Public Figures, Private Lives?

Today’s obsession with celebrity culture is pushing and pulling at the thin boundary between public-figure access and that person’s right to privacy. Supermarket tabloids abound, and the public’s appetite for celebrity gossip — accompanied by photos — seems to only grow with the expansion of media and information outlets online.

For many celebs, Hawaii has become a favorite place to vacation, to own a home, to get away from it all.

So it made headlines recently when Steven Tyler, the Aerosmith lead singer and former "American Idol" judge, celebrated upon hearing that an invasion-of-privacy bill named after him had passed Hawaii’s Senate despite serious concerns about its vagueness and constitutionality, even among some senators voting to keep the bill alive.

The measure, Senate Bill 465, S.D. 1, is now stalled in the House with "zero support" there — but the topic still commands a kind of gawk factor akin to Tyler’s Feb. 8 personal appearance at the Legislature. It’s got buzz.

The "Steven Tyler bill" made the relatively few paparazzi living in Hawaii nervous and has been regarded as an overkill compared with what’s seen in Hollywood.

"The shows that I do — and they’re pretty big names that come in — they’re pretty much used to it (the media attention) when they’re doing shows," said longtime Hawaii promoter Tom Moffatt. Paparazzi "work the ‘Five-0s’ and things like that," he said, "but they’re pretty much accepted by the security at these places."

A larger issue is on Maui, the favorite island of second homes for the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Willie Nelson, Clint Eastwood and Woody Harrelson. Last year, Tyler bought a home surrounded by trees and the ocean in the prestigious Makena district of South Maui for $4.8 million.

"Public figures have a right to reasonable privacy," Sen. Kalani English of Maui said in proposing the bill. He wrote in the bill that "sometimes the paparazzi go too far to disturb the peace and tranquility afforded celebrities who escaped to Hawaii for a quiet life."

Dina LaPolt, Tyler’s attorney, told The Associated Press, "I was very surprised we got out of the Senate on the first run. If it had passed through the House, I would have been shocked." If the measure fails this session, LaPolt said, she plans to continue the effort next year.

Numerous camera-armed paparazzi have been routinely recorded crowding movie and music stars in airports and elsewhere, most commonly in Los Angeles. California has had laws since the late 1990s aimed at controlling them. The Hawaii bill is based in part on the California statute.

A California appeals court last month recommended that charges be reinstated for a photographer accused of chasing singer Justin Bieber on a Los Angeles freeway, after a state judge had declared the anti-paparazzi law to be unconstitutional. It is the first case in which the statute has been tested.

"We’re not in-your-face paparazzi like you see in L.A., where the competition is crazy because there are so many of them," said a Honolulu paparazzo, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "In the seven years that I’ve been doing it here, I’ve never seen paparazzi from Hawaii charge up to a celebrity. Have we annoyed them? Sure we have, but you don’t see anybody do like what they do in Los Angeles."

The Honolulu paparazzo said about 13 full-time paparazzi are based in Hawaii, most of them on Maui and Oahu, earning $80,000 to $120,000 a year, and several engage in the work part-time. "It’s a livelihood," he said. "I did a bunch of other things before this but the money was just too tempting."

Pae ‘Aina Communications, which represents celebrities, has "filed police reports for photographers in trees; perhaps the most egregious has been the use of telephoto lenses to capture private moments from up to one mile away," Adrian K. Kamali‘i, its president, testified to senators.

The British royalty was jolted last September when a French magazine published a sun-bathing topless Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, on holiday at a private chateau in France. Analysts have indicated that the photo was taken about one-third of a mile away, requiring a powerful telephoto lens.

The bill before the Legislature would make it illegal for a commercial photographer to take pictures or recordings of celebrity and family on land they own or lease by use of "a visual or auditory enhancing device" even if the photographer had not trespassed upon the property.

"It’s totally unnecessary because there’s more than adequate present law available to celebrities and you and I for invasion of privacy," said Jeff Portnoy, a media attorney. "There’s criminal and civil penalties for trespass, for example."

He said one Hawaii law already forbids "using a device to allow you to see or hear in an area that you might not otherwise be able to do just with your normal faculties."

Portnoy said the penalty — triple damages for the same invasion of privacy that regular people would commit — is "ridiculous" for conduct that is vague.

For example, he said, in Portlock on Oahu, "there’s all these houses right along the beach and there are a million public rights-of-way and people have backyards with low fences or hedges, and there’s more grass which is arguably private — I think it is private — right contiguous to the beach. So if Steven Tyler is renting a house in Portlock and is sitting on that grassy area, which is outside the fence line, and I’m walking on the sand and I take his picture, is that a violation or not?

"The way the statute is written, technically it is," Portnoy said. "I don’t think there’s a court in the country that would uphold that as being constitutional, because he’s in plain view. I could take a picture with my cellphone."

Portnoy added: "One could argue that paparazzi need to be deterred — I’m not saying that’s a legitimate argument. But this bill is kind of killing a gnat with an elephant."

"I think the celebrities have to realize that they’re in a business and we’re in a business," the Honolulu paparazzo said. "We all pay all the Hawaii taxes that we’re supposed to pay. When we’re tracking a star — not stalking them — we’re tracking a celebrity, we rent rooms for hundreds of dollars a night, and we rent cars, and we fly, and we have to have meals."

Would such a statute cause the paparazzi to pack their bags and leave Hawaii?

"No, it wouldn’t stop us at all," he said. "Our agencies are prepared, if that law passes and one of us gets sued, to go to court and, I’m sure, if it’s a ridiculous law, it would be overturned."