Two months ago, a resident of East Quad found herself in the shower, a head full of shampoo, staring down the lens of what appeared to be a cell phone equipped with a tiny digital camera. She shrieked, not out of shock, she said, but because she was livid with after this invasion of privacy.

"It could have happened to me multiple times," said Sydney, whose name has been changed to protect her privacy. "It could have happened to anyone else. They're silent, they're instant, there's no way for anyone to ever find out."

Technology has presented stalkers and voyeurs with a new tool: a pocket-sized camera disguised as a phone. Camera phones-nonexistent only three years ago-now dominate the cell phone market. Though a convenient device, these phones can infringe upon privacy because of their unobtrusive size and inconspicuous packaging.

It was a bit after 10 a.m. on a typical Wednesday when Sydney spotted the camera. She said a shadow appeared behind the curtain and paused for a little longer than usual.

"I live in a coed floor with coed bathrooms...so it was not unusual for me to see a male silhouette outside the shower."

Though the shadow lingered longer than usual, Sydney said she thought nothing of it. The shadow then disappeared.

There was a Velcro sign outside the curtain reading "occupied."

"The next time I looked over to get something else out of my caddy, there was a phone sticking into my shower being held up by somebody," Sydney said. "It took me a second to process what was going on," she said.

When she realized, she screamed, and the figure scurried away.

"I didn't know what to do," she said.

While nobody witnessed the incident; at least one person reported hearing someone running down the hall following Sydney's outburst.

"I filed a police report, but in the end there is nothing to be done because nobody saw anything," she said.

According to East Quad Director Jeremy Leiferman, the photographer has not been identified.

"I'm concerned that we have an individual who thinks it is OK to photograph an individual in the shower," Leiferman said.

The student who was potentially photographed said she's worried that the cameraman might be a student.

"I'm presuming that this person is a student here and that every person on their phonebook could have had that photo while sitting in class," Sydney said. "It was hard for me after that to feel comfortable being in a shower or being alone in my room because I was afraid."

Sydney's hallmates were concerned when they found out what transpired.

"I think it's an issue of respect," a male hallmate said. I would never have thought it would happen here."



Halting voyeurism

After the incident, Leiferman sent an e-mail to East residents, notifying them of the situation, and encouraging them to be aware of their surroundings and their safety.

"The University is very concerned about camera phones," Director of Public Safety Ed Callahan said.

With workout rooms in the Village, the pool in Gosman and locker rooms in the gyms, Callahan confirmed that privacy is a concern. The University is constantly re-examining security procedures to ensure safety on campus, he said.

Callahan said that students must be cognizant of their surroundings and encourages them to pass information to Public Safety. "If you feel someone is violating another's privacy, let us know," he said.

The bottom line, though, Sydney said, is that "anyone who wants to get in the bathroom has the opportunity to do so."

She continued that, since any student who lives on campus has a key that grants access to all residence halls, "we don't personally know the people who enter the buildings."

"The ideal situation would be to leave the bathrooms as they are with the exception of installing locked doors on the showers the same way you have locked doors on the bathroom stalls," she said. "I've seen that at other schools."

Though she does not feel camera phones should be illegal, Sydney believes that places such as locker rooms, public bathrooms and bathrooms in a dorm are inappropriate venues for camera phones. She said that it's a tricky issue. Although gyms might be entitled to ask patrons to leave camera phones at the front desk, people may need to use them for their primary purpose-making calls-and would likely prefer not to leave the phones at the desk.

"Colleges and universities need to continue to be proactive with regards to technology and privacy," Leiferman said.



Legal battles of voyeurism

The battles between privacy and technology have appeared in Congress and courtrooms nationwide. Pictures from low-cost camera phones can be uploaded on the Internet in seconds, rendering them a realistic and powerful threat to privacy.

"This is about privacy and decency," Rep. Charles Gonzalez, D-Texas, told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Gonzalez is the co-sponsor of a bill in the House called the Video Voyeurism Prevention Act of 2003. It would require up to a year in prison for those who capture an "improper image" of a person's private body parts, where one has a reasonable expectation of privacy.

"Dirty old men are taking pictures in girls' locker rooms and looking at ladies through peepholes," Rep. Michael G. Oxley, R-Ohio, co-sponsor of the measure with Gonzalez, told the Post-Intelligencer. "The danger is that the technology has empowered people to potentially use it in ways that violate peoples' privacy."

A similar measure, which would make it a federal crime to secretly tape people in places like locker rooms, theater changing rooms, and bathrooms, is working its way through Congress.

Different measures have been taken across the world. In Washington, it is already a felony to take photographs up women's skirts. Hong Kong recently entertained the possibility of banning all camera phones in locker rooms and swimming pools, according to Reiter's Camera Phone Report.

Saudi Arabia banned camera phones in 2002 and continues to crack down on their illegal importation by smashing phones with large mallets when found. Camera phones in South Korea are now required to make a loud noise whenever taking a photo or video, according to ABC News Online.

Yet, the dangers remain. Five women seeking jobs at Hooters recently sued the restaurant, claiming they were secretly videotaped while undressing. In December, a 20-year-old man was charged with felony voyeurism near Seattle for using a camera phone to take photographs up a woman's skirt.

New York specifically outlawed video voyeurism in summer 2003, after a case wherein a Long Island landlord spied on a tenant and her boyfriend by hiding a tiny video camera in the room's smoke detector.

These examples were all discovered by the Post-Intelligencer.

Furthermore, faster, more sophisticated devices are becoming more affordable. The Consumer Electronics Association estimates that camera phone sales grew from 1.2 million in 2001 to 6.3 million in 2003.



Hi-tech stalkers

Technology-facilitated intrusion is not only due to camera phones. With the Internet, Web cameras, online "white pages" and Global Positional Systems, privacy is much harder to achieve than in the past.

The positive effects of technology are tremendous for spreading information, communication and data. But the negatives have created a new horde of cyber stalkers.

Working to Halt Online Abuse is an organization tracking cyber-stalking statistics. In 2002, the group averaged 50 to 100 cases every week. In 2003, 63 percent of victims were between the ages of 18 and 30.

The five ways that online harassment or stalking usually began were e-mail, message boards, instant messaging, Web sites and chat rooms.

Cyber stalking is now a criminal misdemeanor in approximately 20 states, though Massachusetts has yet to act on cyber stalking.

The newest forms of media communication have come through Web sites such as thefacebook.com.

Thefacebook.com is the newest fad for a handful of schools, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard, Yale, Cornell and, more recently Boston University and New York University. It allows registered members of these schools to search for other students in their own school, find people in their classes, and see visualizations of social networks.

Thefacebook.com is secure in that only members can see each other. But other Web sites are less secure. Without even registering for J-Date, a Jewish dating network, someone can see the names, faces and home cities of anyone who is registered. The risk is that stalkers can often obtain hefty files on victims' social networks.



Sophisticated, dangerous technologies

GPS receivers and face recognition technologies have also been hailed as both extremely useful tools and extremely intrusive ones. A GPS system can immediately track down somebody in danger and provide help. Hikers and boaters use the devices to keep from getting lost, while trucking companies monitor drivers with it.

Of course, the capabilities present a downside. One woman in Milwaukee could not escape her boyfriend.

"He told me no matter where I went or what I did, he would know where I was," she stated at a court hearing. It was because he had installed a satellite tracking device in her car, according to the Associated Press.

In addition, identity theft can be a danger in the world of Internet transactions. By obtaining a name and social security or credit card number, stalkers can steal an identity.

The infamous "Buffalo Spammer" was recently found guilty on 14 counts of identity theft and forgery after he sent out 825 million bulk e-mails using stolen identities and forged addresses, according to ZDNet.

With sophisticated technologies that can spread information quickly and universally, the new century has created many chances for privacy hazards. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, told the Post-Intelligencer that the technology allowing video voyeurism is "more than creepy and invasive-it's just plain dangerous."

Especially on a college campus, where safety is often presumed and danger often ignored, technologies could greatly hinder privacy if students aren't aware of their surroundings.

As Sydney said, "It's scary to be in a world where we trust that people we don't know are going to act appropriately with technology whose capabilities we don't fully understand."

-Alexandra Perloe contributed to this article.