Phone user accused of under-skirt pix

An Auckland accountant said to have used his mobile phone to film up the skirts of unsuspecting female shoppers faces a charge of offensive behaviour.

The man, in his mid-30s, allegedly placed a video phone in a shopping basket and cruised the aisles of New World supermarket near Victoria Park in central Auckland.

The store was alerted to a man acting strangely around female customers about four to six weeks ago.

A woman complained after being followed and brushed against. She recognised the man as the same person who knocked against her at the pick'n' mix section a few weeks earlier.

She saw him again on Monday and told security, who monitored him standing beside another woman. The police were called.

Supermarket owner Rob McGregor said security staff investigated the woman's complaint and discovered "what appeared to be inappropriate use of a camera phone".

Police have seized the phone. The man, who cannot be named, will return to court next month.

The Government has introduced a bill to make intimate covert filming an offence that carries a prison term.

The Crimes (Intimate Covert Filming) Amendment Bill defines such filming as "the making of surreptitious visual records of other persons in intimate circumstances, without their knowledge or consent, and in circumstances that the person would reasonably expect to be private".

The definition includes "recording beneath or under a person's clothing".

Such behaviour will bring up to three years' jail.