Official Guilty of Hiding Camera in DC Embassy Bathroom

Alfred Keating had been the highest ranking official at New Zealand's US embassy
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Apr 18, 2019 2:38 PM CDT
Official Guilty of Hiding Camera in DC Embassy Bathroom
In this March 29, 2018, photo, Alfred Keating, a former Navy commodore and senior defense attache, walks towards the Auckland District Court in Auckland, New Zealand.   (Michael Craig/NZ Herald via AP)

A naval commodore who served as New Zealand's senior military attache to the United States was found guilty Thursday of planting a hidden camera in a bathroom at the country's embassy in Washington, DC, the AP reports. A jury in the Auckland District Court deliberated for 4 1/2 hours before finding 59-year-old Commodore Alfred Harold Keating guilty on a charge of attempting to make an intimate visual recording. He will be sentenced on June 25 and faces the possibility of up to three years in prison. Keating resigned from the New Zealand Defence Force after pleading not guilty to the charge in March, ending a 40-year career during which he became one of New Zealand's most senior naval officers.

The Brickhouse Security camera was discovered after it fell from its hiding place in a heating duct of a unisex bathroom on July 27, 2017; it appeared to have been in place "many months," per the BBC. The jury heard from witnesses that a DNA profile found on the camera's card was 10,000 million times more likely to be Keating's than any random New Zealander. Keating's personal laptop had at one time been connected to a Brickhouse Security camera and he had made Google searches about how to set up and position the camera. Police found more than 700 deleted files and 20 existing files on the memory card, including 19 pictures of people using the restroom over a 5-hour period. (Here's another story involving an embassy bathroom.)

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