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Puts lid on revelations

By Tony Dennis

BOLTING THE STABLE door after the horse has bolted, US Defence secretary has banned the use of cameraphones by US forces in Iraq. The Business quotes a source inside the Pentagon as saying that the United States suspects that a significant number of the digital photos and videos of prisoner abuse seeping out of Iraq were taken using cameraphones.

This isn’t the first time a cameraphone ban has been instituted. The INQ reported as long as go as 2002 that health clubs were banning usage of such devices in changing rooms for fear they’d be misused by paedophiles. See here.

Although most cameraphones are configured to capture video snippets (circa 10 seconds long) so that they can be sent as multimedia messages (MMS), such handsets can also be set to video for as long as there is storage space left. Which, with SD/MMC cards for cameraphones reaching 128Mb, means hours rather than minutes.

The INQ was amused by the suggestion by an informant at Hutchison’s 3 network, quoted in The Business, that one reason why it hasn’t sold handsets into the financial and blue chip sectors is fears over commercial espionage. All of 3’s handsets support video capture — even the Nokia 7600. What a great excuse for failing to meet your sales target!

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