There has been a lot of media hype during the last month over camera phones. News reports and Children’s charity, Barnardos claim that these devices put children at danger by potentially exposing them to salacious content and by providing yet another technological vehicle for paedophiles to exchange explicit and illegal content. There is no doubt that there can be very serious risks associated with camera phones and multimedia message technology.
Desktop PCs as stationary devices, often installed in the family living room, make it relatively easy for concerned parents to supervise their children’s Internet activities, whereas camera or MMS (multimedia messaging service) phones, by their very nature, are highly mobile devices and therefore represent a whole different regulatory challenge.
How should parents protect their children from receiving inappropriate content on their mobile phones? Well, you would expect the guidance on this matter to come from the mobile operators. However, they too seem to be on a steep learning curve and right now, no concrete safeguards are in place. Campbell Scott, product director for O2 says that his company ‘needs to understand filtering technology a little better’. At the same time, the issue of content control is not merely restricted to the technical challenges of content monitoring, but also presents a key dilemma: ‘Can we (02) make the judgement as to what kind of content subscribers on our network can share?’ questions Scott.
What he would prefer to offer concerned parents is the ‘controls to opt out of certain services if they cause the user or the guardian reason for concern’. Scott suggests that in time mobile operators will develop a code of practice for dealing with this issue where filtering will be available as an optional service. ‘Even at that, operators cannot guarantee that certain inappropriate images will not get through. It really is a case of best effort.’
For Eamon Farrell, head of content at Vodafone, ‘It is difficult and possibly undesirable to police person-to-person mobile traffic given certain technological limitations and data privacy issues.’ For him, the operators can combat camera phone nasties by taking a multi-pronged approach to this multi-layered problem.
Tackling the problem
First of all, the operators must adopt a strong position of social responsibility where ‘there is no question of Vodafone providing adult mobile content through its portal until there is a way of controlling content sent to the phones. Secondly, the operators must educate the users and give the tools to control the content to the user or the guardian. So, the latter is the fashion in which content can be controlled in a technological sense.’
Therefore, it seems that the operators are agreed that mobile content filtering tools should be made available to consumers. The next question we as consumers need to ask is when these tools will be made available?
The content filter software providers claim to have the products right now to deal with the threat of mobile nasties: Fran Fanning, CEO of content monitoring company, Telcotech claims to have been in discussions with the operators for nearly two years. She says the whole matter is complex as it involves issues relating to ‘eroding a major revenue stream, reassuring the subscriber base, and analysing content. While people are sharing content, operators are generating revenue’.
Fanning’s software uses sophisticated image analysis technology. It can also block WAP URLs and create ‘black lists’ and ‘White lists’ of content. Fanning also says that based on conversations with her own children, she believes that images of a certain semi-clothed Cork schoolgirl are but the ‘tip of the iceberg’. ‘Kids get illegal and adult-orientated images like this to their phones everyday.’
It is clear that the mobile phone companies need to offer some sort of censoring solution to concerned parents as soon as possible, whether it’s developed by themselves or by a third party. Parents and other responsible users are savvy enough to know that if two or more paedophiles are sharing illegal, inappropriate images of exploited children over a phone network, then the operators should be doing their utmost to stamp it out using all that technology has to offer. Let’s not ban the technology, but make it safer through enhancement.
23/02/04
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