I must be getting old. I recall a time when the telephone had no purpose more nefarious than calling someone you disliked, pretending to be a clinic doctor and imparting untrue news of a venereal nature.
That prank, although undeniably cruel, seems positively innocent compared to some of the wicked acts a phone can help perpetrate in these high-tech times -- and I'm not just talking about being able to watch the latest Eminem video on some of the more newfangled models.
The state Senate recently passed a bill making illegal a practices known as "upskirting."
For the uninitiated, and hopefully that's most of you, upskirting involves using a camera phone to surreptitiously take pictures up a woman's skirt. It is related to another now-outlawed practice of taking pictures down a woman's top, or, to put it in pervert parlance, "down-blousing."
The Legislature was moved to act after an incident last year involving Robert Sullivan of Alexandria, Va., who visited the food court at a Cumberland County mall craving more than a slice of Sbarro pie.
Sullivan was arrested after being caught taking a picture up a woman's skirt, for what creepy purpose it probably is best not to dwell on -- other than to perhaps note that a cursory Google search turned up numerous Internet sites devoted to upskirt pictures.
The cops who cuffed Sullivan faced a dilemma. Telephone technology had outpaced state law. At the time, Sullivan's hobby of clandestinely snapping these type of shots was as illegal as hobbies such as stamp collecting or model ship building.
The police wisely decided, however, that such grievous breaches of etiquette should not go unpunished and charged Sullivan with disorderly conduct. He served a day in jail and was fined $1,000.
The penalties for such unwholesome activities are now considerably stiffer.
Should Sullivan ever be caught in a food court photographing some poor woman who only wants to finish her Subway meatball sandwich in peace, he could be jailed for a year and fined $2,500.
Hopefully, word will get out that Pennsylvania, like 19 other states, now has laws specifically prohibiting upskirting and down-blousing. Sullivan would be an appropriate party to help spread the word.
Perhaps he could do so by using the telephone for its original and now seemingly antiquated purpose: conversation.
