SEOUL, South Korea-The world’s No. 3 mobile-phone maker Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. will ban the use of camera phones in its semiconductor, flat-panel and electronics factories, according to local reports.
Samsung officials were not immediately available for comment.
The ban, effective July 14, is part of an effort to protect against industrial espionage. Interestingly, Samsung is one of the world’s major manufacturers of camera phones and sells them throughout the world.
Samsung’s move is not the first example of such camera-phone policy.
In Britain, camera phones have been banned in areas surrounding courts due to the risk of users taking pictures of key witnesses and police, according to local reports. Courts in the Australian state of Victoria are considering a similar move, following allegations that a camera phone was used to photograph a jailed stockbroker. The pictures were sent to a Sydney newspaper.
Other camera-phone bans address more vulgar situations. Australia’s state of Victoria imposed a ban on camera phones in swimming pools and recreational centers after a man pleaded guilty to taking pictures of young girls in a pool changing room in Melbourne, according to local reports. Other areas across the world have taken similar steps, including fitness and recreation centers in parts of Britain, New Zealand and Hong Kong. In fact, Saudi Arabia’s Commission for Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice has banned the use of camera phones throughout the country to stem what it calls inappropriate pictures of women.
Such fears may be founded; a newspaper delivery man in Singapore has been accused of attempting to secretly photograph women in public toilets using his camera phone, according to local reports. He was charged with breaking into a women’s restroom and taking pictures by placing his phone on the toilet’s false ceiling.
Camera phones have also popped up on the right side of the law. An Italian shop owner used his camera phone to photograph two people outside his store he considered suspicious. He sent the pictures to local police, who discovered the two were wanted for robbery. They were arrested, according to reports. In Osaka, Japan, local police said they get dozens of camera-phone pictures every month of crime scenes, stolen cars and suspects. And in perhaps the worst and most well-known camera- phone incident, onlookers allegedly recorded the rape of a woman in a public restroom using their camera phones in Sussex, United Kingdom. Police said the photographers may not have known they were witnessing a rape and asked that anyone with recorded images to step forward.
Further, camera phones soon may play a major role in newsgathering. The BBC news channel in Europe encouraged viewers to take their camera phones to local protests and then send in the photos.
