US bans cameraphones in Iraq
Found on The Inquirer on Saturday, 22 May 2004
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.
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.
They are banning the media so they can control what's released. I'd call that censorship. Nobody can tell me that's done for security; not when they ban picture/video devices after the recent revelations. It sounds more like the gov hasn't much interest in changing the situation, but in supressing future evidence.