iPhone is extra-loud to avoid upskirts

Let’s look at a line from this CultofMac post:

In Japan, upskirt and downblouse shots have become increasingly popular with the advent of high-resolution camera phones.

Let’s look at that again:

In Japan, upskirt and downblouse shots have become increasingly popular with the advent of high-resolution camera phones.

Now while this story is ostensibly about the iPhone’s shutter noise, I’m hard pressed to believe this is such a big deal that electronics manufacturers have to up the shutter volume. I was talking to Serkan, our Japanese correspondent, and he pointed out that Japanese girls and young women have to wear skirts year round, giving Japanese men (who are “Pervs, like all of us” says Serkan), the opportunity to use their mobile phones as secret porn manufacturing plants.

He also noted that upskirts are probably popular in Germany and the U.S. I disagreed: jeans are far too popular here for any hardcore upskirt action and, well, Western minds are sexually deviant in their own ways not related to the furtive vouyerism/frotteurism associated with Japanese sexual predilections.