Here's a fun hobby: Covertly filming women's butts in tight pants or leggings and posting them to YouTube. A Canadian university was recently struck by a wave of this "upskirt-lite" voyeurism. But secretly-filmed butts are all over YouTube.

This week campus security at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia issued a warning about some pervert secretly filming female students and posting the videos to YouTube. Though news reports initially didn't link to the account, it was easy to figure out the user was one LeggingSpy. For months, LeggingSpy had stalked college girls with a video camera as they walked around wearing leggings. Then he uploaded clips with catchy titles like "ASS Closeup: college teen girl caught wearing black Lululemon leggings spandex pants". Leggingspy's channel had over 340,000 views by the time it was shut down.

Police and media attention seems to have driven LeggingSpy into hiding, but there are plenty of other creepy ass men on YouTube. (Though none appear to have LeggingSpy's in-depth knowledge of legging manufacturers.) Youngmack707's ouvre includes over 150 videos which have garnered over 400,000 views. Bootystalker10304 has uploaded over 30 videos of women's butts. He wisely specifies in his profile that they were all "filmed in Washington," where the Supreme Court has ruled upskirt videos (and, by extension, butt videos) are legal in a public place, according to privacy blogger Kashmir Hill.

But even where laws ban upskirt videos, filming a sorority girl's Lululemon-clad butt, while disgusting and sad, would likely not be a crime. In 2004, congress passed the Video Voyeurism Prevention Act, which bans video voyeurism on federal property. But it applies only to filming "naked or undergarment clad genitals, pubic area, buttocks, or female breast." If you're wearing leggings—technically, underwear, right?—as pants, anyone can walk up to you and secretly film your butt.

As far as we can tell, there are only a few ways to deal with the LeggingSpies and BootyStalkers of the world, who will, sadly, always exist:

  • Wear mirrors attached to your glasses so you can see any creeps behind you
  • Only wear billowing, knee-length cloaks.
  • Never leave the house.

Grow up, guys.

[The Not-so-Private parts, Pogowasright, Toronto Star]