NEW YORK — A small digital camera apparently planted by an unidentified voyeur to shoot up passing skirts caused a brief bomb scare near a Manhattan subway station, police said Wednesday.

A pedestrian called police on Tuesday afternoon to report seeing a box with wires sticking out of it under a subway grate in a sidewalk on the Upper East Side. The block was closed off while the police bomb squad investigated. The scare ended when officers discovered that the device was a digital camera.

Police said on Wednesday they believe someone positioned the camera to record so-called upskirt images of women and girls in dresses and skirts as they strolled over the grate.

Investigators found no evidence that the hidden camera had taken or transmitted any of the photos, which are featured on various Web sites.

As of late Wednesday, there were no arrests.

Video voyeurism, secretly capturing images of another person for sexual purposes, became a felony in New York in 2003. The statute, Stephanie’s Law, was named for a Long Island woman whose landlord spied on her for months by hiding a tiny video camera in a smoke detector above her bed.

Under the law, most video voyeurism can result in sentences ranging from one year to seven years in prison. The longest sentences apply to cases in which images are sold or traded.