again, the court said, especially given the high recidivism rates of sex offenders. 
 
 "Pedophilia is a lifelong affliction for which there is no treatment," Posner wrote. "Coupled with the particularly devastating consequences of their conduct, these offenders pose a unique - and perhaps insurmountable - challenge for conventional law enforcement techniques." 
 
 The court found that the language of the monitoring statute is focused on protecting children, not punishing sex offenders, and rejected Belleau's comparison of the GPS anklet to branding. 
 
 "Early forms of shaming were designed to be noticeable, even prominent, while the GPS device is designed to be inconspicuous," Posner said. He added that as technology improves, the devices will become smaller and less burdensome. 
 
 He also pointed out that the anklet could exonerate Belleau if he is arrested for a sex offense he did not commit. 
 
 "Given how slight is the incremental loss of privacy from having to wear the anklet monitor, and how valuable to society (including sex offenders who have gone straight) the information collected by the monitor is, we can't agree with the district judge that the Wisconsin law violates the Fourth Amendment," the unanimous panel wrote. 
 
 Judge Joel Martin Flaum wrote a concurring opinion. ||||| BOSTON (AP) — A man who took cellphone photos up the skirts of women riding the Boston subway did not violate state law because the women were not nude or partially nude, Massachusetts' highest court ruled Wednesday. 
 
 The Supreme Judicial Court overruled a lower court that had upheld charges against Michael Robertson, who was arrested in August 2010 by transit police who set up a sting after getting reports that he was using his cellphone to take photos and video up female riders' skirts and dresses. 
 
 The ruling immediately prompted top Beacon Hill lawmakers to pledge to update state law. 
 
 Existing so-called Peeping Tom laws protect people from being photographed in dressing rooms and bathrooms when nude or partially nude, but the way the law is written, it does not protect clothed people in public areas, the court said. 
 
 "A female passenger on a MBTA trolley who is wearing a skirt, dress, or the like covering these parts of her body is not a person who is 'partially nude,' no matter what is or is not underneath the skirt by way of underwear or other clothing," the court said in its ruling. 
 
 State law "does not apply to photographing (or videotaping or electronically surveilling) persons who are fully clothed and, in particular, does not reach the type of upskirting that the defendant is charged with attempting to accomplish on the MBTA," the court said. 
 
 The SJC said that while such actions should be illegal, they are not, given the way state law is written. 
 
 Suffolk County prosecutors said their interpretation of the state's Peeping Tom law was that "upskirt" photos are illegal. 
 
 District Attorney Dan Conley said prosecutors are hoping state lawmakers will change the wording of the statute by the end of this legislative session. 
 
 "What we have is not that the Supreme Judicial Court is saying this is OK," Conley said. "The statutory language just didn't quite fit the conduct." 
 
 In its ruling, the court said that other states, including New York and Florida, have passed laws specifically criminalizing upskirt photos, noting that women have an expectation of privacy under their clothing. Washington lawmakers closed a loophole in that state's voyeurism law a decade ago, after a similar ruling there. 
 
 Conley added that this conduct has become more and more prevalent, and he urged riders to be alert. 
 
 "This action is immoral and reprehensible; don't do it," he said. 
 
 A telephone message left with Michelle Menken, Robertson's attorney, was not immediately returned. 
 
 Senate President Therese Murray said she was "stunned and disappointed" with the court ruling. She said the Senate will respond quickly. 
 
 "We have fought too hard and too long for women's rights to take the step backward," Murray said in a statement. "I am in disbelief that the courts would come to this kind of decision and outraged at what it means for women's privacy and public safety." 
 
 Gina Scaramella, executive director of the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, said such photos are a serious invasion of privacy. She said the law needs to catch up to technology. 
 
 "It really is a form of sexual harassment. It's a violation for the person who is unknowingly getting their body photographed," she said. "People wear clothing for a reason and having someone violate that privacy is a real problem." 
 
 MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo said that Transit Police support the Suffolk County District Attorney's efforts to work with the Legislature in rewriting the statute. He did not say what the MBTA could do in the meantime to prevent the activity. 
 
 Pesaturo said that in the past three years, T police have investigated 13 "secretly photographing" cases. In some cases, the alleged offender was issued a court summons. Some remain open investigations. During those three years there was an average of 395 million passenger trips on the MBTA. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press writers Steve LeBlanc and Paige Sutherland contributed to this report.
– An attempt at "upskirting," an exploding camera, and a guilty conscience led to … no arrest in Wisconsin, but the story is still attracting attention nationwide. The Wisconsin State Journal reports on the unidentified 32-year-old man at the center of it all, showing up Tuesday at a Madison police station to turn himself in for what he'd intended to do: take pictures up women's skirts by using a shoe camera. The Washington Post notes it's not exactly clear what a "shoe camera" is, but the man apparently was able to attach some kind of photographic device to his shoe and was testing it at home when the battery exploded, injuring his foot, Officer David Dexheimer tells the Journal. After getting treatment for the minor burns he received from the mini-blast, the man confessed his unsavory intentions to a clergyman, who encouraged him to turn himself in to police, Dexheimer says. There's a Wisconsin law on the books that outlaws anyone from purposely installing a device to photograph or otherwise record under a person's clothes without that person's consent, but the man in this case caught a lucky break: Per Madison Police Chief Mike Koval's daily "significant calls" blog, "the subject was counseled on his actions and released from the scene as no illicit video had been taken." Koval notes there is an ongoing investigation, however. (In some places, upskirting is legal.)