Students suspended over phone porn

THREE students in a southside Dublin school have been suspended for distributing pornographic images on picture phones.

The suspensions were handed out in the last school term and are the first example of the growing problem with mobile phone pornography.

The Dublin-based mobile software firm Telcotec said the schools it works with are struggling to cope.

"The secondary schools who banned picture phones last year for privacy reasons have had to add suspensions because pornography is being passed around, particularly among boys," said chief executive Fran Fanning.

Paedophiles have used the anonymity of the internet to prey on children some have been caught by tracing the computer's owner.

But the mobile phone network is more anonymous. Prepaid mobile phones bought for cash cannot be traced as there is no record of who owns the handset, while 3G third generation technology will allow paedophiles to access child porn on prepaid phones with impunity.

Most of the pornographic pictures are downloaded from the internet and sent on to MMS phones.

The Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland (ASTI) said mobile pornography was prevalent.

"We've heard informally of it being passed around on phones. You can take it as a principle that what can happen, will happen," said president Pat Cahill.

He is also concerned about students using MMS phones with in-built cameras to take pictures of teachers in the classroom.

MMS phones can be used for more sinister purposes. In a raid on a paedophile network last April, Scottish police found phones containing images of children being abused. As a result, Britain ordered operators to have controls in place by June.

Telcotec is in discussion with the five British operators, including Vodafone and O2, to provide filtering software. This analyses flesh tones in an image and blocks out unsuitable ones. But Ms Fanning said there were no moves to introduce the system here.

"The problem of pornography is already there but it's not being talked about. That's because the mobile operators don't have the solution in place," she said.

Vodafone, whose 100,000 subscribers sent one million pictures over Christmas, said it was considering how to deal with this "evolving area". "But we can't be responsible for what people send to each other, no more than we can be responsible for what they say to each other," said spokeswoman Cara Twohig.

In a statement, O2 said it regretted the "inappropriate use" of mobile phones. It said customers ran the risk of being disconnected from the network.