March 4, 2004
Cuba's Castro censors cameraphones
Via Smart Mobs, The Inquirer reports on a curious incident that happened to a British couple on a Caribbean cruise docked in Havana, Cuba.
Disembarking from the boat, "customs officials spotted that they were carrying a cameraphone, and strongly advised them to take the device back to their cabin and swap it for an ordinary (digital) camera".
Asking around afterwards, they discovered that Castro's regime is worried that tourists might photograph something they shouldn't and send it back home before the regime had the chance to censor it."
As the Enquirer rightly points out, "besides owning a MMS/fototext capable handset , you'd also need access to a GPRS network for this kind of thing and we weren't aware that C-Com (Cuba's mobile operator) had such a capability."
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