"Be careful of strangers," as Mama told you since you were a child. "The wolf usually comes wearing a sheep's skin." Anyone behind you could be tracking you furtively, though he is usually not working for the CIA, but just spying for fun's sake.

Odes should be chanted to the new developments in the high-tech industry each day. Even with little money to dispense, people's dreams of becoming a 007 in the new era are still coming true.

Curious school children often turn to some small shops selling plastic toys shaped like a spiderman or death's head in which a tiny amplifier is installed. With auxiliary radio reception, they can overhear the topics or comments by their fellow students, if they are sitting no farther than 1 metre away.

Spurning such childish gadgets, adults look for something top-end to show off their more sophisticated tastes.

When the first mobile phone with the addition of a digital camera, the Nokia 7650 came onto the market, youngsters came flowing into the stores to make inquiries, or just to buy without a second thought.

A mobile phone dealer surnamed Wang from the Cyberspace Hongkou store said since the emergence of those photographic mobile phones, his trade has seen bumper business, especially on weekends.

There are now three brands of mobile phone offering this capacity, that is the Nokia 7650, the Panasonic GD88 and the Sony-Ericsson T68ie.

Partly due to the application of imperceptible technology, the clarity of the Nokia 7650 is only 10,000 dpi, the GD88 is higher, reaching 110,000 dpi, but it has little memory for storage. The same goes for the T68ie. The high price tag is also contributing to the cooling of demand. There are also worries stirring in society.

Speculation is growing that people with obscene ideas might be stealthily using such mobile phones in public bathrooms, pretending to be making a phone call but actually shooting your naked body through the inlaid lens instead. Some media sources have said all public bathrooms have banned mobile phones with photographic functions in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

"The MMS function formally introduced on October 1 by China Telecom, the largest monopoly operator of Chinese telecommunication business, could be seen as a trigger," said Gu Jiandong, a renowned lawyer from the Shanghai Wanbang Law Firm.

Compared with the traditional SMS, which could only send short text message, the MMS has the ability to transfer multi-media materials, such as stereo music or colour pictures from the Internet.

That is to say, with a set of infrared communication equipment, one can easily link a mobile phone to the Internet and freely download anything needed.

"Rules on civil privacy rights say that anyone secretly photographing somebody and publicly distributing the pictures without seeking permission can be sued and sentenced to two to four years in prison," Gu said.

The first such case was raised in Chongqing Municipality, according to the Chongqing Morning Post. The woman named Liu Hong, with intimate ties to a married man, was photographed by the man's wife when she was washing her hands in a public washroom. The pictures were spread all over the net.

A thorny issue

But such cases are sometimes very complicated to deal with. The first thorny problem concerns the difficulties in collecting evidence, while the second lies in catching the troublemakers.

"No one likes to be involved into legal cases, so few take the responsibility of suing. If the court runs out of defendants, how can cases go to court?" Gu joked.

The public security bureau only bans professional spying apparatus, which does not include mobiles or digital cameras.

But actually the digital camera can be even more dangerous than mobile phones. Professional ones, with resolution of 10 million dpi or above, are conspicuous because of their size. Smaller ones, however, can be a problem.

For example, the Finepix M603 by Fujifilm, with a resolution of up to 6 million dpi. The DSC-F77, developed by Sony, claims to be the lightest, weighing only 157 grams with a resolution of 4 million dpi.

"Some archive museums do not allow indoor photography to preserve the secrecy of certain documents, but people can stealthily take photos with the help of these cameras without drawing the attention of the security guards. This problem should be taken seriously because it is related to property rights," Gu said.

Due to the immaturity of the legal system, there are still many loopholes that need serious attention.

"In any case, civic virtue has to play the biggest role," Gu concluded.

(Shanghai Star November 21, 2002)