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Story: Workplaces 'should ban camera phones'

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In my opinion this is yet another example of the typical knee-jerk reaction demonstrated by companies who wish to be seen to be proactively protecting proprietary information, but are sadly out of touch with reality.

It seems ironic that most employees in manufacturing support organisations (planning, IT, finance) are freely issued with laptops these days to allow flexible working practices, yet the same organisations are paranoid about the (mistaken) threat of employee-owned camera-phones.

What self-respecting employee, intent on a spree of industrial espionage, would risk the embarassment (or even waste time) by photographing a 100 page document with a 640x480 pixel VGA camera-phone with no external storage? It would take forever (even with an integrated SD/CF/MS card slot) and probably be totally illegible. Surely the smart thief would opt for one of the easy options .....

a) Email the document to interested parties?
b) Transfer to CD-ROM / Floppy / Flash Memory?
c) Simply save the document on his/her laptop and share the document with a competitor without leaving an e-trail?
d) Log-in remotely from a hotel room and give the competitor full access to all company systems?

For visitors, I can accept that any cameras should be left at the security desk, but organisations really need to accept the fact that todays e-methods have effectively made this method of industrial espionage virtually redundant. 99% of snaps taken on a camer-phones are generally in bars, on vacation, or both.

Time for a reality check.

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