Three students suspended over mobile phone porn

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

Most of the pornographic pictures are downloaded from the internet and sent on to MMS phones. The problem threatens to get even worse with the third generation (3G) of mobile phones which will provide commercial pornographic services to users, including full video clips.

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

“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 inbuilt cameras to take secret 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, the British government has ordered mobile operators to have controls in place by June.

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

Vodafone, whose 100,000 MMS 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 added customers involved ran the risk of being disconnected from the network.