Bundesjustizministerin Stefanie Hubig (SPD) announced that she will prohibit voyeuristic photographs and videos taken in public saunas and spas.
She told the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung” that many forms of digital voyeurism are already punishable-such as secretly photographing under a skirt or through a cut‑out. However, filming someone in a public sauna is not currently a crime, and she says this loophole is widely recognised.
According to Hubig, “voyeuristic nude photographs of others are unacceptable, even when they are taken in public places such as a sauna, a bathing lake or a spa”. She pledged to “create contemporary criminal rules against digital voyeurism” and added that “no woman should have to suffer being turned into an object of voyeuristic photos just because a smartphone with a camera is always at hand. Our state has a duty of protection here”.
Still, she warned against overreaching. “As always when creating new criminal offences, we must proceed very carefully and restrict ourselves to sanctioning criminal conduct” she said, referring to her former role as a judge. “In this specific context, that means it is not about casual photography; we are dealing exclusively with digital voyeuristic images-and nothing else”.
