Crowdsourcing Site Lets You Fund an Upskirt Camera
LatestUPDATE: Indiegogo responded to our questions about the campaign. Their response is at the bottom of this article.
Crowdsourcing platforms have the potential to do amazing things. Cards Against Humanity, the Veronica Mars movie, and a slew of independent games and tech toys wouldn’t exist without it. So what’s one of the most funded projects ($36,000 and counting) on Indiegogo right now? What dazzling invention will finally get funding thanks to the power of the people? A goddamn upskirt camera.
That’s not how the Peek-i advertises itself, of course. It’s a “cool spy gadget” that makes you “feel like James Bond.” You know, if James Bond was surreptitiously taking photos of Pussy Galore’s nether regions instead of buying her martinis.
Here is some actual text from the fundraising page on Indiegogo:
Make awesome shots of your friends, completely unaware that they were on camera!!!
You don’t need to point camera directly on the object!
Don’t scare your astonishing award winning picture away! Peek-i is there for you!
Surely, every one of you was in a situation where it would be nice to take a picture, but… Not comfortable to do it!
Therefore, you pretend to do something on your device, and at the same time trying to capture the desired scene with device’s camera.
Yeah, don’t scare the subject of your award-winning photo away by letting them know there’s a camera pointed at them! People love that. Take candid shots of your friends, because it’s so difficult to get people to pose for pictures these days!
The photos the inventor posted of possible uses for the Peek-i are even more ludicrous:
ABOVE: One of the images from the Peek-i fundraising page. CREDIT: Indiegogo
ABOVE: Another photo from the Peek-i page. CREDIT: Indiegogo
Rrrrrright. This camera is so ladies can catch their cheating boyfriends. Interestingly enough, those weren’t the original photos that ran with the campaign. CNET captured the original images that ran with the campaign, which showed a dude getting an upskirt shot of a lady he’s eating lunch with and some bros snapping of a pic of their waitress’ cleavage.
ABOVE: One of the original photos used for the Peek-i campaign. CREDIT: CNET
ABOVE: Another original photo used for the Peek-i campaign. Wow, what a neat spy gadget! Totally not creepy! CREDIT: CNET
The reporter who wrote about this over a month ago said Indiegogo told her the campaign was “under review.” Apparently, their review process consists of telling the campaign manager to use less creepy photographs.
It’s an upskirt camera. It is designed and sold so men can discretely get photos of women’s crotches in public. (Just in time for summer!) And men are excited: The project’s funding goal of $1,000 has been reached and exceeded by 3,969 percent.
Indiegogo did not respond to repeated inquiries from Fusion about the product. According to their terms of use, the campaign seems questionable:
Campaign Owners are not permitted to create a Campaign to raise funds for illegal activities, to cause harm to people or property, or to scam other Users.
Is violating people’s right to privacy illegal? Is taking upskirt shots of women (and probably posting them online to somewhere like r/upskirt) causing harm? Yes. Unequivocally, yes. Evidently, Indiegogo doesn’t care that it’s allowing a pervert to shill a product that violates the right to not have photos of your crotch posted on the Internet. Feel free to let Indiegogo know how you feel about that here.
UPDATE: Indiegogo has responded to emails from Fusion.
Here’s what they said:
Thank you for reaching out. Indiegogo empowers campaign owners and contributors to raise money for, or support, the things that matter to them. Since Indiegogo is an equal opportunity platform, a wide variety of subject matters and opinions may be expressed through campaigns. Due to the fact that we do not curate these campaigns, the views reflected by campaign owners are not necessarily those of Indiegogo. Because of the diversity of our community, it’s possible that something could be disagreeable or disturbing to you without meeting the criteria for being removed or blocked.
With that said, the campaign does not contain any video or language that indicates or encourages its users to use it for illegal activities.