03:41 PM CST on Friday, February 3, 2006

By Mark Greenblatt / 11 News

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11 News Defenders went undercover to reveal who put bathroom cameras up and where they are.

Privacy experts and those who have been caught on camera are outraged.

These days you expect to find cameras watching you at a lot of locations like banks, convenience stores or even at the airport.

KHOU-TV

A choice of angles from the bathrooms in a Houston area bar.

But as the 11 News Defenders discovered, the next time you go to the bathroom, you may want to look up. Someone else might be looking in.

You're out on the town, where seeing and being seen is all-important.

But you might be horrified if you knew you were being watched in what many say is your most private moment.

"It's just somewhere you just feel like you should feel safe," said Andrea Simme.

Simme said at first she liked the local nightclub. "The bar staff's friendly, everybody's friendly," she said.

The crowd seemed nice and as the bar's website bragged, the bathrooms were clean.

Which is why she was shocked when she went into the restroom and looked up, "I notice a camera," she said, a surveillance camera inside the ladies room.

"I'm disgusted. You're not expecting someone to be watching you," Simme said.

So her fiancé Scott went into the men's room and saw a camera. "It's right over top of the stall," he said.

Needless to say, the couple wasn't happy

"I don't know where that's going. I don't know who's watching that," said Scott.

And adding insult to injury, she said when they brought it up with the club, "I was basically thrown out."

Where were they?

At the Oz Bar, a north Houston gathering spot that features bands, bikini contests and other get-togethers.

But why would anyone put cameras in a bathroom?

It turns out that it may be part of a growing trend.

"I think it's outrageous," said law professor David Anderson, "A restroom is a place in which we all have real, legitimate, reasonable expectations of privacy."

He's an expert in privacy law at the University of Texas Law School.

"It's one of the worst invasions of privacy I've heard of," said Anderson.

And it has been happening in several places.

In Georgia, a business put up a camera in a restroom, supposedly watching for drugs.

There was a camera in a Louisiana Wal-Mart.

Both of those cases brought civil lawsuits

So far, only two states in the country have criminal laws against bathroom cams.

"I don't need cameras in the restroom to protect me," said Simme.

The 11 News Defenders wanted to see about those cameras at the Oz Bar and went under cover.

In the ladies room there was a camera up in the corner, peering down on us.

And over in the men's room, a camera was staring down from the ceiling as customers flowed in and out of both bathrooms.

The 11 News Defenders asked a bartender about it.

11 News Defenders: "I just looked up and there's a camera in there. What's that all about?"

Bartender: "That does not record anything in the bathroom."

11 News Defenders: "Oh, OK."

Bartender: "In the men's bathroom it doesn't record anything."

But she said the women's camera did work and record. "It's totally legal," she said.

"If they're recording, that alone makes it an undeniable invasion of privacy," said Anderson. "Open and shut."

Randy Ozburn is the owner of Oz Bar.

When asked if he believed anyone's privacy has ever been violated there, he said, "No. Absolutely not."

11 News Defenders asked about the men's room, pointing out the camera in it.

When asked if someone was standing right over the urinal, would they be captured by the camera, "You can't see anything, no," said Ozburn.

When 11 News Defenders looked at the Oz Bar's own security monitors, reporter Mark Greenblatt could be seen.

When asked if it worried him at all, "Why should it?" Ozburn said, "Everybody knows there are cameras here."

How? He pointed to signs.

And over in the women's room?

"The Oz Bar's biggest percentage of clientele is women and the reason for that is because of the cameras. They feel secure here," said Ozburn.

Ozburn says the cameras help stop vandalism.

11 News Defenders asked Ozburn how many times he has ever had to call the police for a crime that's happened in the women's room?

"Well, never," he said.

And events where women dress in bikinis at the bar, where do women change?

"They would change in the stalls," Ozburn said, "I would think so, there are cameras in here."

He admits what they catch, they record.

Do women know they're being recorded? "The sign next to the door says they're being recorded in the restroom," said Ozburn.

When we wanted to see this time for ourselves what these cameras could see, he claimed he couldn't oblige.

"The camera's been broke for five months," he said.

Still, Ozburn says women get fair warning, pointing again towards those warning signs.

"That sign has been up ever since we put the cameras up," Ozburn said.

The only problem, as undercover video showed, the signs weren't there any of the times 11 News Defenders visited.

11 News Defenders: "Let's be honest with me here. You put those signs up after I called you."

Ozburn: "Absolutely not."

11 News Defenders: "You had somebody put them up?"

Ozburn: "Absolutely not."

11 News Defenders: "Somebody magically put them up?"

Ozburn: "Absolutely not. I did not do anything of that nature. And I will argue that from now on."

But when we told him about our tape, "When I went into the men's room, the sign was not up there. And I put the sign up there," Ozburn said.

"The camera shouldn't be there," said State Representative Garnet Coleman.

But Rep. Coleman says sign or no sign, it doesn't matter.

"I don't know of any Texan who wants a camera in the restroom while they're taking care of their private acts," he said.

As a result, he says he will file new Texas legislation making it illegal to put cameras in bathrooms.

And in the end, Ozburn may have changed his mind.

"We don't want any liabilities," he said.

Before the interview as over Ozburn started taking the bathroom cameras down.

"We did this for one reason only. That was to keep our customers happy."

The Oz Bar's owner says he only pointed his ladies room camera at the mirrors, not the stalls.

That still disturbs that young woman who went into his bathroom. She says plenty of people do private things, whether in front of the mirror or anywhere else in a bathroom.

That's why Rep. Garnet Coleman says in the next special session of the legislature he'll introduce that bill that would ban cameras from public restrooms altogether.