Normally in order to be legal, a store must do the following:

1) use same-sex personnel to monitor their customers (women monitor the women's dressing rooms and men monitor men's dressing rooms); and,

2) the security systems need to be 'tapeless', meaning that the person watching through the camera can see what's going on, but can not keep a tape of what they're viewing.

This tends to strike a fairly good balance between protection of merchandise and protecting your privacy.

While there did seem to be a trend toward camera-based monitoring a few years ago, this has seemed to have slowed. With the advent of security devices on the clothes themselves, stores have been less inclined to look into dressing rooms.

If you're ever concerned about how you are being monitored, ask a store employee to tell you who is monitoring the camera and whether they are keeping tapes. If the store won't disclose its methods, or they seem to be monitoring in a manner that you are uncomfortable with, take your money somewhere else. Losing your business often speaks louder than words.