Man denies secretly installing camera software
The defence says it was a “bungled” attempt to help a friend with some software she needed. The police say it was a plan to secretly install a programme that would take intimate videos of her.
Christchurch District Court Judge David Saunders will decide the issues in the next three weeks after reserving his decision today at the end of a day-and-a-half of evidence.
He remanded Roy Thomas, 34, on bail for delivery of his verdicts on two charges on June 20.
Thomas denies charges of causing the data or software in the woman’s computer to be modified without authority, and that he “intentionally or recklessly made an intimate visual recording of another person”.
The judge-alone trial was told that Thomas met the woman at a party and she asked for his help with software for her laptop.
Among the programmes he installed was Genus-cam which allowed the laptop to take videos whenever it was open. It was set to work when it detected movement, in “hidden” mode, though a small light would be on beside the computer’s web camera when it was recording. Thomas had the log-in and password to access it.
Thomas told the court he explained about the programme to the woman but she had apparently not paid attention. He believed she could make good quality videos and upload them to a website if she wished.
But the woman told the judge at the first part of the hearing in April that he told her nothing and she was surprised to find the programme’s folder on her laptop a few weeks later.
By then, the programme had taken 280 videos of her, and according to a police Electronic Crime Laboratory witness, Bevin Pelvin, some of them showed the woman undressing.
Thomas had returned to the woman’s home a few weeks after, and had transferred the video files to his own external hard drive where they were later found. Mr Pelvin said 19 of the files had been opened.
Thomas told the court he had returned to see the woman because she had requested some movies, and he removed the Genus-cam videos because she obviously had not understood about the programme and it had made and stored so many videos that it was slowing the laptop. He had not wiped them because he did not know if they were important.
Defence counsel David Goldwater questioned the police witnesses, who told him they had found no evidence that Thomas had used remote access – which was available – to view the videos, or that he had ever put any of them on the Internet.
He said the matter arose because of friend’s “perhaps bungled attempt to help another friend”. If he had set out to make intimate recordings, it seemed he had then not made use of them.
Judge Saunders asked Thomas, who gave evidence, about his advice to the woman not to close her laptop because it would wear out the wiring between the screen and the body of the laptop.
The Electronic Crime Laboratory witness said he had never heard of that advice, but Thomas told the judge it was his experience of using laptops in India where he came from. He believed it would prolong the laptop’s life.
Police prosecutor Glenn Henderson said Thomas had clearly recklessly set up the programme in circumstances where there was a very good likelihood that the woman would have the laptop open and running in her room. A lot of the recorded material had been innocuous, but it had also captured some files that were clearly “intimate visual recordings”.
Category: News
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