opinion

Invasion of Privacy is hard to prove

HF3 passed the House with a unanimous vote last week. The bill makes it easier for victims of invasion of privacy to put their perpetrators to justice.

This bill is important to me because I was a victim of this crime two years ago in Iowa City. My former landlord had built and used peepholes to spy on his tenants in their apartments. Even though he had admitted so much to the police during his initial interrogation, the complexity of the code made it difficult to prove his guilt.

The code currently requires that a perpetrator be aroused by the act, among other things, to be guilty of invasion of privacy.

The change in the code would have doubled my landlord’s penalties and made it much less taxing for all parties involved in the trial to prove his guilt. Due to the many complexities the new code would eliminate, future victims of this crime will benefit immensely from its passage.