Location: NYC
This is based on a recent post I made on r/advice, but since one of their rules is no legal advice and theres been some new developments I decided to come here.
Original post:
“For context, I recently finished my first year of college, so l’ve been home a lot more since I dorm during the school year. He travels a lot for his job, so l’ve been mostly home alone.
Over the past few weeks, l’ve had a suspicion that something was off, since he seemed to know things he shouldn’t but I put it off to coincidence.
Now I know it wasnt.
I found a camera. He hid it in a smoke detector, deliberately so it wouldnt be spotted.
It has a microphone and basically an entire view of the kitchen and living room, which is almost the entire apartment.
I genuinely don’t know how to approach this. I’ll try to confront him on Sunday when he gets back.
I feel violated in my privacy. I’ve had my friends and my girlfriend come over too (no secretly, all with permission) and he basically couldve been watching at any point.
He said before that he wouldn’t ever spy on me and there truly isnt any reason to. I dont throw parties or anything. Its not for home security either because we live in a big building with doormen in a good neighborhood.
I simply lost all trust in him now and I dont know how to move forward.
He had a camera on me. He basically filmed me when I was getting out of the shower naked, when I was dancing in the living room, when me and my girlfriend made out on the couch.”
—————-
Since yesterday I’ve investigated the camera more and found the slot for the micro sd card which stores the footage.
Sadly, the data was unreadable and windows said it was in a RAW format. Using some basic data recovery software I’ve been able to salvage some low quality images from the footage though.
He’s been doing this for about 2 years, even back when we lived in a different apartment and I was still a minor.
I looked into local NYC law and it seems putting a camera in a smoke detector is an absolute nono, in addition to recording audio without at least one involved party consenting.
Should I seek legal counsel? Should I confront him first?